Weebly - A Suitable Substitute for iWeb?

I'm looking to transition my class website which was hosted via MobileMe but will no longer be available after June 30, 2012. I've been playing around with Weebly (the free version), but I'm not opposed to paying for the service since I was doing that with MobileMe anyway.

What I'd like to know is...have any of you used Weebly? If so, positives? Negatives? Helpful hints? I'll take them all. I've looked at a couple of other web hosting sites, but this one at least doesn't have advertisements which is a distraction that my middle schoolers could do without. I'm liking the fact that it allows students to create their own websites which is on one hand intriguing, but on the other a potential nightmare for me if it's not easily manageable.

Thanks in advance for your help! =)

Catherine

Tags: iweb, mobileme, weebly

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Permalink Reply by Miss A on July 27, 2011 at 7:56pm

I sent you private message with my web address link. I try not to have it posted all over the web since student photos are on it.

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Permalink Reply by Rachael Zyla Hubbard on July 28, 2011 at 11:31am

I explored many of the sites out there trying to find the most user friendly one with the most gadgets, and Weebly was the winner. I just use the free version. Then I needed to create a site that was password protected so I used Yola for that one, but I really like Weebly the best.

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Permalink Reply by Catherine Cabiness on July 28, 2011 at 11:47am

Thanks Rachel! Yola is another site that I was looking at and I like that you can password protect certain pages which I couldn't do with iWeb. Do you use the Tal.ki forum for threaded discussions with your students?

Catherine

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Permalink Reply by Rachael Zyla Hubbard on July 28, 2011 at 2:22pm

Yes, I found Tal.ki to be much easier to use than some other ones. Glad to help!

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Permalink Reply by Catherine Cabiness on July 30, 2011 at 6:52pm

Good to know. I was playing around with it the other day. I just hope it's not blocked by my district's firewall. Thanks again! =)

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Permalink Reply by Kimberly Harden on July 28, 2011 at 2:41pm

Hi Catherine,

I am a special education major and for one of my classes we had to create a website for our professional portfolio. I used weebly to create my site and it turned out pretty good. I did almost the whole thing in about two hours and that was my first experience creating a website. The most difficult part was changing the colors of the background to something besides the options they gave me, but for your students they could just choose from different layouts that are already set up. Putting in a table was a little tricky too. I would recommend weebly though, because most middleschoolers have more experience working with web pages than I do and I was able to do it!

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Permalink Reply by Catherine Cabiness on July 30, 2011 at 6:56pm

Thanks Kimberly! I do have another question for you, in order to change the colors of the background, did you have to change the code?

Catherine

P.S. Your last sentence is funny because I use the same logic with my middle schoolers, I bring in examples from elementary kids and tell my students that if elementary kids can do it, then so can they. ;-)