Website builders are tools that allow the construction of websites without manual code editing. They fall into two categories: on-line proprietary tools provided by web hosting companies, typically intended for users to build their private site; and software which runs on a computer, creating pages off-line and which can then publish these pages on any host. (The latter are often considered to be "website design software" rather than "website builders".)

The first websites were created in the early 1990s. These sites were hand written in a HTML.

Later software was written to help design web pages and by 1998 Dreamweaver had been established as the industry leader; however some have criticized the quality of the code produced by such software as being overblown and reliant on tables. As the industry moved towards W3C standards, Dreamweaver and others were criticized for not being compliant. Compliance has improved over time, but many professionals still prefer to write optimized markup by hand.

Lawrence "Larry" Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. On April 4, 2011, he took on the role of chief executive officer of Google, replacing Eric Schmidt. As of 2012^[update], his personal wealth is estimated to be $18.7 billion. He is the inventor of PageRank, which became the foundation of Google's search ranking algorithm. Together, Brin and Page own about 16 percent of the company's stake.

Larry Page was born in Lansing, Michigan. His father, Carl Page, earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 1965 when the field was in its infancy, and is considered a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence." Both he and Page's mother were computer science professors at Michigan State University. Gloria Page, his mother, is Jewish but he was raised without religion.

Page attended the Okemos Montessori School (now called Montessori Radmoor) in Okemos, Michigan from 1975 to 1979, and graduated from East Lansing High School in 1991. He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Master of Science in computer science from Stanford University. While at the University of Michigan, "Page created an inkjet printer made of Lego bricks" (actually a line plotter), served as the president of the Eta Kappa Nu in Fall 1994, and was a member of the 1993 "Maize & Blue" University of Michigan Solar Car team.

Randall Patrick Munroe (born October 17, 1984) is an American webcomic author and former NASA roboticist as well as a programmer, best known as the creator of the webcomic xkcd. He and the webcomic have developed a cult following, and he is one of a small but growing group of professional webcomic artists.

Munroe was a fan of the funny pages from an early age, starting off with Calvin and Hobbes. After graduating from the Chesterfield County Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill: A Renaissance Program, he graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2006 with a degree in physics. Munroe worked as an independent contractor for NASA at the Langley Research Center before and after his graduation. In October 2006 NASA did not renew his contract and he began to write xkcd full-time. He now supports himself by the sale of xkcd related merchandise. The webcomic quickly became very popular, garnering up to 70 million hits a month by October 2007.

He has also toured the lecture circuit, giving speeches at such places as Google's Googleplex in Mountain View, California.