Hey there using the trial at the moment and trying to decide if I should use this program or not.
I know nothing about building websites.
My site is going to be pretty large with tons of pages.
I want to be able to have ebooks for sale on my site and add paypal to my site.
Have any of you used site spinner in this sort of enviroment? if so how did you find it?

People here have done both ebooks and Paypal on SiteSpinner sites. If you use the Find button at the top of this page, you'll find previous discussions -- usually of problems!

You may also find the SiteSpinner Gallery of interest.

DB, check out my reply to your question in the other section. As I said there, buy it. Not only will you find the product easy to use, the help you get here on the forum is invaluable.

I've found all the help I needed with none of the attitude that prevails on techie sites. Friendly software, friendly help.

Bruceee: Funny, I went to the gallery and the site you have featured this month is from Jacksonville, just like me. Quite a coincidence.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Thebes11,

SS is brilliant! Though without the help of this fantastic forum I would struggle, LOL! The guys on here are superb in their help/assistance.

As far as having an Ebooks/download system is concerned, I've been doing exactly that for a new site (AimHi Publishing which supplies audio file downloads and PDFs.

The hosting company has turned out to be very difficult to communicate with (they can't be botherered!) and their terms now seem rather expensive now that we've read/come up against them.

So, I've bought www.downloadz4u.com and a colleague is currently working on a completely different system. So, we will join the others offering such a 'service' (to upload files that can then be sold/downloaded by customers) and hope that we will be far more competitive and less restrictive/difficult.

It's planned to start in about 3-6 months time as there is a lot to set up and test.

Our website will be set up using SS and will link in to everything else, which our hosting/programming guy is setting up. If VM is interested, we may well offer a discount to SS users as SS/VM have been superb in the support they have given us over a number of years.

So, perhaps you could keep a note of the URL and look us up later on? The sooner we can launch, the better! :-)

mccifa

Hey mccifa,

Thanks for the feedback - I am still finding it a little hard understanding everything about the program and have looked up one of my problems on the forum to find an answer that I couldn't even understand!!! Think I must be going a bit brain dead because usually I can spend an hour in a program and have it down pat- so I'm getting a little frustrated! Have been trying Microsoft Publishers Web site creater which has been quite simple but I am concerned that when I upload the site it won't appear as I have created it! So it's probably best to stick with this one! Had a look at your site and noticed that on your affiliates page you have 2 lots of text overlapping each other- though you may want to fix that! Cool well will definately keep that URL on hand - I won't be up and running for quite some time as I have one heck of a lot of information to get into my site!
Kylie

Thanks, Kylie. The affiliates page looks absolutely fine here (in Google Chrome and IE7)though the site owner found another page where text was overlapping and he uses the same browsers as me and same screen res. I'm not sure how this happens.

It's very easy to launch into building a website without fully understanding the basics. Although SS is excellent in many respects, appreciating some of these things is not easy when there is so much to take on board.

I now make sure that I set up what I want to show on every page, make sure they are 'includes' and not 'copies' and get the Z order right before before copying and pasting a new page. When extra objects are added to the pages the Z order may need to be changed a bit, but the basic structure is then in place.

Then I keep 'template' pages for certain things...like the products on AimHi...which makes it all so much easier when adding new ones.

I've picked up loads of tips off here and also had stacks of help from the regulars. I now have around 10 sites and almost as many I'm working on.

My next door neighbour gave up on SS ... but he just launched into it, tried to use a template to achieve what he wanted, knew nothing about the software but just wanted an easy way to set up a site. He failed miserably but over the last 2 years or so went right back to basics and has taken his time.

A chap opposite had used Dreamweaver to set up a number of sites. But he found it all too confusing. He now uses SS and loves it though again just a simple tip now and again has opened up a whole new world for him. He couldn't work out how to achieve something recently so I sent him a video...and it blew him away! He had no idea about the Z order.

It's too easy to miss essential things when reading a manual...cos at the time you have no idea how important & useful they might be.

All I can suggest is that you take your time and if you can't find an answer then post a question. The 'database' of questions and answers now seems pretty huge and I find it a bit frustrating searching for something and a long list of posts appears, many of which may have no answer to my problem. So when in a hurry I just post and get great help. But reading some old posts has led me off on very useful tangents sometimes!

Good luck, stay in touch and let us have a look at your site please when ready :-)

mccifa

I should warn you in advance, the product is great, but made even better by the people who answer in these forums. I've never built a site before, but thanks to the awesome support I've received from the people at the forum, I'm almost ready to publish.
You are wondering whether or not to buy--go for it; you won't be sorry.
Gypsy

I am SO very pleased, I've only just started the trial period a few days ago, having very little previous HTML knowledge, and the website for my community association was up and running after one day's work!
http://wallaceburson.netne.net
I will definitely purchase, after approval from my community association membership.

Hi

SS is excellent!

I've used MS Frontpage and Dreamweaver in the past as well as a whole bunch of CMS tools and also written stuff in Notepad (it was 1991!)

Take time to learn SS, it will be time well spent. If you've not done any designing before then you've no bad habits yet - you can develop a whole bunch of new ones!

You really can go from zero to website in an evening with SS, I don't know of any other professional tool that will allow you to do this.

People achive great things with SS, the forums are very tolerant of noobs as we've all been one.

Good luck and enjoy

I just wanted to throw my support behind a "yes" decision to buy SS. I've been working with it for about 3 weeks now with time out for H1N1, and after getting some great help from people on this forum, I've got my first of 3 websites up and running, and looking fairly professional if I do say so myself (check it out at www.pullmanusa.net/resume). I've maintained several websites online since at least 2005, but they were created with a GUI application that was never upgraded after I bought it, and only allowed for real basic features. Since I really don't know HTML... my sites have retained their antiquated look for too long.

SS is allowing me to do things I could never do with the old application, like drop-down menus and downloads from my site to the visitor. SS allows me to create a MUCH more polished and professional looking site. I look forward to adding forms (may be a bit steeper learning curve there), video, Flash, Java, and other goodies. I'm kind of ticked off that I didn't get SS Pro... it's been that easy to get things up and running. AND... let me praise the built in publisher... WOW, just so simple after I realized how it worked (and that had been one of my fears).

This forum is invaluable because there were times that the tutorial didn't make sense, and the online help didn't address any of the issues I was trying to get help with.

It's a BIG yes for SS.

Good luck with your site.

As a newbie to SS maybe my vote doesn't count. Over the last 3 years I've looked at dozens of site builders, downloaded and tried about 8 of them. In my opinion none of them come even close as to ease of use. Many had more features but if I couldn't figure out how to use them what's the use. I created a site with another builder and I'll be the first to say it looks quite bland and will never look the way I want it to because of the limitations of the builder itself. With SiteSpinner a great looking fully functional site can be put up with relative ease but it's a fairly complex program so you may not get all of the programs capabilities built in to your site right away and that's OK with me as the features are still there when I learn how to use them.

My suggestion is to learn the program as well as you can by reading the tutoritals, online help, and search the forums using the 'find' button. Every time I open SS I read the 'tip of the day'. When I run into a snag I refer to the tutorials or search the forum. As a last resort I ask a question here and I must say the users of this forum are relentless to solving any and all problems. The only problems I've seen go unsolved here are the ones where the original poster gave up. Recently I had a publishing problem, turns it it was my error and not SS or VM. The discussion went on for a couple of days and was finally solved due to the diligence of the posters here. I can't say enough good about them.

The site I'm building now looks awesome (if I must say so myself) and the organization I'm building it for is quite impressed but I'd never be able to achieve this without SS and this forum.

After trying many site builders I settled on SiteSpinner and am very glad I did.

My tuppence worth? I would even bother with anything else - SS rocks!