Similar to Doodlekit, Webnode is a free (no ads) website creation tool aimed at helping web design novices get a modern-looking website online in minutes. Once you've registered for a Webnode account, you're asked to choose a title and slogan for your new site. Then you select a template and start adding content.

Webnode uses a common modular system which allows you to drag content areas to create different layouts or add content like polls, forums, and photo galleries. There are also widgets for PayPal, Flickr, YouTube, and Google Maps. Like Tumblr, Webnode lets you use your own domain name for their service (instead of somename.webnode.com).

Traffic statistics are also available which show you important things like unique visitors, referring URL's, visit duration, and browser version.

All that's missing is a chic Web 2.0 name.

Wow. We never thought about it this way before, but if the web still looked like this, you wouldn't need an iPhone with Safari to surf the web on your phone.



Remember back when the web was basically text and an occasional logo or product picture on a plain background? And remember when the idea of buying and selling things online was new and kind of scary?

This promotional video from 1994 does beg one question though. If this company was trying to promote itself, why does it tell viewers to email for more information at the end? Shouldn't they have an amazing web site of their own?

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Internet monitoring company has announced that late last month the web passed a significant milestone: 100 million web sites.

But wait... 100 million? So few? Surely there can't be only 100 million web sites out there! Ah, but let's take a closer look at what Netcraft considers a web site: "There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them," says Netcraft's Rich Miller. Ah, there's the rub: According to Netcraft, it's only a web site if it has its own domain name and has content on it. The latter part I think we can all agree with--this excludes, presumably, blank pages, registrar parking pages, Google ad farms, and the like. But what about the domain name thing? There are tens of millions of Blogspot blogs out there, for example, but since they're all on .blogspot.com, Netcraft is counting them all as one. The same goes for every other blog host, and every web site living at Geocities or a similar host. 100 million web sites my butt.

Still, it's an interesting milestone. When Netcraft started counting back in 1995 there were only 18,000 web sites in existence. A hundred million domain-names-with-content in the 17 years since the World Wide Web's birth? If that's not something to marvel at, I don't know what is.

Realmac Software has released version 3.5.0 of WYSIWYG editor RapidWeaver. The new version is Universal Binary, meaning it will run natively on Intel Macs. New features include CSS-based photo albums, SFTP support, improved blog functionality, and of course, more themes. As in previous versions, there is also easy integration with iLife and .Mac.

Given my general view of WYSIWYG editors (with which you became familiar on Tuesday, if you weren't aware of it already), I tried not to let RapidWeaver's self-congratulatory list of features sway me. I downloaded it with an open - but skeptical - mind.

Well, color me pleasantly surprised! Turns out RapidWeaver is more than just a WYSIWYG editor. You can use the WYSIWYG features if you want, but you can also code by hand. Also, the pre-set templates are much more robust and useful than I've seen in any other site creation tool. For example, the Contact Form template requires PHP - but those who are wary of server-side programming don't have to do the dirty work themselves.

But let's get to the code generated by the WYSIWYG interface, since that's always my bone of contention with "web site creation software." I can hardly believe it it myself, but... RapidWeaver doesn't use tables for layout. And it also doesn't make up for the lack of tables by resorting to divitis. It's not perfect, of course; but then neither is every piece of code I've ever written by hand. All in all? It's as if RapidWeaver is actually an editor of the 21st century.