Serif WebPlus X6 review

A key feature in WebPlus X5 was its range of Smart Objects that could be dragged onto the page to create dynamic blogs, forums and e-commerce sites with very little effort, albeit with a reliance on Serif’s WebPlus.net for hosting. Otherwise, sites can be hosted anywhere. These have been sensibly relocated from a toolbar to a more logical position on the QuickBuild Bar in X6, but the selection is the same as before. As with WebPlus X5, there’s limited scope for creating pages in HTML in WebPlus X6. New pages can be created as HTML, but it’s HTML or nothing from then on. You can’t use any of WebPlus X6’s other design tools, and their design can only be seen using a preview button. Similarly, while the source code for standard WYSIWYG pages can be seen, it can’t be edited, although user-defined snippets of HTML code can still be embedded on the page.

Site hierarchies can be visualised with ease and the pages dragged around to restructure the layout

Serif has made few changes to the site templates supplied with WebPlus X6, but there are 10 more than X5, which gives you 30. Many are showing their age and none offer the slick, modern appeal of those available for WordPress or Tumblr, but they do come with dozens of colour schemes and sympathetic designs for the page’s purpose, such as home page, product list, Contact Us page and so on.

WebPlus X6 also adds a couple of template variations for viewing on mobile devices. These can be used to create standalone sites or inserted as pages into a standard site structure so that visitors can be redirected accordingly depending on browser type and screen resolution. Sadly, this approach does involve creating two separate versions of the same site, one for desktop use and one for mobile, and it’s a shame Serif didn’t include a simpler theme-based solution that automatically reformats desktop pages for mobile browsers.

Mobile sites can be combined with the desktop version

Even though it’s still the best web creation tool for those more interested in designing sites than writing HTML code, it’s disappointing that Serif WebPlus X6’s templates aren’t more up to date and its mobile features more flexible. It’s still strongly recommended for new users, but those with WebPlus X5 have little reason to upgrade.