Edition of February 2004
n°52 - Page 14

ThunderSite: It may certainly be yet another Trial Version HTML Web editor, but ThunderSite will enable you to build your own Website and publish it Online in less than a day. If you are a beginner and want to get involved in building a Website, not wanting to waste time on its realization, then install without delay this publisher’s software.

You will therefore be able to begin building your Web pages, as soon as you have installed Thundersite. A helper wizard will guide you through the different steps that will help automate the building of your Web pages. Thus, you can enter you contact information, the name of your site, the key words that will be used by the search engines, the Website’s description as well as the choice of graphic aspect. The Trial Version of Thundersite contains three different graphical templates and thirty two website structures all customizable at will. As for editing the content of your pages, Thundersite behaves like a general publisher and has picture, images or objects, and flash animation insertions.

Just like with a simple text processor, you will be able to modify your font, its alignment, the font size and positioning with pictures. Only the graphic aspect is not customizable; also take note that, on the graphic templates provided with this Trial Version, a ThunderSite logo will appear in the upper right corner, and a link towards the publisher’s site will be inserted on the copyright line. But it will be possible to add your own logo and change the page titles as well as the button captions.

If the provided templates do not seem suitable for what you want or if you do not want the ThunderSite advertisements, you can find many more templates on the publisher’s website. These templates will not include any logo and you will be able to order a new one from ThunderSite’s graphic artists, according to the graphic aspect you want for your Website. However, every downloaded template will cost 15 €. Even if this might be a slight turn-off, this amount cannot be too excessive to have the total graphic aspect and structure finished for your website.

ThunderSite is perfectly compatible with the Microsoft Suite tools and permits copy/paste, while keeping all the text attributes and formatting, it is also true, if you already have a website. The other site’s text will be able to be imported by copy/paste, without any worry. Another very important feature of this particular HTML publisher is that it has an included FTP client. In the Publication menu, you will have to configure beforehand the FTP server of your Web Host as well as your login and password, after which, uploading your creation on your web space will be extremely simple.

To conclude, ThunderSite will help you if you are newcomer to HTML web building. It will be the ideal companion for your first website and will give you a rewarding first experience, as long as you do what we explained previously. Afterwards, you will perhaps regret the ThunderSite’s simplicity which doesn't let advanced users go any farther. For example, you will not have at any direct access to the HTML code of your page. You should configure a second external publisher (Notepad, for example), if you need to work on your code.