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News
March 2005: International version of ThunderSite v2 officially released.
October 2004: New Thematic Packs available regrouping Website Templates by theme at discount prices.
June 2004: Announcement of ThunderSite Pro for advanced users (release expected in 2005).
January 2004: ThunderSite has been chosen as the easiest Website Creation Tool by the French Press.
November 2003: Official release of ThunderSite v1.
 
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    Frequently Asked Questions
 

Why use ThunderSite?
 

ThunderSite is a Website creation tool intended for most users. It is suitable for beginners as well as advanced users who do not want to waste time, effort and money on building a website.

ThunderSite allows you to create professional-looking websites quickly and easily without having to write a single line of code (no programming). Thousands of ThunderSite Website Templates (Site Styles) are available, saving you long hours of work and allowing you to change the look of your site at any time with a simple click.

 

I am a beginner; can I use ThunderSite to create my first Web Site?
 

Absolutely! ThunderSite is specially designed to simply all the steps of creating, managing and publishing a website. If you can use Word – you can use ThunderSite! Also, you can easily create and publish your website on the Web.

 

What are the advantages of using ThunderSite?
 

Your website’s content is what’s most important for you and the people who visit your site. The website’s “look and feel” is important though too. ThunderSite offers several thousand high quality Website Templates to choose from. Furthermore, once you have chosen a style, you can change or customize it at any moment of the creation process with just a few clicks. ThunderSite will automatically update your changes on all the pages of your Website.

ThunderSite will help you overcome "Writer's Block" by offering you a choice of more than 150 Website Structures categorised by Sports, Business, Education, etc... Thus, whatever the subject of your website, you’re likely to find a similar website structure to get you started quickly.

Usually building a quality website requires that you master a set of web programming languages (like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, DHTML…). And that’s before you have any graphics like buttons, backgrounds and headings to define your website’s “look and feel”. So generally you should also have a gift for web design and be able to juggle with graphic tools as complex and costly as Photoshop. With ThunderSite however there’s no need for any programming or graphics skills. This is possible thanks to the ergonomic user interface and the automation of all the complex tasks allowing you to build a complete website, with only a few mouse clicks, as easily as you would create a document with a word processor.

 

 
What should I do to create a professional-looking website with ThunderSite?
 

We have a list of tips for you below. The three most important ones for making professional-looking websites are: (1) Be clear in your presentation, (2) Organise your website’s structure intelligently, and (3) Maintain a consistent “look and feel” for all pages.

  • Website content is very important: make a website that covers a precise subject.
  • Avoid creating huge pages (of more than 100 Kb) with too many pictures or big Flash animations…
  • Re-use the same media elements in several pages to accelerate the loading of pages.
  • Avoid exotic fonts that may not be installed on the visitors' PCs. Otherwise, the look of your website could seriously suffer.
  • Update your website frequently to get people to visit your website regularly. To do so, ThunderSite allows you to publish only recently modified pages (To update your site, press F9. To publish only the current page, use Ctrl+F9).
  • Design an ergonomic aspect for your website to attract users’ attention: select the best suitable Website Template for your website from thousands of Site Styles available at ThunderSite.com. Do not forget that you can also order customized variants.
  • Respect the consistency of all the pages. ThunderSite does it by default: each time you change the Website Template, it automatically updates all the pages of your website, modifying even the text and hyperlinks color to match the new Site Style.
  • Be cautious with animations. If you are using *.gif animations, make sure they are really useful, since pages with too many animations have been known to make Internet users flee. On the other hand, the advantage of a *.gif animation is that it can be played by any browser (as there is no need to install a Flash plug-in in the browser).
  • Avoid using background sound or music except when really necessary, it may not be appreciated and may surprise or discourage the visitor from returning to your website.
  • Needless to say, avoid spelling mistakes.
  • Do not mix incompatible colors or use too many colors. A webpage should not contain more than three distinct colors... ThunderSite Website Templates have been designed to offer you color consistency. When you change your Website Template, ThunderSite will automatically update all the webpages' appearance and text colors (main text, headers, footers, banner titles, hyperlinks, buttons, dynamic menus...).
  • Avoid all types of gadgets often found in personal webpages such as counters (especially if your website is not visited often).
  • Avoid dark Website Templates (i.e. dark background) especially if you are building a website for a company or an organization that wants a serious corporate image. White backgrounds with dark text color are more pleasant to read and give your website a more serious appearance.
  • Do not use characters that are too large or too small. The recommended font size in ThunderSite is 10.
  • Avoid using more that two different fonts in the same page. Use Standard Web Fonts like Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Verdana… By default these are the fonts chosen by ThunderSite.
  • Got a logo? Use it on all your pages. It’s easy with ThunderSite to insert a logo into your website’s template.
 

What traps will I avoid by using ThunderSite?
 

ThunderSite automates a large number of tasks that are generally carried out manually by Web designers. Thus, you avoid the many mistakes and classic traps of website building that face even experienced developers:

  • Non standard filenames: ThunderSite assigns default filenames to files giving you the possibility to customize the filename. ThunderSite makes sure that no special characters (or blanks) have been used which could generate display errors on certain Web browsers.
  • Broken links: When you delete a page, all the hyperlinks pointing to it will be deleted automatically by ThunderSite. The same is true if you delete a document or any other file from your website structure, all hyperlinks pointing to it will be deactivated. ThunderSite says “No” to broken links!
  • Deleted media: The same is true for deleted media (pictures, flash movies, videos…). A media element is deleted from all the pages into which it was inserted. Thus, no more image-not-found problems!
  • Display problems on navigators: Often, Web designers are surprised to find that their published website is displayed differently from what they expected. One of the strong points of ThunderSite is that it is compatible with all known navigators. Thus, it spares you display problems: when you publish your site with ThunderSite, the results on all browsers are the same as how you see it on your PC.
  • Frame problems: Even today, many web creation tools encourage the use of frames. ThunderSite does not use frames because they have been known to create a number of problems (notably with search engines).
  • Navigation problems: Website designers often forget to update navigation bars when they add (or delete) a page within the site or when they change its name. ThunderSite automates all these tasks and allows you to create the structure of your website as simply and quickly as you would create the content of a book page. ThunderSite automatically updates navigation bars when you add (or delete) a page: if you add a page, ThunderSite will add a button pointing to it; if you delete a page, ThunderSite will delete the corresponding button. The same is true for your site map.

Thus, thanks to ThunderSite, you will avoid the most common mistakes of web creation, even if you are a beginner.


 
 
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