This is my first look review of Webnode. Webnode is supposed to allow you to get a website up and running in just minutes.
This review is part of my series examining different easy to use website builders to help you find the best website builder for your task.
Let’s dive in and take a first look at Webnode.
Signing up for Webnode
The sign up process is really easy you can check it our for yourself.
Simply click on create a website then fill out the basic form and then finish off by checking your email and selecting the confirmation link.
Webnode offers lots of different templates to help you get started. Choosing your template carefully when you start is an important part of building a website with Webnode, because unfortunately you can witch templates. You would need to rebuild your website with the template.
Here are some guidelines for choosing a Webnode Template.
Choosing a template
I think that there are 3 main things to look for when choosing a webnode template. What the menu area looks like, the look and options of the opening section of the home page and the over all page styling.
These three factors are the main differences between the themes.
The first factor: Selecting the right template menu style.
One of the main factors in the design of a webnode template is the style of the menu section. These are the main menu styles available.
There are templates with the hamburger style icon for the menu. When you click on it it opens up a side menue on desktop or a full screen menu on mobile.
There are themes with a side menu. This feature a fixed menu along the side of your website. On mobile is displays a standard hamburger menu along the top of your website.
There are also themes with more traditional top menus these come in two main styles one with a colored background behind the menu and one with a clear menu background.
There is also a menu style which is kind of cool looking where the menu starts out at the bottom of the first section of your website and then becomes a sticky header at the top as you scroll down.
The Second factor: The homepage first section
What I found after testing several different templates is that the first section of the home page is part of the template, and some of these first sections are more flexible then others.
Most of the templates have limited ability to add content to this first section of your website. It’s pretty much what you see in the template preview is what you get.
I did find a few templates where the first section will allow you to add content blocks like any other webpage section in webnode.
Those templates were the ones that feature a button in the first section. that templates with buttons seem to allow you to add, remove and move around content sections in that first part of your home page. This allows for more design flexibility.
The Third Factor: Over all page styling
The third factor is the page layout styling. Most of the themes have a pretty basic styling where you get a full width page with a colored or image background.
However there are templates like the hair style template that places your content in boxes that are separated from the over all background of your website.
So if you like the boxed content look you should choose a theme that features that styling.
Styling your website
Besides choosing your theme you have only two other main controls over the over all look of your website. Both you will find under settings at the top and then design.
Font options
Each theme has a global setting for the font or the default font for you website. I did find that different templates had different font options, so that’s something to keep in mind.
Main website color or complimentary color
You also can choose a complimentary color that will add a default color to certain parts of your website depending on your theme.
For the most part this color will be used for you headers, as a highlight color in your menu and for the buttons on your website.
Currently you have to select from the theme color options and you can not choose your own color values. However I was told by a member of the webnode tech support team that a new update coming soon that will allow you to select your own complimentary color.
Building your pages.
Building you pages is fairly intuitive with webnode. There are several different content blocks that you can add to your sections.
Some of these blocks like the photo gallery block offer several different style and layout options.
Laying out your sections
Once you have added some content blocks to a page section you can move them around to create columns and in most cases you can also adjust the width of those columns.
Making these adjustments can be a bit fiddly, because you have to get your mouse in just the right place to switch between clicking into the content block to adjust the content and moving or adjusting the width of the block.
The fiddly-ness of the website builder is fairly typical amongst website builders that I have tested.
Adding new sections to a page
Adding a new section to a page is as simple as hovering over either the beginning or ending of an existing page section and then choosing the content type that you want to be in that section.
Choosing blank is the most flexible and allows you to add different content blocks to the section.
Some other content blocks like the heading with a button, recent blog posts or photo gallery have they’re own desings.
If you choose the 2 or 3 column content block you can use this as a starting place, but you can still move around the content pieces in this block later.
One of the annoyances of using the Webnode builder is that you can’t copy content block sections.
This would be useful if you had styled a content block to you liking and you wanted to reuse that styling without having to recreate all of the settings.
I also found that when you changed the color of the text in the builder it would re adjust the size of the text also. Hopefully the upcoming update will correct this.
There are also no controls for adjusting the height or width or padding of sections. Section height seems to be controlled by the template for each of the content blocks.
There are convienent undo and re-do buttons at the top of the builder which can come in handy.
Creating New Pages and managing your websites menu
Creating new pages and managing your websites menu is handled with the pages button in the top tool bar.
Here you can add a new page, decide if that page should appear in your menu and also you can rearrange the order of your menu items, and even create sub menus by dragging items to the right underneath another item.
When you create a new page you can choose what type of content block you want to start with. You can always add additional sections or content to any of the pages that you have created.
Blogging
Webnode offers a simple blogging module. If you don’t plan on creating an extensive blog this could be a good option.
There is just one blog feed however and it does not currently allow you to have different blog categories.
If blogging is your main purpose in creating a website you should check out my post on the best blogging platforms.
Conclusion
This is my first look at Webnode and as I have some more time with the website builder and get a chance to go more indepth in to it’s features I’ll revise this review.
Over all the Webnode website builder is easy to use and has some nice template design options. Adding content and re-aranging content is fairly easy and intuitive.
On the negative side I do wish that you could switch between templates without needing to rebuild your website.
I’m also little disappointed that you currently can’t choose your own complimentary or main color for your website. Webnode has said that that have new updates coming to the builder so I’ll be taking a look at those when they come out.
If those two things don’t bother you and you would like to easily build a website that also has blogging capabilities or can be expanded to add an online store I think that Webnode is a great option and worth looking into. You can try it for free by using the link in the description below this video.
Try out webnode for yourself for free!
