Review: Mr Site Takeaway Website Pro design software

Mr Site Takeaway Website Pro gives users everything they need to create their own websites without any prior experience.

Not only will it create and manage web pages, it will also deal with all the additional administrative issues you may not have known about before starting.

You won’t need to find hosting or the ability to register a domain because that's all taken care of by Mr Site and included in the one-year subscription.

Although the software arrives in a box, the whole process is in fact carried out online – the disc provided contains only an electronic version of the printed instruction manual. In fact, it’s much easier to just buy Mr Site online and save yourself the hassle of recycling the box.

Typing in the unique activation code supplied starts off the process that takes you through the whole thing, from registering a domain name to creating the finished site.

Once you’ve signed in, it's possible to create a site in just six steps. You start by choosing an overall look from a palette of around one hundred different designs. Then the program goes on to add individual pages and content, and letting the user preview and publish – all from within a single simple interface.

When you’ve created your pages you can add extras such as an online shop, photo gallery, blog or forum, turning those simple pages into a fully functional interactive website.

This Pro edition of Mr Site includes a number of advanced features not available in the standard edition: search engine-optimisation tools help boost your ranking in Google searches while Paypal Express Checkout gives you the ability to use fairly advanced commercial techniques such as controlling stock levels, shipping charges and customer details, which is handy if you're running a small business on the web.

You also get improved visitor tracking statistics an online image editor and business stationery creation tools. The Pro edition also offers up to 600MB of web space and unlimited monthly bandwidth, compared with the 150MB/2GB per month limits of the standard version.

Although limited in scope, Mr Site Takeaway Website Pro is an excellent way to get a fully functional commercial-grade website off the ground without having to hire a Web designer or learning how to build your own.