What You See Is Harder Than It Looks

Template of Doom

Trying to get my web houses in order is borderline maddening. I have two main web sites (www.cjnstudios.com & mylonelyplanet.com) with the later being the newest and more likely dedicated to gallery work. Then there is this blog thing that I am committed to working on this year.

That’s all peachy, I have plenty of images and content the head-smashing-keyboard is the look and feel of the sites. A lot of templates are similar between WordPress and whatever I end up developing the web sites in (Rapidweaver, Freeway Pro, Muse, etc..). I find myself looking at templates that should be easy to customize vs. developing something from scratch.

Now, when I say develop, I am not really writing sites from straight HTML, my coding days are long gone. MUSE allows you to layout the site similar to a true desktop publishing program which has the downside of managing mobile sites differently. Some could argue the “responsive” implementation is better because you have precise control over the device layout.

Freeway is template based so a lot of the heavy lifting is done for you but still a significant number of options available. Freeway also comes with (depending on which purchase option chosen) a slick, flexible slideshow plugin called Exhibeo which handles hi-res deplays (e.g., Retina).

Muse is available via the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and Freeway is not cheap. I am no closer to a lead case now than I was back in November when I started all of this. Perhaps I should just turn them all into WordPress sites and be done with it. HA!