Product Reviews

Mr Site Takeaway Website Pro boasts that it's the 'world's leading business website in a box'. You really do get a box, although, as it turns out, Mr Site isn't in it. Along with the usefully chunky manual comes a CD-ROM, but this merely provides Adobe Reader (so you can read the on-disc documentation) and the Firefox web browser (so you don't have to put up with Internet Explorer, which web designers hate with a passion). There's no actual web design software. This is because Mr Site is in an online application. Why the box then?

The most important thing in it is an activation card, which you use to sign into the Mr Site website. You then choose a domain name for your project, which will be registered as part of the purchase price. As always, you'll need a few alternatives in mind in case someone else already owns your brilliantly original name. Twiddle your thumbs for a few minutes while Mr Site sets everything up, and you can then build your site using a straightforward interface via your web browser.

With any program that claims to let you make a website without any actual web design skills, there are four primary concerns: ease of use, how long it takes, the available features, and the finished result. With an online tool, there's also the question of performance, and we found Mr Site adequate in this regard. Although some sections were slow to respond, most updates happened quickly, and publishing was practically instant.

Elsewhere, Mr Site is variable. It really is easy to use, and you can get a site up and running quite quickly. For

ADVERTISEMENT

beginners, the simple button-based interface is a boon, and it's a cinch to get new pages online and to edit them later. Usefully, the more you dig, the more options become apparent, including those for fairly advanced styling via Mr Site's content management system. Features-wise, Mr. Site also comes up trumps. Through its Extras section, you can add a shop, gallery, contact forms, blogs or a forum with just a few clicks.

Site for sore eyes

Aesthetically, it's less successful. Although a range of templates is offered, many are dated and staid, and they feel geared towards a heavily templated site rather than anything more flexible. Yet, because of how Mr Site deals with text, it's hard to get things consistent across your site, and many of the add-ons, notably the chat forum, look hideous.

We were also disappointed to find Mr Site was incapable of resizing images; you'll need to do that in a separate image editor, which is a hassle.

Our finished site seemed to work well enough, and was relatively snappy. Under the hood, we were less convinced. For a business site especially, you want your 'code' - the programming gubbins that tells the user's web browser what to display - to be clean. While Mr Site's code makes an effort to comply with current web standards, it offers poor semantics for page content. That may sound airy-fairy, but the practical upshot is that your site might not rank as high as it could in search engine results, making customers less likely to find you.

There's also the question of where Mr. Site's appeal lies. Although it makes a reasonable stab at automating the website building process, first-time users are better catered for by free online tools (Blogger and its ilk) and low-cost domain hosting companies. There's also a consumer version of Mr Site, at around £25. Businesses are likely to want a flexibility and professional sheen that Mr Site doesn't really deliver. However, if you fall between these camps, can stomach the dodgy visuals, and don't mind paying £7.99 per month after the first year in addition to the purchase price, Mr. Site is worthy of consideration.