Web site design is not just for professional graphic designers, whose fingers have grown hairy through long hours of hand-coding HTML. Anybody can do it, though the range of budget Web design programs is surprisingly small. Serif has been a leader in this field for some time with its WebPlus application, and version X2, strangely following version 10, continues to add useful extra functionality.

Looking more like a desktop publishing program than a specialist Web design tool, WebPlus X2 has been revamped to tone in with Windows Vista and now has slide-out, tabbed palettes on both sides of the editing page. On the right are colour swatches, site navigation and a component art gallery, while down the left are fonts, styles and tutorials.

WebPlus is ideally suited to those happy to go with predefined templates and components, and these are now very flexible, if sometimes a little complicated to use. There are automated navigation bars, for example, where you can colour the background and text, define the font and stipulate fly-out sub-menus. Getting them to display the right buttons for each site page, however, by selecting from 13 different Navigation Types - including Parent Level, Previous and Next and Breadcrumb - is not for the faint-hearted.

If you want to use pre-designed templates for your entire site, Serif has provided a number of multi-page designs, so different areas of content can be given different looks. WebPlus has moved further into handling business sites by including facilities to merge databases; ideal for maintaining product lists and catalogues. It works with Access, dBase and ODBC data, as well as with the company's own database format.

There are also more Web-based resources on offer. WebPlus 10 started with counters and RSS feeds, but WebPlus X2 includes Smart Objects for handling forums, access control for user groups and applets that can analyse visits to your site.

Building visual pages is made easier by the introduction of the Media Bar, from where you can drag and drop photos over existing images on your site, to directly replace them. This saves a lot of time if you regularly update visual material.

Search tools have been improved too, with extra optimisation so search engines can index your site, but also a facility to build a local search function, so visitors can search for specific text within your site.

There are still a few things on the wish list, though, such as a facility to create custom rollovers without having to design and import images for the various button states from external programs.

If you want to put together a Web site quickly and easily, without the steep learning curve of a heavyweight design tool, WebPlus X2 could well be the answer. There are surprisingly few things it can't do for the personal Web creator, and it's getting more competent at handling small business sites, too.