There are different website generators that we can find online. Small businesses may consider them as quick-starts to build an online presence. One common question is whether website generators are good. In reality, website generators can provide us with decent results, but only for a limited time. It is a mistake to think that we can establish a long-term presence by using website generators. We won’t be able to get significant positive impacts from quick-fixes. Website should be the result of labor of love. Our hard work will allow people to return and read new updates. Free website generators will fail to lay the necessary groundwork for sustainable website platform.
Website generators could do more than a few things inappropriately, because they lack the usual common and artistic sense of real human designers. As an example, images could be placed where texts should be. This could ruin the overall design and search engine bots can’t properly read images. For this reason, we may need to evaluate pages created by these generators, so that our resources won’t be wasted. If we want to create a mini-site with lightweight design, these generators can be used as a starting-point. It means that we should always have the opportunity to edit our pages.
HTML validation is another factor that we need to consider when using website generator. Results should be fed through the W3C Validator and it’s an effective tool to validate web pages produced by both human and machines. The validator should be able to pick up any kind of code error on each page. Website generators may be reliable enough to not produce serious HTML errors, but there could be issues that result in reduced usability and accessibility. An example, there could be no XML declarations at the top of the code or the generator doesn’t provide identification of the document type.
The validator should know where to start when it comes to creating a webpage. Many errors could be associated with the fact that various HTML attributes have been deprecated or no longer used based on present guidelines. This could happen when the generator isn’t yet updated to reflect latest changes in XHTML standards. Generators that are commonly updated may have fewer validation issues. Validator may also fail to deal with common issues, such as excessive uses of images that result in reduced experience. Adding too many animations could also degrade performance and this is one thing that validators can’t detect.
After using website generator for a while, we should know things that it ignores. The number of design layouts and fonts they use could be limited resulting in less than adequate designs. It is important to consider things that we should change on pages created by these generators. Using web generators isn’t an unfair business practice, as long as we add unique content. This simply gives us an opportunity to compete better and we could continuously improve the website by adding or changing elements.