User:Medea bless/Site2You

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Site2You is an advanced CMS (Content Management System) that helps people create their own websites without specific programming or design skills. The system lets users modify a pre-built website template using a well-known WYSIWYG editor in real time. The system is supplied with the built-in widgets for precise website editing: various multimedia features like MP3 & video players, optimized text boxes, e-commerce facilities, etc. ^[1] It competes with other web creation companies such as Weebly, Yola, Wix & Webs.

History[edit]

Founded in 2001 by Andrew Williams and originally named as Site2You the project was launched in open beta in July 2002.

In February 2003 Site2You signed an agreement with Template Monster according to which the Template Monster company added a new type of web templates – Turnkey templates.

During 2003-2009 Site2You Support team had been working on the Control Panel improvement which resulted in a brand-new 1.2. Control Panel release (major release). This version included a lot of considerable adjustments: Admin Panel interface & Ticket System updates, speed improvements, new content boxes addition (namely Stored Video widget, Blog, Site Poll, etc).^[2]

In April, 2010 The Control Panel was supplied with the Site Design Configuration options & the Multilingual content widget. Now site2you users can change the way a template looks without webmasters' help.

On June 30th, 2010 Site2You released a new version of turnkey templates which can be hosted on external servers. These templates are supplied with advanced Image Sliders, User Management console, Multilingual Content & Photo Gallery widgets.^[3]

Features[edit]

Site2You's widget-based website builder allows users to "drag and drop" content boxes onto a web page & maintain it on-line once published. ^[4]. All of the features are built-in and stored on site2you.com servers ^[5] which makes it easy to edit a template on-line. Templates' source files can be easily edited in any PHP editor. It also allows to create own widgets and customize a template profoundly.

Turnkey templates are written in HTML, PHP & partially Java which helps them to remain search engines friendly. Users can add site' & pages' keywords, meta tags & descriptions, apply ALT and title image attribute values through the Admin Panel. Site2You system also lets customers use external HTML statistics tracking scripts such as Google Analytics.

The following functions are available within the Control Panel: Under Construction Mode, Website Preview, Admin Panel & Site Design Configuration options, E-mail Management & User Management sections, etc.

The following modules and widgets are available: E-commerce facilities, Image Slider, Photo Gallery, RSS feed, Blog & Social Media, Site Poll, Site News, Audio & Video Players, Multilingual Content widget (with the ability to upload custom fonts), Contact Forms, text boxes with various CSS presets, etc. ^[6]

Currently Site2You templates are available in 2 versions:

Turnkey 1.0. templates which are hosted on site2you.com servers. The package of services includes: template usage, free domain name registration, unlimited hosting, bandwidth & e-mail boxes , Control Panel & access to a special FTP folder, web masters' assistance & 24/5 live support.^[7]

Turnkey 2.0. templates which require customer's hosting. This version provides a client with a full control over a template. A user can both edit the source files & work on changes through the Admin Panel.

Newcomers can test the tools on a 7-day free trial account using a temporary domainname.site2you.com URL to get a feel for how the builder works.

Criticism[edit]

Since Site2You CMS is a custom-built system, users criticize it for being incompatible with other site creation tools. In defense of the CMS, the developers say, that they constantly update the system and supply it with new widgets which make the Site2You website builder a self-sufficient system.

Besides, the Control Panel often conflicts with customers' *.js & *.css files – changes applied to the content boxes' structure are not accepted by the Admin Panel and are displayed on live sites only.