you could always use notepad (or any other text editor), it requires hand-coding the page (knowledge of HTML, etc.) but for simple stuff it wouldn't be very hard.

dreamweaver is pretty good and more akin to a page layout workflow like inDesign.

I second indexhibit. At first glance it seems like you really can't tweak it a lot, but you should really try to learn some CSS and you can already make substantial changes to the appearance. CSS looks complicated, but is really only a way of defining "styles", like in Indesign or Word. Some good tutorials here: W3schools

Another option is to get a blog and change its custom appearance: Wordpress is a good starting point. If you want simplicity Plaintxt offers some superminimal themes for Wordpress.

It's been a few years since I've dabbled with web design, but for what it's worth, I do think that that dreamweaver is a good place to start.

I'm pretty sure mos' website was built with Drupal:

http://drupal.org/

Nice, innit?

That site could be done in anythign, but I'll say that it looks horrible, imho, because of the thumbnails loading randomly (they 'pop' onto the screen without any control, odd, 'cause it has a 'loading' indication).


Dreamweaver - for super simplicity. Don't worry about learning any hand coding, you don't need it. You'll pick up the few things you need very quickly. The CSS built into Dreamweaver will be good enough.

Flash - for control. Loading, like on that site, is a pet peeve of mine. The simplicity of the design, the functionality, etc., is up to the designer, not the software (in anticipation of the Flash flamers).

It'll take a lot longer to learn well, though.


Stick with HTML/Dreamweaver if you want to keep things less time consuming.

Thumbnails all came right up for me, maybe you gotta bum connection, trace™?

What is it with architects and control? I am a big time Flash Hater (if it ain't searchable, and it ain't linkable, then it doesn't belong on the web), but you're right, trace™, where good design with software is concerned, it's the rider, not the horse, that wins the race.

sure, they come up, just randomly (instead of a controlled loading) - they just 'pop' in. Just a symptom of html, there are ways around it, but rarely done and rarely worth it.

Anyone used Expression Engine?

Contemplating using that for my site instead of Drupal/Joomla/Wordpress, seems easier as it allows html templates, perhaps a little more control from WYSIWYG side. Also seems like it lends itself to not looking like a "blog" as much.

Not sure though, CMS is new to me.

I'd only suggest going that route if you were familiar with web design and some programming, which is far, far more involved than a simple html site.

Content Management Systems are fairly sophisticated pieces to websites. Rarely do we incorporate them into websites due to cost/time.

Stick with something simple, some basic WYSWYG app will do just fine.

I'm fairly well versed in HTML, CSS with a sprinkling of MySQl. My concern is with the excessive amount of time it takes to update my site whenever I get a new idea, (which is often). My needs have exceeded that of a simple static portfolio (I want tagging and automation), or the constraints of a hosted blog (ala blogger, etc.), what I need now is a framework that isn't terribly difficult to work with but also gives me enough control to avoid a 'widgetized' look.

Perhaps just using CSS and XML may get me part of the way there, it just seems like a CMS would do the ground work for me without me having to learn PHP.

It looks like it's easier (i.e. HTML as opposed to PHP etc.) to create custom templates for the expression engine than other CMS's (like drupal)