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Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

blog.designers.weebly.com

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Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is some companies wants to go outside the 'template', and that's where direct manipulation gets really tricky when you got a different customer every month. I work as a product designer for a norwegian CMS, and I would die to make it drag'n'drop direct manipulation-icious. But almost all of our BigCo customers demands solutions outside the regular blog/template, which then would give us two options. a) Custom…

You should checkout http://www.webpop.com (disclaimer, I'm the co-founder). We've managed to make a dead simple on-site editing interface that works with any design, without any need to stick to any 'template'. Our goal is to allow designers with a knowledge of HTML and CSS to make completely custom designed websites that a client can easily (and safely) keep up to date.

That's what I meant with b), which is how we do it too. But it's not the best solution, which is direct manipulation – no 'form window' to edit the content of a page.

Which, as stated, is hard when you got demanding customers with very different needs for a website.

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#32

Wow, this is pretty huge. There's a big gap between designers and developers particularly in the smb market. Youll have designers that don't know how to develop make brochure-style sites that business owners don't know how to develop. Or you'll have developers make an editable site that looks like crap. If you want both you have to pay a lot of money. For designers Weebly now takes the place of the developer and give…

Problem is some companies wants to go outside the 'template', and that's where direct manipulation gets really tricky when you got a different customer every month. I work as a product designer for a norwegian CMS, and I would die to make it drag'n'drop direct manipulation-icious. But almost all of our BigCo customers demands solutions outside the regular blog/template, which then would give us two options. a) Custom…

By the way, the majority of customizations can be made to the template, and you are free to edit all HTML/CSS of the site there.

For the remaining customizations, you can either choose to style a Weebly element's CSS, or you can drop in your own code with a "Custom HTML" element.

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#33
This compelled me to play around with Weebly for the first time.

I created a quick landing page (http://prototypecases.weebly.com/). Easy to add built in contact forms, integration with Google's web fonts was nice, built in SEO tags to paste html. Tons of layouts to pick from and a super easy way to add images.

I was very impressed by how easy it was to put together and how fast customizing the site is. Classically, when it comes to this sort of thing, I think Wordpress but drag and drop is a very marketable feature for Weebly. I'm impressed.

I do have to note that the control panel timed out and the site displayed some sort of app disconnection error several times.

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should checkout http://www.webpop.com (disclaimer, I'm the co-founder). We've managed to make a dead simple on-site editing interface that works with any design, without any need to stick to any 'template'. Our goal is to allow designers with a knowledge of HTML and CSS to make completely custom designed websites that a client can easily (and safely) keep up to date.

That's what I meant with b), which is how we do it too. But it's not the best solution, which is direct manipulation – no 'form window' to edit the content of a page. Which, as stated, is hard when you got demanding customers with very different needs for a website.

I'm not actually convinced a) is the best solution though. For some things it is, but once you work with structured data that might show up in different places and might be displayed in different ways in those places, it's not always the best.

It works for simple pages where there's no real separation between content and design, but once you have text that's transformed to uppercase in one place because of a "text-transform: uppercase", or a long blog post that's only shown as a summary on the home page - editing directly in place becomes problematic.

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#35
I'm not sure if I get the pricing right: using Weebly pro I'm paying 4,58 US$ a month max. and can use it on 10 Domains. If I use Weebly Designers I pay up to 24,95 US$ for a single domain. So the possibility for my own branding justifies a price increase of up to 50x or am I missing something?

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#36

How does Weebly make money? I guess this Designers platform is the first step?

Weebly has been profitable since 2008. We make money by selling Pro accounts and domain names.

Where are the pro accounts? I can't find a pricing page on your website (by design I assume).

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I meant with b), which is how we do it too. But it's not the best solution, which is direct manipulation – no 'form window' to edit the content of a page. Which, as stated, is hard when you got demanding customers with very different needs for a website.

I'm not actually convinced a) is the best solution though. For some things it is, but once you work with structured data that might show up in different places and might be displayed in different ways in those places, it's not always the best. It works for simple pages where there's no real separation between content and design, but once you have text that's transformed to uppercase in one place because of a "text-tr…

Yes, but most of the time direct manipulation is king, so I hold that as the best solution.

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#39
post #35

I'm not sure if I get the pricing right: using Weebly pro I'm paying 4,58 US$ a month max. and can use it on 10 Domains. If I use Weebly Designers I pay up to 24,95 US$ for a single domain. So the possibility for my own branding justifies a price increase of up to 50x or am I missing something?

Is that alot of cash to whitelabel the CMS as your own? I don't think so.

Re: Weebly (YC 07) Launches Whitelabel Platform for Designers

#40
post #35

I'm not sure if I get the pricing right: using Weebly pro I'm paying 4,58 US$ a month max. and can use it on 10 Domains. If I use Weebly Designers I pay up to 24,95 US$ for a single domain. So the possibility for my own branding justifies a price increase of up to 50x or am I missing something?

I'm with you...with this price structure, I don't think the whitelabel upside is worth the extra cost. I'd rather create my client his/her own website in a Pro account and let them worry about the reoccurring annual fee. Plus, it appears that the designer is billed, when I'd much rather it be direct billing to the client.
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