Piria Updates Flex-Based Rombla Web Site Builder

Piria has updated its Rombla visual Web site builder with new capabilities just a month after its release.

Piria announced the beta of its Rombla online "no programming" Web site builder at the Adobe Max conference in San Francisco held Nov. 16 to 18. Rombla enables designers to create fully editable Web sites using simple visual editing tools and then share them with their clients to edit and maintain.

Bob Lang, founder of Piria, said by using Rombla to make it easy for clients to keep their sites up-to-date, designers will be able to focus on higher-margin design work rather than ongoing maintenance, marking a new chapter in Web design.

Designers can also share their designs with the Rombla community to showcase their talents and attract new clients. Business owners select a design and customize it themselves or collaborate with a designer using Rombla to make major changes and additions.

Lang posted a blog entry on Rombla Dec. 13 reporting new bug fixes and progress on two new features in the works.

One feature is the ability to publish Rombla sites to external domains. "Our testers are now validating FTP transfer of Rombla sites to several large hosting companies," Lang said. "Initially, you will be able to download your site and FTP it to your existing hosted domain. Shortly after, we will add the ability for Rombla to automatically publish to other hosting companies without the need to download and transfer files."

Regarding the second new feature in development, Lang said, "We have also added the ability for Rombla to auto-generate a background copy of each page's content in HTML format to help search engines to index content and dramatically improve your site's search engine ranking."

At Adobe Max, Lang cited a survey that indicated that designers are spending the majority of their time on maintenance and updates rather than on new site design. For their part, many clients have been frustrated that they can't edit their own sites and keep them up to date, Lang said. Rombla addresses both these limitations, he said.

"With Rombla, designers can separate content from design, which really changes the dynamics of building Web sites," said Chris Fortier, owner of Chris Fortier Graphics. "I can now rapidly build out a site and then work collaboratively with the client to finalize the design and content, which is a process that's far more efficient than what designers have been doing since we started building client sites more than 10 years ago."