widget-based

Weebly is an online, free, widget-based Web site creator, funded by micro-seed fund Y Combinator. It uses a widget style format, allowing users to create pages with only a few clicks by dragging and dropping different page elements (images, text, or interactive content, etc.) onto a page and filling in the content.[1] It competes with WebStarts, Yola (formerly Synthasite), Jimdo, Webs, uCoz, Wix, and other web hosting and creation sites [2]. The site was originally created by David Rusenko, Dan Veltri, and Chris Fanini, all of whom attended Penn State for an undergraduate degree.[3] It was named by Time Magazine as number four of the fifty best websites of 2007.[4]
In June 2008, Weebly added the Weebly pro accounts feature, allowing users to create password-protected pages and upgrade file size limits, as well as receive additional support services.[5] As recently as October 2008, Weebly has become compatible with Safari and Google Chrome in addition to its existing compatibility to Internet Explorer and Firefox.[6]
Contents [hide]
1 Features
2 History
2.1 Initial Release
3 Criticism
4 References
5 External links
[edit]Features

Weebly's WYSIWYG editing interface allows users to easily and quickly "drag and drop" content into the currently open Web page, which Weebly considers as its flagship feature.[7] Consistent with this design are also a blog editor, a simple method of implementing and customizing its library of themes, and a policy of no forced advertising on even free accounts' Web sites.[7] Pro accounts include more capabilities such as the adding of in-site audio or video content, "premium" support, and site statistics. [8]
[edit]History

The objective of Weebly when it was first created was to enable content creation.[1] According to Weebly staff:
“ How many people have good information that they would like to put on the web, but currently don't know how? Maybe it's because they don't have a web host, maybe it's because they don't know how to write a web page and upload it. Whatever it is, web content creation needs to get easier, and I think this is the next step. Want a three column layout? Drag and drop. Add Google AdWords to your site? Drag and drop. Then double click it, and set your options from easy drop-down-menus.[1]

Initial Release
When Weebly came close to an initial first release, the staff decided to release it in a two-phase launch plan: first, there would be a limited invitation, followed by something "more substantial" a few weeks later.[9] The initial invitational beta release was announced June 2006[10], followed by the official private-beta launch on September 12, 2006 [11]. Later, in February 2007, Weebly staff announced it was working on a new WYSIWYG-like editing interface for Weebly.[12] This interface, along with a few other new features, was released March 2007.[13]
[edit]Criticism

Since it is built on its own platform, Weebly cannot take advantage of pre-existing plugins from other popular blogging engines.[14] In December 2008 Weebly reached 1 million users. It released several new templates but at the same time received criticism for not realising the biggest feature request from users: the ability to edit or upload the CSS/HTML of the web pages.[15]. Responding to this request, on February 26, 2009 Weebly released the ability to edit the CSS and HTML of any site[16].