How To Make A Blog Using Wix

Creating your new website with Wix is a great choice if you don't want to get your hands dirty with long lines of code. But if you're like me, a huge sucker for beautiful web designs, then you'll quickly realize a thing or two.

Wix websites don't come fully responsive out of the box and sometimes look hideous if you're trying to access it from a smaller device. Bummer, right?

However, there are a few things you can do to somewhat bypass the fact that your Wix website won't be fully responsive. I'll be covering:

What is Wix?
Are Wix websites fully responsive?
Is there an alternative to Wix?
How does Wix auto resize work?

So, without further ado, let's dive straight into what Wix is.

Note: I'd always choose a self-hosted Bluehost website over Wix since it's a lot more flexible and is fully responsive out of the box.

What is Wix?

Wix is a rather popular Israeli website building company that was founded way back in 2006 by three super cool dudes.

They wanted to make it easy for people like you and me to create beautiful websites without knowing how to code. Within a few hours, you're able to successfully launch an online store, portfolio, forum, and much else.

They've been rapidly growing since 2010 and is now accessible in more than 190 countries across the world - making them one of the most popular choices when it comes to creating a new website for non-coders.

But as previously mentioned, there's a bit of a hurdle when it comes to Wix.

Are Wix websites fully responsive?

When designing a "responsive" website in Wix, you're designing one website for desktop screens and another for phones. In other words, you've got yourself a breakpoint that registers whether the viewer is accessing your website from a larger screen or a smaller screen.

Only having a single breakpoint makes it easy for beginners to design websites but it's by far an ideal solution for those of you looking for a silky smooth website across all screen sizes.

That's essentially why I host most of my websites using Bluehost. It's a lot cheaper coming in at only $2.95/month and you're able to create websites that are, in fact, responsive - and are looking really nice.

On the Wix support website, Wix also tells their users:

Since non-responsive elements (such as images, text and shapes) do not adjust based on screen width, placing these elements on top of a responsive element, such as a strip, may cause differences in the way your page looks in different browsers or on different devices.

It's not very comforting that your website looks different from device to device and from browser to browser. Especially when considering the new Google Page Experience update.

Take a look at the Core Web Vitals. A rather important aspect in terms of ranking on Google is having a website that's visually stable. As seen above, Wix websites are rather far from being visually stable. Especially in terms of responsiveness.

If you want to read more about the Core Web Vitals and how it has a big impact on where your page lands on Google, then head over to WordStream's article.

Is there an alternative to Wix?

When I first started creating websites I used Wix - as most other people do when they don't know how to code. You constantly see advertisements from Wix so it's no wonder that people tend to lean towards Wix when first starting out.

What I quickly realised, and probably should have thought of before using Wix, is that simplicity and missing features often go hand in hand.

Wix has created an amazing platform for beginners who don't care too much about responsiveness and whether or not they're on the first page of Google. But those of us who actually cares about such things should probably look elsewhere.

Instead of spending hundreds of hours on learning a platform that won't let you create fully responsive websites, I'd recommend you to self-host your website using Bluehost and create a WordPress website.

WordPress is used across the world and is extremely easy to use. In fact, I found it a lot easier to learn than Wix due to the massive amounts of tutorials out there helping you through every possible scenario.

How does Wix auto resize work?

If you don't care too much about Google rankings and the visual stability of your site, here's some of the things you can do to make your current Wix website somewhat responsive.

Use strips & columns

One of the ways you can make Wix auto resize is by using strips and columns. They won't make your website fully responsive but the content inside the strip or column will be stretched to fit the entire screen.

However, as Wix mentions on their own support page: "...placing these elements on top of a responsive element, such as a strip, may cause differences in the way your page looks in different browsers or on different devices".

It's definitely a simple workaroud to a rather big problem but it's not exactly an ideal solution if you're looking for long-term results.

if you're not already familiar with how to add columns and strips, then Wix wrote a great support article explaining how: Adding and Setting Up a Strip.

Stretching elements to full width

Another workaround is to stretch your elements to full width. They'll expand to take up the entire space on your screen – meaning they'll auto resize.

It's, just like columns and strips, a very basic solution and won't make your website fully responsive. The best tip I can personally give you is to transfer your entire website over to a self-hosted Bluehost WordPress website.

But if you're once again absolutely hooked on Wix, here's an article explaining how to make Wix auto resize or stretch to full width: Stretching an Element to Full Width.

Final thoughts on Wix auto resize

Wix websites are far from fully responsive, and are mostly suited for people who know nothing about creating websites, and who just wants the bare minimum.

There's a couple of workarounds that'll make your Wix website somewhat responsive but they're far from intuitive and will rarely work.

The absolute best solution to your problem is to transfer your entire site to Bluehost and create a bonkers WordPress website that does indeed come fully responsive and is rather easy to set up.

Trust me, I've been in your shoes. You won't be disappointed with WordPress.