First, the review assumes that you are the administrator of a web site powered with Website Publisher. As soon as you complete the order process, you will receive an email from the vendor with the required information to download the product. It can then be installed by following the instructions in the step-by-step wizard either in Linux or in Windows server. The wizard prompts you to enter database related information such as database name, username and password. As soon as the installation is completed the site will be loaded with a default template which comes with the product.

Figure 1

The site can be managed by logging into the system by using the administration username and password which you gave at the time of installation. If the supplied credentials are correct then a dashboard will be displayed as shown below.

Figure 2

While administrators have the rights to perform all the tasks associated with the creation and management of articles, users can register as authors and post articles to the system. I found that the registration process is pretty simple and also Ajax and CAPTCHA enabled to prevent unauthorized registrations. Even though you have registered, your account will become active only after the approval by the administrator. But administrators can enable auto approval of new registrations from the secured area although it is not recommended. Authors will be able to login to the system immediately and the management area will look like the one below.

Figure 3

I noticed that the article submission process is simple, but the form and the links on the right hand side overlapped each other when I switched the text editor to complete mode. I feel that this is a CSS problem with the template and not that of the product, which I hope will be resolved in the next development cycle. The vendor also provides excellent support and provides an immediate fix for problems.

The published article can be edited at any time by the author after logging into the system and selecting the My Submissions link. It will be visible on the site only after the approval by the administrator.

I found it very easy to navigate through the administrator dashboard. The functions for each module have been given inside the drop down menus. You can easily monetize your site by simply specifying the Google publisher ID by selecting the Adsense tab from the settings menu on the top of the page. The resulting page will look like the figure below.

Figure 4

You can pick the pages on which the Ads should be displayed and the system will automatically display them on the site. It is also possible to customize the font, color and other related settings. Even though Google Adsense is used by the majority of users, I would prefer to see the implementation of other Ads such as Lakequincy and Widgetbucks into the site from the administration area.

An interesting feature which I noticed is that you can create a logo for your site without using any other tool from the administrator area within two minutes very easily by specifying the required text. I would suggest the vendor to provide more design options especially that of Web 2.0 styled logos.