WebSite X5 Evolution (PC) | 
 enlarge | From: PX Software
Category: Software
List Price: £39.99
Buy New: £20.52
You Save: £19.47 (49%)
Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 76
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows 2000
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5060160810104
ASIN: B000ZLPAFO
Release Date: December 20, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...
 Takes away the confusion November 26, 2008
Mrs. M. Gallagher (London)
Building a website is something that has been one of life's mysteries to me. I started my journey when you had to really know what you are doing with HTML and it made me run for the hills. This software has given me the confidence to give it a go - and I haven't looked back. So user-friendly that even I can do it, particularly with the online help facility. Great for home or small business use.
Solid and Easy to use November 25, 2008
Paul B (UK)
I've tried to create websites from scratch before, using many different programs and even the free web based tools. None of them worked that well and the sites always ended up looking cheap and bereft of any good features.
WebSite X5 Evolution is different, though. From the moment you start it up, the software takes you through a dazzling array of options, but never confuses you. This means that I managed to set up a simple but effective website in a matter of minutes (20 minutes if you're interested) using pre-defined templates and my own images.
While the option is there for those who want to have a simple web design tool without thinking too much about where to put everything, this software will also be happy to let you design something from scratch. It will resize images and text, allow you to add multiple pages with easy-to-use links and generally look after you as much or as little as you want.
That said, there are a few areas that WebSite X5 Evolution could improve in. Firstly there's the shopping cart. Billed as a feature on the packaging, this only has basic support at best. It's a nice idea and does work well with Paypal, but it just doesn't feel comprehensive enough to use on a professional site.
The second area where the software falls down is in uploading the finished files. You'll need to use your own hosting site to upload it and not all of them are compatible with the uploader that WebSite X5 Evolution uses. This means that you will need to know a little about how to upload files yourself and obviously how to set up a webspace from one of the many hosts out there (someone like Freeola).
Despite the flaws, WebSite X5 Evolution is actually an easy to use piece of web creation software that lets you build personal and semi-professional websites in a short space of time. If you're a small business who wants to design a site cheaply but without looking cheap, then this is perfect for you.
 Watch this space... November 24, 2008
Mark R. Bannister (London, England)
My start with Website X5 was not terrific, as I was unable to install the registered product due to a fault with the Incomedia website. This forced me to install the evaluation edition which allows you to use only the first 4 templates. As there was no way of converting an evaluation copy into a registered one I had to reinstall the product to get it to work properly.
Apart from this annoying glitch I found the product easy to use and generally intuitive. Don't be put off by their broken English - which you will find lots of examples of - the product itself is sound. The wizard approach taken by Website X5 is particularly well thought out, logical and seems quite comprehensive. I especially liked it that at any stage during the wizard I could preview my web site to see what it currently looked like. A very useful feature indeed.
However, don't think that this software comes with lots of clip-art, graphics and macromedia flash files that you can include in your site design. It doesn't! You either choose one of 123 predefined templates (171 if you go to their website - not the 1,000 claimed on their product packaging), or you can design your own template. But you must supply your own graphics (and flash files if required).
The E-commerce cart feature is designed to work with PayPal, but I couldn't get this feature to work. Or maybe it just doesn't do anything in the website preview...
Overall I think this is a well designed product with a lot of potential, but it would be a much better product if it really did have 1,000 templates to choose from and a large selection of clip-art. There are plenty of products out there that you can use to create web pages, albeit more complicated to use. However, drawing your own graphics is a skill that many people in a rush to put up a web site simply don't have the time to do, and if you did you'd need to use a different product to create the graphics. Incomedia can't really gloat about their product's ease-of-use until they have addressed these problems. Perhaps in later releases. My advice is, try it, but watch this space for future updates.
The product has great potential, but it's not quite there yet...
 Inconsistent layout, limited capabilities, only good for very basic sites November 21, 2008
David Burton (London, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In a time where you can start creating websites from within the browser using Google Applications, and where powerful, full Content Management Systems are available as open source, this comes across as very much a 20th Century web development package, rather than a 21st century one.
Where's the Map Mashup creation? Where's the funky gallery creation? Where's the versioning? Content Approvals? Publishing Dates? Decent shopping cart (theirs is at best poor? Decent selection of templates, even? AJAX/DHTML visual effects?
The templates is particularly disappointing, since it claims to have a lot of templates, but when you actually come to use it, there are quite a lot that look very similar, and some of the numbers come from having the same template with a number of different alternate colour schemes. I wanted to create a games-related one, but there was nothing remotely appropriate - it's mostly fairly generic styling, with little real flair.
If you want to create a few entries to provide some details about yourself, then set up a blog on LiveJournal or Blogger, and you won't have to worry about arranging hosting, FTPing files up, etc.
If you want to set up a shop, skip this because the shopping cart stuff just isn't up to scratch - use Actinic, OS Commerce or any number of other dedicated offerings, which offer more power, more payment providers, and so on.
If you want to set up a photo gallery, then perhaps look at Flickr, or other sites or software really oriented towards doing that kind of thing.
If you want a simple company site, then you'd have to create your own tailored templates to look suitable, and then you're losing a lot of the simplicity.
I wanted to like this. The menu system makes some sense, and it's quite easy then to add extra pages and work out how to edit that particular page. For an enthusiast/personal site, the templates aren't so bad, perhaps. And it does run reasonably quickly on a machine with 512MB RAM, and is perfectly useable on a 1024x768 resolution screen. I just don't see many people finding the core capabilities sufficient for their needs, and those who do may be better off looking at some of the many comparable solutions available for free, rather than paying for an out-dated piece of software such as this. The plus point is that it seems relatively mature - in my tests it ran smoothly and didn't crash once, unlike some web page editing software around.
All in all, a rather limited appeal. Finally, registration was a bit of a hassle - you couldn't just install the software, you had to click through to a web page, register an account, enter a registration code, then get a returned code to paste into the installer to complete the installation. That's rather a pain compared to most software, and is just another black mark against the software.
A quick and simple website design tool November 20, 2008
Planet G (Berkshire, UK)
This product makes it very easy to get up and running with a website for the most technophobic PC user. I was impressed by how easy it is to use Evolution Website X5 and the results, if a little similar and rather basic, are fully functional and quite professional looking.
The container includes an installation leaflet which as well as containing installation information, has an overview of the features and the 5 main steps necessary to create a fully usable website.
The software contains over a thousand different graphics models, all of which are customisable in terms of colour. The software also allows for the creation of a site map structure, the creation of pages, and stylised text and menus. It even has the tools to allow the addition of ecommerce features, including a shopping cart. Great value for the price. Evolution Website X5 also has a facility to allow the upload of a website to the internet (I have not tried out this feature yet, so am unable to comment on it).
When you put the disc into the PC you have to register the software which involves the provisionj of some personal information including an email address to the producers of the software.
Having spent some time trying out alternate website designs with this software, I think it makes the design of a website very easy and straightforward, which has to be a good thing for most people, but I also think you could probably recognise the style of websites created using the package. I found that I had to live with certain design features that I wanted to change - and I also didn't like having to provide my email address as part of registration.
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