Ever want to start a blog or website, but don’t want to learn code and website-building knowledge? Many people have and lost out on their chance at building their dream blog or website for the lack of coding or the knack for design. Needly lets you build your own blog or website without needing technical knowledge for both.
All you need to do is know how to drag and drop. Needly combines the ideas and features of a bunch of different web apps and puts it into a single app. It carries the features of WordPress, Google Reader, Basecamp, Buddypress, Elgg and much more.
Recommended Reading: 9 Ideas for Building Great Websites With Less
Getting Started with Needly
One would think that the interface for Needly would be unorganized, unusable, ugly. Needly is definitely not any of those things, in fact, it has pretty advanced features and an easy-to-use and organized dashboard.
The Needly dashboard layout is organized in three different sections which brings an organized, easy and quick navigation throughout editing, creating and managing your site:
- the middle section shows your feed
- the left sidebar shows basic navigation with your profile header and links to your website creator
- on the right is the sidebar for your groups, group members, search functionality and member invitation.
Managing and Creating A Site
Pop-Up Postings
Posting articles and other media to your Needly site is a mere click on a link on the dashboard. The feed will bring up a popup that allows you to post a video, article, image, quote, link or audio file.
Uploading and Saving Media
Besides the Post to Site dialog and tool, there is a separate and handy feature that allows you to upload a wide variety of media files and other content that you can upload, save for later, schedule it, date stamp or publish on your site while using the website builder.
You also view the media content that you have posted previously or view the media that is already on your website pages.
Adding Extra Elements
Once the user starts using the website builder they will notice that it is very fast, flexible and fluid. The easy drag and drop widgets and designer makes it such a breeze to use.
Easily add widgets and elements like Google Maps, Disqus comments, Vimeo and Youtube content, Javascript and HTML scripts, Twitter widgets, not to mention individual CSS attributes throughout the drag and drop designer.
With a little imagination and trial and error, you can set up a very professional-looking website purely out of drag and drop actions.
Advantages
- Build a site without programming knowledge.
- Multiple apps in one.
- Connect using WordPress, Facebook, Twitter or Google apps.
- Create and Join Groups
- Help out with community sites.
Disadvantages
- May be slight confusion during the first time using dashboard, for beginners.
- Mediauploader is not drag and drop. Yet.
- No individual profile pages unless made manually, on your website.
Conclusion
Needly is available in a free plan, and two other monthly pricing plans which understandably gives you more in terms of storage and bandwitdth. On top of what is mentioned, Needly still has plenty of treats (e.g customizable fonts, colors, styles, templates; responsive grids; universal RSS reader) for the new site owner and it is up to you to look around and try out this new way to build a site, coding-free.
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