When Apple discontinued its iWeb webpage design app back in 2011, it left a lot of users who relied on it to design their personal or business websites in the lurch. The makers of EverWeb, though, saw the gap that iWeb’s demise left and decided to fill it.
EverWeb, like iWeb, is a WYSIWYG web development tool. That is, instead of having to look at lines of HTML code, you see a live preview of your site that you can edit, much like how you would edit a document in a word processor. EverWeb lets you drag and drop elements—shapes, text boxes, images, you name it—into your webpages and tweak them as you see fit.
It extends this drag-and-drop functionality to also cover things like Twitter and Facebook social buttons, Paypal buttons, audio or video players, and so on: If you want to add one of these, you simply drag it into your webpage then customize it via an inspector window.
Since EverWeb’s creators designed it with iWeb users in mind, it takes some design cues from Apple’s app to help keep the learning curve to a minimum. And like iWeb, it comes with a number of templates that you can use as the basis of your site.
Once you’re done designing your site, you can save it to a folder, upload it via FTP, or upload it to EverWeb’s own hosting service—all from within the app itself.
We haven’t gotten a chance to use EverWeb, but it seems like a solid all-around package for anyone who wants to build a site for themselves or their small business without the mess. The standalone app costs around $80, but you can purchase an edition that comes bundled with EverWeb’s website hosting service for an annual fee of $100. A free demo is available for you to try before you buy. Check out the EverWeb site for more.
