After two months of working with Nicepage

  

After just over two months of working with Nicepage, I remain enthusiastic about the program, after having bad experiences with MobiRise and PineGrow. I realize that maturing such a complex program requires time and effort. After all it has managed to allow website designers to break away from the restrictive blocks, object and element positioning of the bootstrap based programs, which is no small feat. In addition it has brought an interface that makes it ridiculously easy to learn how to use the program within a brief period of time, besides adding a ton of functions, like animation of images, icons and shapes that allows to create webpages of a different level. The integration with CMS systems like WordPress and its open source equivalent Joomla make it applicable to a much wider range of websites. Particularly since both systems support a ton of plugins, like ecommerce, that makes building web shops possible. In today's lockdowns and restrictive access to public provisions, creating online sales points have become a lifeline for many.

Click the image to visit the Nicepage website

The minor flaws that I have run into, will be corrected really fast, I'm sure, because I have noticed that the support department on their forum page responds quickly, which probably results in the high update pace of the program. Communication with the mods on the Nicepage forum is done from within the program as well, by the way, which is quite a useful feature. Since I started to use it approximately 2 months ago, there have been some 5 updates, all of which can be installed from within the program, while offering the possibility to back up the created sites before updating. I did not have to use this option, because the updates did not cause any problems, which hints at the fact that the developers do some sound testing before releasing the updates. All in all, these are positive experiences some of which I haven't encountered while using other programs that I used previously. So, for me, switching to Nicepage was a perfectly on the mark decision. 

Updating Nicepage from within the program

The minor flaws I referred to in the previous paragraph concerned to sometimes fiddly positioning of elements (text and images), in automated fluid repositioning of them in laptop, tablet and mobile devices resolutions and screen orientation. With some trial and error these can all be corrected quite easily however. Other programs I used, preform much worse in this department. Note: making sites work for display on multiple screen resolutions and orientations in an environment that is more complex than the popular, but restrictive object positioning bootstrap method, is quite an achievement. An other weird flaw I encountered, is the colouring of the bullets in a bulleted list, that strangely enough works on Opera's android vertical webpages for mobile devices, but not in the desktop versions of Opera and other browsers. Bearing in mind the proven prowess of the Nicepage developers, however, this is an oddity that they should easily be able to correct.

In the near future I plan to test Nicepage in combination with Joomla to add ecommerce functionality to a website. This will have to be done in a sub-domain that I will need to create, since my own site does not require the use of Joomla. Stay tuned to learn of my experiences with this type of web site building.

Another nice feature of Nicepage are the Animation options, that allows designers to draw the attention of the website visitors to a particular area of the page. These all work flawlessly and are fully customizable. It shows the attention to details of the developers that really understand the needs of designers.

Animating images and icons etc. in Nicepage

While on the subject of understanding what designers need - the recently introduced Mega Menu allows designers to create a so called (you guessed it) Mega Menu, in which visitors immediately see what the categories in the dropdown options are in a clear way. So the developers tailor the program to the designer's needs who then can create a website tailored to the visito's needs. Absolutely great!

The Nicepage Mega Menu

What has also become perfectly possible with Nicepage is to build websites, without outsourcing the UI / UX-design, since the program has a functionality and flexibility that its competition lacks. These features could potentially speed up the creative process, because the UI / UX design phase can be skipped entirely. In these times of budget cuts and decreased face to face communication, Nicepage may save businesses a considerable amount of costs, while freelancing website builders can accept more different types of assignments and accomplish them in less time, while being able to include visually more appealing effects in the sites they build. This makes the program the ideal choice for the designers that do not have a whole lot of legacy data to take into account. The plethora of templates the company offers makes many assignments a breeze, in addition to which these are easily editable, which includes the perpetually changing SEO requirements. Especially for non-coders this program is a dream, because it allows them to do things that required a lot of skilled coding in the past. Coding costs skill and time and the program makes creative design accessible to anyone. If you want to get a proper idea of the possibilities and use of Nicepage, take a peek at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iHl--K4XPs

Pinegrow webdesign

Once and a while a new application emerges from the brain of a genius that blows all its predecessors away with an unprecedented ease. The best of the best do this on all major platforms - Windows, Mac and Linux. Pinegrow is such a program. Not only does it work faster than any program of the competition (take a peek at the listing), it is easier to use, more efficient, versatile (fit to create sites for browsers of the PC, Mac, tablet and smartphones) and considerably cheaper. Sounds too good to be true? Check out their site!

People like me, who occasionally develop websites, should really take time to see what Pinegrow can do. I suspect 99% of them will never bother to use any other application ever again. But also professionals can incorporate their routines and objects in Pinegrow's library and retrieve them with one or two clicks of the mouse. The program can be used by just dragging and dropping components and / or customizing any detail, because it is based on the increasingly abundant Bootstrap, which also makes your pages look good on any type of device. No other application on the market today allows to design this way.

It gets better still. If you run across a website you like, Pinegrow allows to open pages straight from the web after which you can customize them and use them yourself. This feature plus the fact that Bootstrap is continually evolving, makes Pinegrow an absolute must for anyone who is into designing websites. The best of all is that it costs under 50 dollars... Talk about mindblowing...

Update October 2 2014
Version 1.22 is issued now. Pinegrow already was bloody brilliant, but after updates like the Wordpress module, it has become even more usable.

Update April 22 2020

And what do you know, after all my enthusiasm about the program it corrupted my website beyond repair. Returned to using Mobirise that I gave a bad review years ago. But the software is a thing in motion in which buggy code is improved and features are added. Some updates are good, others are terrible. Mobirise apparently did a good job while Pinegrow took a turn for the worst. 

Update Feb 2022

A few months ago I switched to Nicepage and never regretted it. No coding needed whatsoever, totally free positioning of objects, independent from the grid and numerous features that its competition lacks. Absolutely the top of the bill for beginners, advanced users and UX designers. Check out my blog entry about the awsome Nicepage program. Their developers update the program at an enormous pace, so it gets even better really fast. Nicepage offers total freedom of placing objects anywhere on the page without having to write a single line of code, among a shipload of other very attractive functions. This truly enables web 3.0 design with minimal effort and maximal result. Nicepage also offers a plugin that allows to integrate websites in Wordpress, which means designers become totally independent from the Wordpress functions and build beautiful websites of their own. Creative webdesigners that have little or no coding skills should most definitely check out the magnificent Nicepage program! If you want to get a proper idea of the possibilities and use of Nicepage, take a peek at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iHl--K4XPs The only disadvantage of Nicepage is that it is dead slow from time to time, but the abundance of features still makes it the best and most versatile website builder available. When the world is offered a ton of options without coding skills already, moving towards AGI that currently is under development will make things even easier still. AGI is said to make coding superfluous all together, meaning that you should be able to do many things, including coding, that required the ability to code just a short while ago. If you haven't yet tried this program, download the trial version and give it a go. You won't be sorry.