Dunked is a specialist web site builder geared toward serving to inventive professionals – photographers, artists, designers, illustrators – construct fashionable on-line portfolio websites to indicate off their work.
The service might work for private customers, too, or anybody who needs to showcase a spread of media content material. Select a template, add photographs, possibly import media from websites like YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, SoundCloud and 500px, then drag and drop till the location seems to be precisely the way you need.
Dunked is about pace and ease above all else, and there is not rather a lot you are able to do to make the location your individual. There are solely 17 templates, and lots of of those observe a really comparable sample: a title, a block of textual content, and a panel of thumbnails which may be clicked to zoom in on that content material.
There’s additionally not one of the superior extras you may get with extra general-purpose web site builders: a weblog, types, internet retailer, bookings, mailing lists, or any form of social media integration past easy icons and hyperlinks.
There are some configuration choices, together with just a little format management, a selection of font and coloration schemes, and the power to immediately edit website HTML and CSS. These cannot match the perfect of the competitors, although, and Dunked most likely will not be a good selection for anybody who wants fine-grained management over their web site.
This would possibly not essentially be an issue for much less demanding customers, in fact, and a fast flick through the Dunked Examples page reveals the service can ship high quality outcomes. Though there are clear similarities between the websites, there may be some scope for variation, and the completed designs are clear .
Costs begin at $eight (£6.15) a month paid yearly for the Skilled plan. This has some important limits, and solely helps 100 initiatives, 100 pages and 1,000 photographs.
In case you do want extra, the Dunked Company plan allows constructing limitless initiatives, every with limitless pages, and a most of 5,000 photographs. It is yours from $19 (£14.62) a month paid yearly.
These costs appear just a little costly to us, particularly when in comparison with common shared internet hosting. Wix is not a specialist in portfolio websites, but it surely’s greater than able to constructing them, has way more options than Dunked, and its Limitless plan provides you a free area, 20GB storage and an online retailer to promote your merchandise for under £11 ($14.30) a month.
One notable plus level for Dunked is its free ten-day trial of the Company plan, with no bank card particulars required. It is a risk-free strategy to discover out precisely what the product can do for you.
Getting began
Attempt signing up with some internet providers and also you’re introduced with prolonged types demanding your deal with, cellphone quantity, firm particulars and who is aware of what else. So, it is good to see Dunked take an easier route by asking solely to your identify and electronic mail deal with.
Conveniently, Dunked additionally allows selecting your individual non permanent URL as a sub-domain of dunked.com (yourchoice.dunked.com).
Full a captcha and that is it, you are carried out, Dunked redirects you instantly to its internet console and sends you a easy Welcome electronic mail with hyperlinks to your website, its administration web page and the Dunked assist knowledgebase.
The online console might be as minimalist as we have ever seen. A left-hand sidebar affords 4 menu choices (Initiatives, Pages, Templates, Customise) and some tiny icons, whereas the physique of the web page has a New Venture button, and there is barely the rest. Though this appears easy, as least in concept, it did go away us with some questions.
The positioning does not ask you to decide on a template earlier than you begin, for example. Newbies could not understand it is an possibility in any respect.
Opening the Templates web page reveals thumbnails of your varied choices, and asks you to click on an Activate button to your favourite. The selection of language puzzled us – did this imply we needed to ‘activate’ a profile someway earlier than we might use it? – however successfully it simply means ‘choose this template to your website.’
We tapped New Venture and have been requested to add or select the media we would wish to embed (photographs, audio, video). Photos may be dragged and drop in bulk from your individual system, however importing internet content material requires coming into URLs one after the other, which might get tedious in case you’re utilizing a number of.
Photos have some measurement restrictions, too, with Dunked not supporting something bigger than 5,000 pixels in size or width. That is displayed clearly on the web page, however in case you by chance choose bigger photographs, the web site tediously uploads them, one after the other, earlier than telling you every time that they can not be used.
You are in a position to enter extra particulars for the venture, together with a title, description, date, shopper, URL, even defining password safety. Most of that is optionally available, although, and initially you will get by with a website title alone.
There is not any energetic preview inside the internet console the place you may see modifications represented as you make them. As a substitute you could faucet a Preview icon as required to open a brand new browser tab, to view and discover your website.
Enhancing your website
Dunked websites are comparatively fastened of their design. There is no such thing as a full-screen WYSIWYG editor the place you possibly can resize and reposition objects, add new content material blocks or right-click to vary their properties.
What you are able to do is head off to a Customise part, the place a left-hand sidebar affords varied site-wide settings and a preview pane shows your website and updates it to match any modifications in real-time.
A lot of the customizations are comparatively fundamental. You’ll be able to set particulars reminiscent of a website brand, tagline or footer textual content, select fonts and coloration schemes, configure social icons and conceal or take away web page parts (menus, titles, tags and extra.)
The interface is usually awkward to make use of. Clicking Typography allows selecting new fonts for 13 separate areas of your web site, for example, however there is no strategy to change them unexpectedly. You should click on all 13 drop-down lists, one after the opposite, and choose your chosen font every time. (Oh, and font sizes are set in a completely totally different part.)
The Colours part equally permits defining the colours of assorted website parts, however there aren’t any pre-defined coloration schemes or every other speedy strategy to set every little thing without delay. You are compelled to make your modifications one-by-one, then wait because the preview window clears and updates every time.
There is not any direct assist inside the Customise display, no hyperlinks to assist paperwork, barely even any tooltips. And in case you make a mistake, there is no Undo. One of the best Dunked has to supply is an possibility to revive the template default settings, forcing you to begin once more.
You do get a sprinkling of extra superior options, together with the power so as to add customized CSS guidelines or immediately edit the location HTML and CSS. This does not less than provide you with Undo assist by way of the usual textual content field Ctrl+Z and right-click menu possibility, however once more, there is no assist, and you might want to know precisely what you are doing to provide something helpful.
Dunked did not impress us with its configurability, then, however that is not going to be a problem for everybody. The service is able to producing some enticing websites with its default settings, and if these be just right for you, the Customise web page may be ignored for more often than not.
Efficiency
It could not precisely be full of options, however even probably the most fundamental of web site builders wants an honest assist service, so we have been to see what Dunked has to supply.
The website knowledgebase received off to a nasty begin as it is not accessible by way of HTTPS. A fast test recommended Dunked hosts its assist website with Salesforce, however though it has an SSL certificates, it applies to Salesforce’ desk.com and never dunked.com. The corporate does not make that mistake together with your web site, fortuitously, but it surely does not precisely create an impression of nice technical experience.
Searching the knowledgebase content material did not enhance our temper. The small variety of articles do not even cowl each space of the Dunked interface, and those you get are quick, generally outdated, and infrequently poorly introduced or lacking helpful data.
For instance, an Existing Templates page hyperlinks to demo websites for all seventeen Dunked templates. Sounds handy, proper? That’s, till you see the web page has no thumbnails to allow previewing the location designs, only a textual content listing of their names. To completely perceive what’s on give you’re compelled to open all seventeen.
There’s a actual, dwell, human assist group, though they’re solely accessible by way of electronic mail, 9am to 5pm EST. We ship them a check query and acquired a useful response, although in an unexceptional 5 hours.
Transferring on to our closing efficiency check, we found our web site was hosted by a Rackspace server, apparently in San Antonio, Texas. Velocity checks confirmed wonderful connection instances within the US, affordable in Europe and extra common in all places else.
That was very acceptable for shared internet hosting, however it will possibly’t inform us how the service will carry out with media-heavy websites, full of excessive res content material. If Dunked sounds interesting, we would advocate you’re taking the trial to see what it will possibly do for you.
Ultimate verdict
Dunked allows inventive professionals to provide handsome portfolio websites, but it surely’s extraordinarily restricted. If you wish to do something greater than add content material to a template, you may be higher off elsewhere.
