SiteBuilder uses a wizard to guide users through creating sites and makes it easy to add text, upload images and video clips as well as allowing users to select pre-existing templates to quickly create and format the site before publishing online.

15th January, 2007. Hostway, the leading provider of web hosting and online services, today announced the launch of its new Mobile SiteBuilder tool to help businesses and consumers build mobile device-friendly websites quickly and easily. Following the launch of the .mobi domain name, businesses have been keen to make the most of the mobile web, and the tool has been launched to aid this. Mobile SiteBuilder uses a wizard to guide users through creating sites and makes it easy to add text, upload images and video clips as well as allowing users to select pre-existing templates to quickly create and format the site before publishing online.

“Recent research from Vanson Bourne has demonstrated that most mobile phone users still don’t use the mobile Internet because sites are hard to navigate, take a long time to load, or display badly,” said Neil Barton, director, Hostway. “Mobile SiteBuilder is aimed at combating these problems by helping people to develop simple, easy to use mobile websites.”

Mobile Sitebuilder will help companies with an online presence make the most of the new .mobi domain name. .mobi is the first domain name to be specifically aimed at websites for mobile device users and has guidelines and technical prerequisites attached to it to make the mobile web experience as pleasant and easy as possible.

“Developers who are familiar with PC-based website development often try to directly convert their websites straight to mobile devices, which is a mistake,” continued Barton. “Mobiles simply don’t have the display size or devices such as mice which allow for the same ease of navigation as PCs do. Developers therefore need to use different methods of designing when making a mobile-specific site.”

Hostway’s Mobile SiteBuilder tool allows users to create websites with up to six-pages, optimised for mobile devices. Each page can hold five images of up to 20kb per page. The site wizard allows users to tailor basic elements of the site such as text size and style, as well as more advanced site editing on the move from a mobile phone. It also automatically links the address postcode on the “contact us” section of the site template to Google mobile maps, allowing users to navigate their way to the company with satellite or graphical maps.

The tool is priced at £21.95 a year and can be purchased on either its own, bundled with a .mobi domain name, or as an add-on to Hostway’s existing standard SiteBuilder tool.

For more information, go to www.hostway.co.uk/domainnames/dotmobi/sitebuilder.asp

Hostway Worldwide
Hostway Corporation (www.hostway.co.uk) provides award-winning web hosting services with eight locations in the US, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Korea, and Australia. Serving customers both small and large, Hostway provides best of breed hosting infrastructure with innovative online tools to help customers broaden their reach and grow their businesses online. Hostway offers a wide range of managed hosting services ranging from Windows and Linux based shared hosting plans, to complete dedicated server and Enterprise managed solutions to now over 400,000 customers worldwide.