WebsitePainter 4+

This program is the perfect stepping stone to understanding a bit about web development whilst not having to know anything about web programming languages.
It has different functionality to iWeb. This program offers drop down menus and web 2.0 style buttons for example. Lots more flexibility to add snippets of programming language. You can make a "contact me" web form pretty easily which you can't do on iWeb without using 3rd party websites.
Websites produced using this program have better compatibility with browsers than iWeb sites.
Didn't receive 5 stars because the program still has room for improvement. It's a bit clunky to use, for example deleting a text box requires you to have the box not selected, then right click to select and chose delete. The photo slideshows could have a bit more functionality with centering images when using both portrait and landscape photos in one slideshow box.

The program interface is clean and relatively intuitive to use for beginners. For those with some previous experience with HTML and who might want to tweak things in the background, some things are a bit problematic/annoying or simply not possible. For example, there is a good range of color selecting options for text entry but no easy way to directly enter a color by its #HEX code. There is a tool option to enter HTML directly but it appears as if that requires the knowledge to compose the entire block of html for the paragraph/page. It could be possible to open the saved HTML page in a text editor to make the tweaks, but this defeats the purposes of using the program in the first place.

The program is extremely good if you want to create picture galleries or if you want to directly embed youtube videos or audio from other sites that permit hot linking. However, if you want to include links to other file types located relatively within the file structure of your site, WSP handles them as if every file was an image file. To explain, once you have finished editing all your pages in WSP, a one-click process compiles everything together into HTML pages (and any folders created for pages) and a WSP_Images folder. This may not be a problem for everybody, or even more than a few people with specialist needs, but it is annoying to have to either try and manage a single folder filled with many mixed file types or, alternatively, create folders outside the program on the server and create permanent links to them from within WSP. Note: the two main criticisms here most likely are not going to affect the majority of people who buy this program, and I’m still loving it, despite these issues.

For me, the very best value in this program comes from the EXCELLENT after sales service offered by the author through a web forum. All questions and concerns are addressed (usually) within a 24 hour time period, and the author is open to suggestions for ways to improve the program. Given that we make so many software purchases to faceless corporations these days, this kind of personal service is incredibly refreshing.