We’re thrilled to announce that as of yesterday, Wix is live and kicking in open beta. That means everyone can now be a part of this fun creative force known as Wix.

Excitement is in the air. Check out what the guys over at TechCrunch and KillerStartups had to say about us.

The open beta launch is a big step forward in our journey to change the way web content is created. We’re constantly exploring new directions for developing and improving Wix. Together with the Wix community (in the forum, email, our social network profiles and more), we can make a happier, prettier and friendlier internet.

We want to give a large round of applause to all the users who helped us through the private beta. Your feedback and experience with Wix had a tremendous role in our decision making process. Thank you for your much appreciated support, we couldn’t do it without you (and we don’t want to!).

Yours Forever,

Team Wix

Hi!

Lately I’ve received many questions regarding art widgets. I can sum them like this:

1. What is a widget?

An art widget looks like a comment, but it doesn’t need to be just one thing. It can include your body of work: additional works, BIO, inspiration, new, links… whatever you want. Like a mini-site.

2. Why should I make one?

There are few reasons to invest a bit more time to create a widget about your work:

A. By adding your info, you give deeper understanding about your work.

B. It can be embedded anywhere on the web - by you and your fans.

C. Search engines can read it, as opposed to Jpg/regular flash.

Here are some examples:

Look at the Widget Byron King Created:

He added: Some of his works in slides, links & a look into his studio (video).

SuicideHappy made one on her Dolls series:

She added inspiration, album of the series & links pages.

F.P.D. (Fanatic Panda Dude) made gifts: postcards that you can embed wherever you want.

You can find them in Galerie de la Royal Digital (VanillaRoyal’s collaborative gallery, I will write more about it soon).

For more examples click here.

If you want us to show your art, make us an art widget and we will show it here & in our social profiles :)

We will show it here & in our social profiles.

Written by Lee

We’re proud to announce the first Wix Website Design Contest, together with Webappers blog.

The contest is very simple. All you have to do is use Wix to create a website.

The website should promote a small business like a hotel, a restaurant, a spa and so on.

Contestants can use any content available on Wix or content that can be uploaded to Wix, as long as it’s flash.

Wix creative VP Design, Yonatan Saragosi, will choose 5 final contestants, and the Webappers’ community will vote on the best design and choose the winner.    

First prize is $700. The runner up will receive $300.

The contest begins today and will take place until June 27^th, 2008.

For more details and for registration, see here

So, as I promise, this is the Wix Evolution.

(And the truth is that we are still at the beginning of our way..)

(this is the actual version)

Here’s a little taste of what happened with Wix lately

And a little bite from what Suicidehappy made with wix:

If you guys really want to, you can read an interview with our CEO (Allon Bloch) at interesting blog called VC caffe

In the forum, our users proved us that they are smarter then us, and invent some sortcuts and triks for Myspace, using Wix, here

Wonna make Flash available for anyone? join our facebook cause http://tinyurl.com/5ft6yw (YE, we know, but we like it anyway :-P )

And Sébastien LANDRIEU (LANDRIEU from the forum) with video-tutorial, Transparency png in www.wix.com

In the next post, I’ll show you some evolution taking place, see you.

Wrote by Amit Knaani

Now we are trying to get into a new rhythm of writing in this blog, things are moving so fast, and we are chasing them as fast as we can… this blog is a good tool to catch them and lock them here forever :)

Today on the schedule: Invite friends and the new Wix forum

We allow ourselves to think that from time to time you got this crazy idea and you want to show or introduce Wix to your friends, well, from now on - you don’t need to write to us and ask an invitation for your friends!

Look for the modest “Invite Friends” button we added to your “My Account” (5 for now - you can e-mail us if you need more) use it! it’s almost fun :-P

Another new thing that we really like - is our new forum (designed and customized by Yonatan, respect! :) ) In this place you’ll be able to tell us what you think, to ask for new features and complain about all our sins, for now we’ve got 2 forums, the main is for support, we’ll try to update it every time issues will come up and we cant wait until you’ll fill it with bugs and problems.

The other forum is for you to talk about - well, everything, the general chat.

In the past few days I was busy with trying to build all kinds of widgets for bloggers using Wix, and I thought it would be great to share them with you (our users). Got ideas for new widgets? comment about them here, lets try to do them as well…

1. The “where i am” widget (see here, my personal one ) As you can see, I just took all kinds of icons (we will supply Wix icons to known Social networks and services very soon) and linked them to the right place. The fun thing is that you can:

• Customize the way your widget looks like (colors, effects, sounds)
• Fit the size of the widget to your blog/profile/whatever…
• Add more icons to your widget the moment you join a new service (and you will!) and the Wix will be updated wherever you embedded it.

2. Sport widget: your favorite players, your favorite groups, you can embed it into your profile and change it following the changes in real life… (see example here )

3. Countdown widget: you’ve got a big campaign coming up? are you starting a new project that you want people to notice? are you planing to launch a new album? new song? new something? why not let Wix promote it?Or simply put: comment to your friends with Wix-countdown widgets, and it will update everyday or every time you want it to (use it as banner, newsletter…) you can see how the Anarchist Music Project A.N.A use it in MySpace press here.

Written by Amit knaani, Amit@wix.com

Yup: Big news – our new version is up and running…(you can read a review about us at Techcrunch).It’s our belief that community is out there in the wider world, not centered here at Wix headquarters. As we see it, Web communities grow and change organically, with content generated by users from all over the world. That puts you, the user, at the center–you own the content, you decide when and where to publish it, you embed it anywhere–and, of course, we’re happy with any creative way you choose to do it!

Did you see our new cool features? (I guess some of you already use it, and as we can see, use it well!)
Now, you can:
• Add mini-pages that allow you to make small changes rather than major overhauls to your designs.(We also added a ton of new content)
• Animate your content, simply by using the “animation” feature; you can now decide when and where your content will appear and how it will look (how about fading in smoothly?)
• Draw from your own collection of visual content and present it in a photo album, carousel, or other creative layout.
• Control the editor and HTML background of your published Wix. When you publish or edit your Wix, you can change the background color from the default blue to any color you’d like. Just click the multi-colored square that you can find in “settings” (in the “info” section inside it) and both your editor background and your published Wix background will be changed.

In the meantime, you can see some of our favorite designs created by Wix users in the ‘Explore’ section of the site (if you’d like your work featured on Wix, email me at Amit@wix.com)On the same note, as you can see from our Artists’ Blog, we warmly welcome (and are seeking!) any content you’d like to contribute to Wix. If you’re an artist, musician, or graphic designer, we’d be more than happy to add your content to the system, allowing other users to see, use and enjoy it (you’ll retain credit for your work). Content submissions should come to me: Amit@wix.com As always, you can find us at our twitter: http://twitter.com/Wix (check it out, we’re friendly to strangers…), or be our friend on MySpace (www.myspace.com/wixmypage) (or, if you are an Artist: http://www.myspace.com/wixart ) or Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=528459119).

Here’s a glimpse of our editor, showing the flexibility and speed of website creation with Wix.