Weebly’s website builder adds group editing

Popular website-building service Weebly is adding a new feature today, one that users supposedly requested most — the ability to create and edit websites as a team.

On one level, this feature seems particularly well-suited for businesses, which can now assign their employees different responsibilities on a website. After all, co-founder and chief executive David Rusenko said businesses actually make up the majority of Weebly’s user base. But he said the team-editing feature also supports one of the common ways consumers use the service, where one person creates a site for their friend or family member, then hands it off.

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The new feature doesn’t really change the existing Weebly interface, unless you try to edit a page that another user is already editing. When that happens, the site will block you. You can add as many administrators (who have full editing powers) to your site as you want as part of Weebly’s free package, but if you want to limit people’s access to select pages or prevent them from doing anything except review analytics and read comments, then you’ll have to upgrade to the pay version.

San Francisco-based Weebly is also revamping its homepage today to emphasize a new message about the company. Weebly was well-known initially for its simple, drag-and-drop interface, but Rusenko said that, as the site has added features over the past few years, it has become increasingly powerful and professional. So the new home page describes the service as “Free. Powerful. Professional.” and highlights some of those features.

The homepage also says that Weebly now has more than 6 million users, about two and a half years after it hit the 1 million user mark and profitability.

The company was incubated by Y Combinator and has raised $650,000 from Steve Anderson, Ron Conway, Mikes Maples, Aydin Senkut (who also invested in VentureBeat), Rajeev Motwani, and Paul Buchheit.