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Web design has grown as fast as the Internet has allowed it. New technology combined with genius web development teams has led to easy and affordable, sometimes even free, ways to set up a website in minutes.
New website owners or busy development teams don’t have to be proficient in programming or even know that much about web design to create beautiful websites with technology like drag and drop website builders.
As a browser-based web design tool, drag and drop website building works like building blocks, where you arrange, place and customize your own site easily.
There are tons of different website builders out there, some of which are included with your hosting package, but the drag and drop method truly allows users to see what they like and put together a homepage and subpages in seconds.
These are just a few ways that people use the drag and drop method to put together seamless web pages.
It’s User-Friendly
No matter what your experience with web design, drag, and drop website builders allow users to load a blank canvas, then drag things like widgets, graphics, calendars, blog space, headers and footers exactly where they want them to be.
This gives a designer total control over the web design without having to know a single thing about how these widgets were coded. Do you want a Twitter widget on your WordPress blog? Just drag it over to your sidebar.
Web site creators like Wix and Weebly truly allow users to take total control and have a variety of options as far as color schemes, images, text, and icons.
A Bevy of Options
One thing to look for in a drag and drop builder is options. Most people using this method want something quick and user-friendly that doesn’t require a lot of knowledge about what’s going on in the background, aka the programming.
Good drag and drop builders will have widgets and plugins for just about anything you want to drag onto your homepage and subpages.
For example, you can integrate social media sites like Twitter, showing your tweets right on the front page of your site or you may want to have a display graphic at the top that changes with the mouse-over.
In addition to these advanced options, website builders need to have a massive selection of colors, backgrounds, images, icons and themes.
Getting Started
If you don’t have too much experience with web design or drag and drop, start with a free website builder that uses drag and drop methods. WordPress, Wix, Google Sites, Weebly, and Yola are just a few of the free drag and drop website builders out there.
If you want to buy your own domain and build a professional site, then choose a host that has a website builder like GoDaddy.
Before designing your own site, look at other sites within the same vein as your idea to see what colors, format and text placement is currently popular.
You don’t necessarily have to follow the same format, but it’s a good idea to have some of the same elements.
You can draw out a design on a sheet of paper that includes boxes of where you would like to place images, links, text and more.
Mix in Your Own Content
Once you have an idea of how to use the drag and drop method and found some inspirational design ideas, you can go to the website builder and start designing your site.
The builder will allow you to arrange text and images anywhere you like on your home page and sub pages, but you also want to mix in your own images and text.
For example, you may be able to drag a changing image box to the top of your homepage, but you may have to create 800 by 600-pixel images to add. In addition, if the site is for your business, you may need your own logo.
At first, try a simpler two or three column layout with text in the middle and links in the sidebar.
Updating Your Content
Drag and drop make it easy to re-arrange or change your web design completely.
If you want to upgrade the look of your website, just go to the drag and drop builder, remove older elements and add new ones, configuring your original images and text into the new build.
Drag and drop sites are very flexible with editing, and you can do it from anywhere since the builder is actually hosted online and not downloaded to your computer.
Hopefully, you enjoyed this article and see that some hope is out there for anyone to create and run a website very easily. I encourage you to continue looking around the site for some companies that may be able to get you up TODAY on the web.
Image Credit: Cyberslayer
