WebMatrix is a stepping stone to Visual Studio

Microsoft launched its free web site creation software WebMatrix yesterday, aiming the package at novice designers, but expecting the move to drive uptake of its higher-end web design software, Visual Studio and Expression.

In conversation with Computing, product manager lead for the Microsoft developer and platform group, Will Coleman, said: "WebMatrix aims to put the novice designer [on the road] to Visual Studio because although it allows them to edit sites and pages, for deep integration they will need to work with Visual Studio."

WebMatrix provides around 120 templates for web site creation, 10 blog applications including WordPress and Drupal, 22 CMS building tools including SugarCRM and Joomla!, four e-commerce applications and two applications to set up web forums.

Coleman also argued that the release meets the need for a tool or framework that allows users who have created some edits on an open source CMS like WordPress to easily publish that to a hosting company or out into the cloud.

Coleman eplained that there is a growing community of novice web designers in the industry: "There are lots of easy-to-use open source content management systems (CMS) and web apps in the industry that mean you don't need deep programming skills to create and publish a web site.

"It's not like the days when you'd have to hire somebody to write your web site from scratch."

Although Microsoft is touting its support for open source web site creation programs, the finished sites will be set up for Microsoft's own web server, Internet Information Services (IIS) Express, now at version 7.5.