By Dale Farris, Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
July 2002

Program Overview

CuteSITE Builder 3 is a specialized software application designed to make it very easy to create, publish, and manage a high-quality Web site, while not having to learn complex programming languages or graphic design. With this super program, you can create a professional, quality Web site in minutes with the built-in Web Wizard, add compelling content such as photos, charts, and surveys, and publish or update your Web site with just one click of the mouse.

CuteSITE Builder's true WYSIWYG functionality allows you to easily format text, change background colors, and add pages to your site on-screen. The program is as easy to work with as working with Microsoft Word, and its professionally designed page templates, photo sequence wizard, and pre-coded survey templates mean there is a very minimal learning curve. With CuteSITE Builder you should be up and running with your Web site very quickly. Whether you are developing your first Web site or another site, CuteSITE Builder is a very easy way to very quickly create quality Web sites.

Key Features

WYSIWYG Editing Environment - formatting equals look on the Web
Simplified Web Site Organization - clearly see the structure of your site
Web Site Manager - displays pages graphically, navigate the structure
Professionally Designed Page Templates - pre-built themes for sites
Easily add images to site - optimizes images for Web site viewing
Image Editing - align, wrap text, resize images, set up background
Photo Sequence Wizard - create and organize image slide show
One-Click Publishing - solves the complexities of copying files to server
Smart Table Editor - easy, quick way to create tables
Survey Wizard - gather feedback from visitors

Getting Started

With CuteSITE Builder 3, getting started with designing a Web site is a easy as clicking the mouse. You open the program and choose whether to start with a wizard, start with a template, or open an existing file. The wizard makes it extremely easy to begin creating a Web site, by asking you questions and letting the program respond to your answers.

You can add a page by clicking Insert, Page from the menu bar, and you can add text to a page body or border by just selecting in the Main Map, the overview of the pages in your site, the page to which you wish to add the text. Then you just click where you want and begin typing your text.

Creating links between pages on a site is also very easy. In the page area, you select the text or image you want to use as a link (meaning the stuff you want a visitor to your site to be able to click on that will then take them to another page), and in the Main Map of your site you right-click the page you want to link to and then choose Link To This Page.

Creating a link to an external URL is also very easy. You select the text or image and right-click the area where you want to insert the link. Choose Create Link to URL or File from the right-click menu, and the Link Properties dialog box will appear. Choose URL from the Link To drop down box, and click the Browse button. CuteSITE Builder will automatically launch your Web browser so that you can navigate to the external URL. Copy the URL from the browser's address field, and then switch to the CuteSITE Builder dialog box and paste this URL into the URL field next to the Browse button.

Adding an image is easy. You select Insert, Picture, Image/ClipArt from the menu bar. The Insert Image/ClipArt dialog box appears, and you then find the image you want to insert. You can also reduce the size of the image by clicking the Limit Image Size (in pixels) box and enter the new width and height of the image. The image will then be resized proportionally. This is extremely important, as Internet surfers will not wait long for an image to appear in their browser. The smaller the size and resolution of images, the faster these will download to the user's machine.

Inserting tables is also made very easy in CuteSITE Builder 3. Tables are a great way to organize photos or a series of data. You can insert a table in the page area or in any border. Click the Insert, Table menu option, that opens the Insert Table dialog box. You choose the number of rows and columns in the table, and determine the width of each column, in pixels, and adjust this if necessary.

You can apply a page layout to a single page or to all selected pages. When you save a Web site file, CuteSITE Builder also saves the display and arrangement of the Main Map, the Overall Map, and the Web site's Outline. You can also distribute a saved file to any user who has a copy of CuteSITE Builder.

You can save your Web site in 2 ways, either as a single file in its native TLX format, or as HTML on your computer. To save the file as HTML, open the CuteSITE Builder TLX file, choose File, Publish Web Site from the menu bar. The Publish Web Site dialog box will appear. Click the Options button, and the Web Site Options dialog box appears. Click the HTML Directory tab, and check the Save Copy of Exported HTML Locally check-box. Then click the Browse button to select a path for the HTML files. Enter a folder name into the HTML Directory box and click OK. In the Publish Web Site dialog, click the Publish or Preview button, and CuteSITE Builder will automatically save the HTML in the folder you chose above.

To Publish your Web site, you of course first need access to a Web server of some sort, usually made available by the customer's own Internet Service Provider (ISP). You need a Web server to post your files, so that others can open your site from their home computer. CuteSITE Builder uses File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to get your Web site to the Web server upon which it will reside. You need information about your FTP site in order to enter this information into CuteSITE Builder.

You have to tell CuteSITE Builder where the Web server is located, and you find this out from your ISP. You then choose File, Publish Web Site from the menu, and answer the required questions in order to move the files from your machine to the Web server. The types of information you will need include the FTP Site Name, Web Site Address, FTP Host address, FTP Host Port, FTP UserName, and FTP Password. ISP support staff can assist customers with this information, assuming you have obtained, or purchased access to their Web server and they have agreed to support traffic at your site.

What About HTML?

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the language of the Web. All Web pages are written in HTML, and HTML defines the way that images, multimedia, and text are displayed in Web browsers. HTML includes tags to connect your documents (hypertext) and make your Web documents interactive (forms).

HTML is a defined standard markup language developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML is based upon SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), and is a language that uses tags to define the structure and some style of your text. Tags are defined by the < and > characters that occur before and after text.

This super program provides a very easy way to work with HTML coding, while not requiring the user to actually know any HTML coding. CuteSITE Builder 3 does all the required HTML coding for you. All you do is work in the WYSIWYG environment, creating text, formatting the text the way you want it, and adding any desired graphic images, and the program adds the necessary HTML code tags to the file in order for these files to load for others to view the information from their computer.

Targeted Customers

CuteSITE Builder is obviously aimed at customers with very little experience in creating Web sites, but it will also definitely be of interest even to those who may have begun designing and updating Web pages. Although the approach is of course tailored to making it very easy to design Web pages, the program by definition is not necessarily what professional Web site developers would call and HTML Editor. However, those that have never, ever had any experience with Web site development will most definitely want to give serious consideration to this program that will make it very easy for them to create Web pages.

With CuteSITE Builder, you cannot get direct access to edit the HTML code that it creates. However, you can use its built-in Insert, HTML Code option, which opens a HTML editing window that will allow you to insert any HTML, Java, or other code that Web browsers support. I suspect that the main target market of potential customers will relish the opportunity to work with this super WYSIWYG approach to Web site design, and not quibble at all with these restrictions.

Professional Web site developers highly skilled in complex HTML coding, dynamic use of Java, Macromedia's Dreamweaver, or other high-end, complicated Web page actions are not the targeted customers of CuteSITE Builder. Nonetheless, I think there is a huge market of potential customers very eager to get their hands on such an application like CuteSITE Builder to help them get started with their own Web page development. Over time, as these novices become more skilled in Web page development, then later they can move up to high end applications.

CuteSITE Builder is an excellent program that will be just what anyone new to Web page creation needs to help them get started. For students brand new to markup languages, this software can also be considered a helpful tool in their entry into learning how to design and enhance Web pages. In formalized educational programs, I also suggest that CuteSITE Builder be considered a tool that supplements their work in learning the fundamentals of working in HTML with an HTML editor.

Price

$69.95
Free, 30-day trial version available via download

Minimum System Configuration Requirements

PC with Pentium or higher processor
Windows 9.x, 98 ME, NT 4 Workstation, 2000 Professional
32MB RAM
25MH free hard disk space
Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher
A connection to the Internet
A Web host, typically an ISP

About GlobalSCAPE, Inc.

GlobalSCAPE, Inc. was founded in April 1996 as a subsidiary of ATSI Communications, Inc. The company focuses on content management applications. GlobalSCAPE products enable customers to easily create, move, and manage information in a secure, collaborative environment. Their products key on Web site development, file management, and secure data delivery solutions. The company now has more than 1 million monthly users of its software and has sold more than 700,000 licenses to date.

Readers may better know this company by its "Cute" product line, which includes CuteFTP and CuteFTP Pro, the world's favorite file transfer application. I have been a long time satisfied customer of their superb CuteFTP application, and depend on this product regularly in order to transfer files to and from the GTPCC Web site host server.

CuteFTP Pro is a secure file transfer application developed for business users, and CuteZIP is an easy way to shrink and encrypt files for secure transfer and storage. Other GlobalSCAPE produces include content management and file server applications.

GlobalSCAPE software is well known and well respected in the high-tech community, as evidenced by their customer base. GlobalSCAPE customers span all industries and skill levels. Other products include Secure FTP Server, CuteHTML, and CuteMAP.

Contact Information

GlobalSCAPE, Inc.
6000 Northwest Parkway, Suite 100
San Antonio, Texas 78249
210-308-8267
FAX: 210-308-8297
Sales: 800-290-5054
sales@globalscape.com
www.globalscape.com