Hotglue.me is a unique online tool for web design and publishing which allows users with no web development or programming experience to easily design a web site and publish it online. Hotglue.me is not only a beginner tool however, more experienced users are able to download their hotglue site to their own webserver.

Hotglue is easy to use and with one click you can add text, images and video. You can also create new pages, add hyperlinks and background images to make a completely unique and personalised website.

To the left is an introductory video to hotglue which explains what its all about and what you can do. If you want to try it out, click the image above which will take you to the hotglue homepage.

In our first web design studio session we were tasked with playing with hotglue, using the tools available and finding out the benefits and limitations of a content manipulation system like hotglue.me. I found that Hotglue is a very useful tool for the novice user who has no experience or background in web development and coding and allows them to make a published website easily and within a fair time frame. It also provides a visual basis of what you are making whereas with HTML coding its more long-winded to see what you have created as you have to keep saving and opening you file in a different format to see what it would look like.

These two images are the only two menus you will run into on the Hotglue design page. The one on the left allows you to upload an image, a video, add and text box and embed another website. The one on the right allows the user to change the background image, compare revisions of the web page (incase you want to revert back to a previous design), add a new page, change page names and URLs.

Hotglue does have its limitations though and the main one for me was being able to create consistency. Consistency with colour schemes, font and font sizes, margins across multiple web pages. It is possible to create consistency among multiple web pages but it is very tedious and time consuming to do what should be a simple task. With HTML coding you can state in your code, margin widths, fonts and their size, a colour scheme. Hotglue however tries to make it easy for the user with a colour pallet, a drag and drop text box layout and a scrolling font sizing setup, all of which do the complete opposite and make the process tedious and long-winded. Consistency isn't an issue if you are making a website to show friends and family but is a necessity if you are wanting a more professional looking website, much like what I am trying to accomplish with this portfolio.