After you’ve chosen a template and started editing your site, you’re treated to a one-minute introductory video. The templates are modern and attractive, with many pinning your navigation icons to the top as the site viewer scrolls down. Eight, round buttons let you add elements, change the background image, access the App Market (from which you get third-party site widgets), see your uploads, and start blogging. You can easily minimize or hide these controls if you need to edit the area under them.

Editing the template design is a cinch. Just click any element, and you’ll see resizing handles and dragging buttons. You have a lot more freedom to place objects where you want them than in Weebly or Squarespace. Double-click text to edit and format it. As you move objects around, guides appear when they’re in line with other objects, to help with alignment. A toolbar offers tools for sizing and arranging objects, including size matching, alignment, and overlap options. If you select more than one object, you can move them together around the page. We like that any object can be animated on load, with effects like Bounce-In, Glide-In, and Spin-In. Overall, Wix offers an outstanding basic editor.

One thing about the Wix site-building interface that really impresses us is that it uses right-click context menus. Most other builders do nothing with right clicks, except launch browser options that don’t help with site building. Wix lets you use right-clicks to change images or edit text. You can customize page design to your heart’s content, including the number of columns, their sizes, and their alignment. In addition, you can easily add new pages, and drag them around to change the site’s navigation hierarchy. Wix lets you password-protect particular pages or require a membership sign-up or sign-in to access content.