My website has grown considerably of late, and the limitations of the design tool I currently use (Namu6)are starting to become a burden.
Namu6 is a very simple, idiot-proof WYSIWYG website management tool - its simplicity could be mistaken for incompetence, but that’s not the case. What it does really well is produce clean, consistently-styled web pages, most of which is achieved by denying the user the opportunity to do anything like using lots of different fonts or colours, or using complicated tables, frames, layers, animated content, drop-down menus etc - it just doesn’t do any of those things, and on the whole, that is its strength.
One little thing it doesn’t do, though, is becoming a nuisance. It doesn’t permit the insertion of blocks of custom HTML - so it’s impossible, for example, to natively embed a video, an ad banner or a web form.
I’m not frightened of HTML, so I’ve been working around this limitation by inserting such custom code blocks by hand, after publishing it from Namu6, but this has disadvantages:
-If I leave these modified pages in situ, they just get overwritten by the unmodified pages next time I publish
-If I break the pages off to prevent them being overwritten, then they’re no longer editable in Namu6 - also, they don’t inherit changes to the menu bar on the rare occasion that I change it.
-If I break the pages off, then the only way to link to them (from other pages still managed in Namu6) is a fully-qualified URL - and this could spell trouble in future.
So, I’m in the market for a new web design tool - I think the virtues of simple layout have now been sufficiently instilled in me that I can be trusted to responsibly use something that would let me make bad design choices.
Criteria:
–I am looking for a graphical design interface (or at least a package with that as an option) - although, as I say, I’m not frightened of HTML coding, I have no desire to try to construct a whole site that way. I understand that this is something that some people might choose to sneer at. I don’t really care if this loses me any respect - I want (primarily) to create web pages, not edit code.
–I need something that’s site-aware - that is, something that will manage the whole site, but without being overbearing - many of the tools I’ve been checking out are fantastic at creating pages, but leave the site structure entirely up to the human editor, either that or they impose a rigid way of working (such as insisting that every page you create must create a corresponding entry in the drop-down menu structure accessible from the front page - I don’t need that, and in fact it would soon be a problem).
–If it can import my existing site (even if it needs a fair bit of work to whip into shape), that would be a plus
–I can’t use a CMS without upgrading to a significantly more expensive hosting package.
–I don’t have a massive budget for this - inexpensive would be nice, free would be even better - anything that requires ongoing costs - such as license subscriptions - is right out.
So… I realise that’s quite a laundry list of requirements - but has anyone any suggestions? (NB: if your suggestion includes the word ‘notepad’, there’s a strong possibility you didn’t read the question properly).