User Review - uCoz Website Builder

September 15, 2010

The following review was generously submitted to us to share with you by CMS Critic reader, Kanat Bektemirov (website):

uCoz is a popular general purpose Software as a Service —includes hosting and CMS— that can be used for a variety of projects. One can create satisfying projects of all types from personal page to blogging, from guestbook to forums, and from news site to online shopping site.

Pros:

Free
No installation
Unlimited hosting (with initial hosting space of 400Mb and it increases every second (similar to Gmail)) and bandwidth
250 offered themes
Variety of modules, tools, and features
Easy to use interface
Cheap plans
All websites can be accessed from one account

Cons:

Forced ads in free version
No personal use of PHP, Perl, ASP etc. scripts
Not SEO friendly
Not 100% open source
Shared hosting

Installation

Nonexistent. Absolutely no installation is required – just register and start working on your project.

It takes 30 seconds to register and then you will have everything ready and available for use. In a few clicks you can set up any module, feature, and template you need.

Admin Panel

Modules

There are 12 content modules to choose from:

News – allows administrator and users to post news easily
Forum – allows users to communicate in a variety of topics
Publisher – gives an opportunity to create a set of structured information on any topic
File Catalog – another content module; has its own goodies
Site Catalog – collected sites are organized in an ordered manner
Ad Board – another content module; has its own goodies
Blog – allows administrator and/or users to share thoughts
Photo Albums – good photo gallery module
Online Games – 100s of games installed by default, new games can be added by users or administrator
Guestbook – allows people to leave opinions on the website
FAQ – easy access to most frequently asked questions
E-shop – powerful tool for organizing sales on the website

These modules have titles, but are not limited to what their names are. There are a bunch of folks who have done unbelievable projects using the modules listed above. But most people use these modules for quickly creating and managing content on the website.

There are also additional modules that have fixed uses such as contact forms, web polls, tag board, banner rotator, informers, RSS import, tests, site statistics, site search, and auto sitemap file creation and updating.

Security, Speed, and Reliability

One of the most important factors when choosing a CMS is the website's security. uCoz provides nearly impossible to hack website security. The admin panel is well protected and one should have little or no fear of it being compromised. uCoz also allows one to set security levels based on IP address which decreases the likelihood that the admin panel will by accessed by others.

Backups of oneís projects can also be created and downloaded so that the projects can be easily restored if oneís work faces peril or transferred to another CMS if needed.

Security Settings

Localization and the Community

Websites and the admin panel can be displayed in seven different languages without any installation of a language pack.

The transition from the different languages can be done in one click. The uCoz community is pretty diverse and is available to help users on uCoz community forums.
Technical support

From past experiences I found out that the official tech support —that can be reached through the admin panel— never responds, if ever, before 2-3 days if using the free version of the service.

I also found out that most tech supporters are not very intelligent. By that I mean they can't respond to anything other than simple questions that can be found on FAQs and docs. Besides being not intelligent, they sometimes respond with boorishness (if using free version).

They once told me to “grow up and start using my brain instead of contacting them”. I don't mean no disrespect, but it is better not to contact the official technical support. I see uCoz is working hard on improving its technical support, so this situation might completely change in the near future.

Language and other settings

Usability

uCoz is suited for both newcomers and advanced webmasters. The interface is easy to use and understand while it also provides tools that more advanced users can take advantage of. The text editor can be switched back and forth between WySiWyG, BB Codes, and plain HTML.

Text Editors

uCoz does not allow its users to use PHP, Perl, ASP or other server-side scripts nor does it give access to site's database and configuration files (i.e .htaccess). However, it is very easy to accomplish your needs using uCoz server-side codes and/or Javascript (+libraries). Also, there is a u.js file in all uCoz website pages (can be removed) that contains jQuery library and many very-very useful functions; some people call it uCoz library. This article contains information about some available functions on u.js.

Since uCoz is SaaS, webmasters do not have to worry about manual upgrading the CMS.

uCoz Server Side code samples

Conclusion

uCoz provides a free and easy to use service while catering to more advanced users who want more freedom in the creation of their projects.

This review was just a brief taste of what uCoz services look like; it is not possible to summ up everything in one article. I posted some screenshots and captions below to show some other features that uCoz services provide.

Kanat Bektemirov