Moot is a fresh and free web service for instantly creating a discussion environment on any web page.

It is setup so quickly. The service provides you a unique HTML code and, once embedded into any web page, Moot appears.

Btw, Moot loads the full HTML and it is no IFRAME. This makes all types of customizations possible. You can apply CSS or even change interactions via JS.

The service provides a single feed of posts, users can follow any number of topics, view other online users or make searches quickly.

It can be a flat or threaded discussion, works in real-time (no refresh required), has an easy-to-use control panel and supports responsive layouts.

Edicy is a hosted and professional CMS platform that enables designers and developers to create new sites and/or integrate any existing sites.

The platform doesn’t require a hosting account, anything to be installed and  it is always up-to-date + secure.

Many templates exist to get started with or new ones can be created with the help of a powerful templating engine.

And, optionally, there is a desktop designer tool which actually launches a small webserver that can render Edicy‘s templates. So that you can keep designing sites in your favorite editor.

There is an easy-to-use content editor to edit sites while browsing, it has a built-in and advanced image editor where you can upload with drag ‘n’ drops and rotate, crop, resize them.

Besides images, videos, tables, maps and other widgets can be inserted within few seconds. Also, a form engine exists to create any type of forms and collect data (they can be exported too).

Websites created don’t need to be all static, it can work with databases or product catalogues, has a blog engine and can be integrated with 3rd party apps.

Another very useful feature is the ability to offer the same website in different languages. Once a new language is added, Edicy simply asks you to insert the translated texts.

The service has many other features from password-protected pages to, statistics or the ability to managing your domains.

To sum up, Edicy is very handy for anyone willing to create their own site or a bunch of sites for their customers (and get support when needed).

It costs almost the price of a quality hosting account (which is included) and 300,000+ sites are already being managed by it.

Squarespace is a hosted content management system that empowers website owners and designers with tools to build websites (business, blogs, portfolio..) easily while removing the most annoying parts of the process.

First of all, there are lots of professionally designed templates (with each template having various style variants) to choose from which can be used "as is" or updated completely to suit your needs.

Websites are created, edited and managed while browsing them. With the help of an in-site editor, editing everything and adding new content (with images, videos, etc.) is a breeze.

And, if you already have a website built with one of the well-known blogging systems like WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or TypePad, Squarespace can import all the content (with comments) into your new website.

There are powerful widgets that can be inserted into any part of the web pages with few clicks. Some of these widgets are: site search, tag cloud, custom forms, links to social network accounts and much more.

Actually, social network integration deserves more words as it is possible to display latest tweets from your Twitter, images from Flickr or items from RSS feeds.

For photographers or anyone to showcase their portfolio, customizable photo galleries with Lightbox integration, hover effects and auto-image-resizing make sure the output is easily manageable and charming.

There is a built-in analytics engine that informs website owners with the most important metrics like visitors/pageviews, keywords, referrers, latest activity and more.

In order to manage a Squarespace website, you don't even have to be online with a desktop as, thanks to its iPhone, iPad and Android applications, the websites can be under control anytime, anywhere.

And, the complete platform is hosted in a high-quality cloud system which ensures that the website can handle any traffic and uptime is something not to worry about.

This website builder has different pricing plans that meets the requirements of standard-to-advanced systems and it can be tried free for 14 days.

As a note to web designers and agencies, multiple Squarespace websites can be controlled under the same account and there are discounts offered for such usage.

Info: This is a review of a paid application.

For web designers who frequently build new websites for clients, managing the content can be a headache:

• no CMS is used and you may need to edit the content manually
• the CMS can be complicated for the client
• or, maybe the worst, the CMS you're using is outdated, has bugs, frequently requires updates, etc. (and you have to update it in many websites)

PageLime is an impressive CMS service which is so simple to use (both for the designer and client) + instantly integrates with your websites and business.

You can create websites how you used to and just add a special class: cms-editable to the parts that you want to be edited like text, images or links.

The pages are edited with live-previews and, besides simple editable regions, you can control more like:

• repeating-regions (where you can duplicate and move up/down items quickly)
• multi-level navigations
• server-side include files

It allows you to control any number of websites from the same interface with a permission-based multi-user interface where you can define "who can edit which website".

PageLime keeps track of every action you (or your client) make and you can restore a previously saved version of a page with a click.

Read the rest of this entry »