Last month I shared a list of 11 Free Tools for Creating Websites. Today, Zoho released a new website creation tool to bring that list up to twelve. Zoho Sites is a new addition Zoho’s suite of services. Zoho Sites appears to be trying to address two frequently-noted shortcomings of Google Sites by offering visually impressive themes and by automatically making your sites mobile-friendly.
TechCrunch says that Google needs to watch out for Zoho Sites, but I don’t think Google has too much to worry about because aside from the theme beauty and mobile readiness, creating a website on Zoho Sites is just like almost every other free website builder. To create a site on Zoho Sites you can sign-in using a Zoho account, Google account, or Facebook account. Once you’ve signed-in, select a theme and start arranging elements on your site by using the drag-and-drop menus. One of the nice elements that you might want to add to your site is the integrated blogging element. You can have a blog reside inside you site. In other words you can have the static content of a website combined with a section for chronologically organized blog posts. Like on any good website builder, you can preview your site before you publish it and you can edit it at any time.
The video below provides a short overview of Zoho Sites.
Applications for Education
If you’re looking for a platform that your students can use to build visually-appealing digital portfolios, take a look at Zoho Sites. If your students already have Google accounts, signing into Zoho Sites won’t require them to create a new user name and password.
If you’re looking to build a new course website that is mobile friendly, Zoho Sites is worth giving a good look too.