It's got our name on it… Wix
Ok not THAT Wix.
As I'm hosting this blog through my motion graphics website created using Wix, I figured my first real post should be about the service, and how perfect it is for motion graphic designers and other creatives alike.
I discovered Wix about a year ago having realised my previous site was long overdue a revamp after about 7 years of service. A good friend of mine created my first motion graphics portfolio site, but since I don't know the first thing about coding, it was difficult and tedious to add or edit content, meaning I rarely updated it. I'd learned which bits of code to copy, paste and tweak, without actually knowing what they meant, which made for some annoying late night calls to the developer when things went terribly wrong.
I'd heard about Wix and other similar services over the years, and they all seemed to be getting more and more intuitive, and easier to use. Wix stood out to me as being particularly tailored towards people who literally know nothing about web design (like myself) so I decided to give it a blast.
The first thing I noticed was how quickly you can get something that resembles a working website. There's a ton of presets to choose from that you can quickly edit and adapt to make your own. I chose a simple, clean, blocked out design, but within less than an hour I'd already tweaked it beyond recognition into something that more closely resembles my site as it is today.
What I really like about Wix, is how quick it is to add pages and content. Adding a new page automatically creates a new tab in your sites navigation bar, and all the links are sorted without even having to look at code.
As a motion graphics designer, I wanted my new site to be very visual, showcasing my best work, all the while keeping navigation really simple. Having an image gallery of thumbnails that can be clicked through to portfolio pages was very important. The options you have for something as simple as this are incredibly extensive. There's all sorts of interesting gallery layouts to choose from, from trendy circular images, to animated slideshows, there's pretty much everything you could possibly want, or you can completely customise your own.
One of my favourite features is the desktop/mobile preview option. Having the ability to preview your site on the fly is incredibly useful, but the ability to preview for a mobile device and then tweak it separately to the main site is invaluable, especially in today's smartphone age.
There's literally hundreds of things I could cover that I love about Wix, from the SEO optimisation features, to the Visitor tracking tool, the whole experience is one that I would recommend to not just motion graphics designers, but anyone thinking of creating a website themselves. I'm at the absolute bottom end of the scale when it comes to traditional web design, so if I can create something I'm happy with, anyone can.
Garth
