Mosaic Site Creator Basics

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What is Mosaic Site Creator?

Mosaic Site Creator is an online site building tool which makes it possible to create and host professional looking, scalable, full featured web sites without any technical expertise.

What can I do with Mosaic Site Creator?

• You can create and launch a personal or business website in less than 30 minutes

• You can update your website from anywhere in the world, using just a browser

• You can add unlimited number of pages and any type of content - text, music, video, photo galleries and files

• You can add interactive elements such as a discussion forum or blog, web forms, mailing lists

• You can safely work on content changes while visitors are browsing your site

• You can publish updates instantly

• You can restrict access to specific areas on your site to select users

• You can monitor site statistics

• You can have your site hosted under your own domain

Does Mosaic Site Creator have any limitations?

Each new version of Mosaic Site Creator brings in new functionalities which are automatically integrated into your website. Tools which are not available with the standard Mosaic Site Creator modules can be obtained on demand as a separate package from Mosaic Technologies, Inc. The current Mosaic Site Creator version does not offer the following capabilities:

• There is no option for simultaneous editing of the same content by several users. Page-locking will be implemented in version 3.0.
• There are no different administrative access levels, approval work flow and history of changes. These tools are available as a custom module.
• There isn't an integrated shopping cart system with online credit card processing. It will be available with version 3.0. For the time being we offer integration with PayPal ^® merchant tools.
• You can't create your Mosaic Site Creator design on your own. Mosaic Site Creator's Template Development Kit is currently under development. Until it is released, our development team assists companies in setting up their own designs on Mosaic Site Creator.
• You can't use Mosaic Site Creator as a general hosting solution - we don't offer FTP, SSH or ability to run custom scripts. Mosaic Site Creator provides instead an integrated platform where you can build web sites without any need of FTP, SSH or scripting.
• You have to be online in order to edit your site.

Who can use Mosaic Site Creator?
Practically everyone who can use a browser and text editing software will be able to use Mosaic Site Creator as well. Mosaic Site Creator can be particularly useful to:

• Small businesses and professionals who wish to establish an upscale web presence

• Artists, writers or photographers in need of an online portfolio

• Collaboration teams looking for an online venue to present project information and coordinate activities
• Individuals willing to create a personal website for blogging or sharing photos
• Anyone who wishes to have a full-featured, good-looking web site that can be easily managed and updated

What makes Mosaic Site Creator different from other website building tools?

The key advantages that set Mosaic Site Creator apart from the multitude of website building tools are:

• Professional designs
• An integrated platform to launch, manage and host a website with all types of content and interactive features
• Flexible pricing structure to accommodate every need, starting from FREE accounts with 10MB of storage
• Easy to use even for beginners with no technical skills at all

What does it cost to make a site with Mosaic Site Creator?
Mosaic Site Creator is at various rates for various levels of service. Please review our Service Plans page for more pricing information.

Why is Mosaic Site Creator free?
The technology behind Mosaic Site Creator is very cost-effective and allows us to host a tremendous amount of sites on a smartly built, scalable infrastructure. Our servers are capable of serving millions of pages at very low cost, which we look upon as an advertising expense. We provide additional services (custom designs and functionality, integration with other systems) that keep our company profitable enough to afford this expense. Contact us if you want to learn more.

Are there any banner ads in Mosaic Site Creator?
The answer is definitely NO. Mosaic Site Creator will never add banners or popup ads to your site. We believe that this form of advertising pollutes the internet environment.

What do I need to build a site with Mosaic Site Creator?

A browser and internet connection. Not more than 30 minutes. And, of course, content and ideas!

Can I use Mosaic Site Creator for blogging?

Sure. Mosaic Site Creator includes a powerful Blog module with abilities for moderation, access restrictions, RSS and posting via email. Mosaic Site Creator offers much more than purely Blogging services however. You can establish a complete web presence of which the Blog is just one feature.

Can I use Mosaic Site Creator for selling products online?

Yes. You can easily sell products on your Mosaic Site Creator website by integrating PayPal^® Buy Now Buttons or Shopping Cart. A Mosaic Site Creator Shopping Cart module with shipping and handling calculator and online credit card processing will be introduced with the business-oriented release 3.0

Can I use Mosaic Site Creator for photo-sharing?

Certainly! Mosaic Site Creator's Image Galleries allow for multiple images upload, automatically prepared thumbnails and navigation, a variety of views including slideshow. You can also order high quality photo prints and restrict access to original images to select users.

No, Mosaic Site Creator doesn't support FTP. The product has been designed with the aim to allow people without technical skills to create feature-rich web sites. We are not trying to compete with companies offering standard FTP-based hosting. This market has been saturated and we can't really provide any competitive advantage there.

Can I use Mosaic Site Creator for editing my current website?

Mosaic Site Creator is not a stand-alone application which can be used as an editing tool on any website. It is a complex web publishing platform with integrated hosting. So, in order to edit your current website with Mosaic Site Creator, you will first need to recreate it with Mosaic Site Creator by opening an account and loading your content. In most cases you can just copy-paste each page from your old site into Mosaic Site Creator. If your current website features functionality which is not among Mosaic Site Creator's features, please contact us for a consultation on how it can be implemented.

You can easily migrate any FrontPage / Dreamweaver site to Mosaic Site Creator by simply copy-pasting the text and images from your current site to Mosaic Site Creator's Text and Image editor. Although the copy-paste is not applicable for some features (like photo galleries, images opening in a popup, etc) and they have to be recreated anew, the time you'll spend recreating your site in Mosaic Site Creator will definitely pay off. Here is why:

• You won't need to become an HTML/JS/FTP expert to maintain your web site on a regular basis

• You don't need to install and update any software

• You don't need to buy hosting (Mosaic Site Creator has integrated high-performance hosting)

• You can edit your web site from any computer with a popular browser

• You don't have to worry about broken images or links

• All your pages will have a professional, consistent look and feel

• You can publish changes instantly

• You can change the design of your site with a single click

Mosaic Site Creator is fully compatible with Internet Explorer 5.5 + on Windows and Mozilla 1.4+ / Firefox 1.0 + on Windows / Linux / Mac OS X

Mosaic Site Creator is not yet fully tested with Internet Explorer 7.0.  With the partially supported browsers listed below you will not be able to edit text and images using the Text and Image editor and there may be problems opening the Photo Galleries pop-up viewer (Safari)

Fully and partially supported browsers grouped by OS:

*** the Back browser button in FF 1.0.x is not functioning properly due to some browser limitations