Last time, we talked about hosts for WordPress sites. This time, we’ll talk about a turnkey solution for quick website creation that I’ve been using on a few of my sites for the last ten years.
The Site Builder is called Strikingly.com.
The best way to show it is through this YouTube video:
When I began with Strikingly 10 years ago, it was a simple one page website builder, with enough built-in design sense to let me throw together a couple of websites quickly, because at the time I was still involved in quite a few large projects. (The websites are http://www.videostory.com and www.timelapsevideogroup.com).
What I like about Strikingly is:
- WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get. Your website is built in sections, picked from a list of templated sections. First you pick a theme, then start to build. Featured sections, testimonials, team sections, media sections, sliders, social feeds, products, galleries, contact and info forms… and more.
- PLAYS WELL WITH VIDEO: This is necessary for all of us. Video can be used in-line in a section, or as a background to your header area. (See this website I created for a client on Strikingly: https://www.4seasonsrentalandexcavate.com/)
- VAST LIBRARY OF ELEMENTS: Graphics, video backgrounds, stock photos, symbols, icons, plus you can easily import whatever you need to customize.
- BLOG SECTION: You should have a blog. Call it what you want– news, info, idle thoughts– but this is the way Google knows your site is alive.
- STORE: This must be important to some people because Strikingly has spent a lot of time on what the call their “Simple Store”. It’s simple because it’s easy, but it’s quite capable.
- SUPPORT: Despite being an easy, capable web builder, support is still an issue. I’ve relied on Strikingly’s support team many times for workarounds, explanations, even a small customization or two when they didn’t have a template that fit my needs. And they listen to their customers feature requests.
- SOCIAL AND OTHER INTEGRATIONS: Pinterest, HTML, Google Maps, PayPal, Facebook, SlideShare, MailChimp… of course you can really do anything with the HTML integration.
If there’s a negative it’s really just that you are dealing with templates, with some allowed customization of fonts, colors, etc. But the same could be said of WordPress– most people are using a templating system of some kind– a theme, website builder, even the native Gutenberg “blocks” system is a templated series of choices. And there are even templates that can be bought for Gutenberg!
So, I recommend Strikingly because I use it– even to make money! I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working my way through creating WordPress site for myself and clients, but I can’t say that for Strikingly. The built-in capabilities of this turnkey website system are extraordinary.
In the next article, I’ll talk about ways to build impressive site in WordPress.
