Zikle | Building Websites is “As Easy As Pie”
Tim March 5th, 2007
Publishing websites online is a heated market for web 2.0 applications, mainly because of the chore desktop applications like Frontpage and Dreamweaver can be to create content. Zikle has entered this playing field with a slick drag-and-drop interface and the promise to make website creation “easy as pie.” Thats a lot of promise so I’ve decided to jump in and see what we’re working with.
1. So easy you’re mom could do it, or so they claim on their homepage. Let’s register to find out if their promises hold up to scrutiny.
2. Registration is free and fairly simple. It looks like you have to be a certain age to use Zikle based on the fact that they ask for a birthdate, but I can’t find any current information on their site about what that cutoff age is. After verifying my email address I log in.
3. Before I get started setting up my site I’m asked to upload an avatar. This hints at Zikle’s underlying social aspect to site publishing. We will see many more areas that all bring in more social features such as commenting and adding friends.
4. In order to find out who else uses Zikle we are given the option of putting in our MSN account information. I like the idea of viewing my contacts for friends, but MSN is an odd choice. I don’t use it and I would think they would want to expand this feature to a few other contact lists (AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.). Since I don’t have an MSN account I choose to skip ahead.
5. I now get to the main area of Zikle where they remind me again how lonely I am. They’re obviously pushing the idea of having friends and connecting through Zikle sites. I decide to click over to the Manage Pages tab to see what I’m given by default.
6. You start off with just a simple Start page. Here in the Manage Pages screen you have the option of editing what you already created, deleting pages, and creating whole new pages. I’m jumping in headfirst so I decide to create a new page.
7. The first step to creating a page is to give it a name and title. Zikle doesn’t explain the difference at all which could be confusing. I would assume the title is what actually shows on the page and the name is what you give it that shows in the Manage Pages screen. The addition of privacy features to make a page public or not is also available.
8. I’m sent to the default view of the webpage. Here I can drag and drop windows, editing contents of the dialog boxes, and removing certain things. I also have a menu up top where I can choose to include pictures and clipart as well as edit the background.
9. Adding an image gives me a Lightbox effect where I can choose from the images I’ve already used in the past or upload a new one.
10. The interface can be somewhat problematic to work with. Although the boxes are drag and drop, the positioning is very hit or miss and from what I can tell there is no way to decide how the dialog boxes get layered. Here I have an image inserted but in some cases it is behind other text boxes causing problems.
11. Adding a text box is much like adding an image. The WYSIWYG interface is easy to use and advanced users could choose to insert html code if they wish.
12. Zikle has included a lot of clipart split up into categories to help the common user pimp out their page. Here’s a screen with a couple banners to put into the site.
13. You can also upload an image to replace the background. It would be nice for Zikle to include some backgrounds to choose from much like with the Clipart screen. Also it would be great to have the option to make the background fixed and choice of whether it repeats or not.
14. After doing a few edits my page is already starting to look like a Myspace profile.
Although Zikle has included many features for making it easy to add content, there’s little in the way of organizing it. The drag-and-drop interface is not very intuitive because of the layering that is going on and the inability to align elements in a grid-like fashion. I think this is a great start for Zikle (it’s a free beta, there are always going to be some rough edges). Addition of video content from YouTube and other sites, maybe even photos from Webshots or Photobucket, would be another great addition. In the end Zikle is making leaps and bounds with regards to online publishing but the end results are still very much average.
