So, the last two days have been a little frustrating. I’ve been trying to get a basic homepage running for furcle. Nothing fancy, just a homepage and some supporting pages with information and a link to the blog. Now, this is actually harder than it seems. I simply want something that operates like a desktop publishing tool (WYSIWYG*) that will convert that into something I can publish to the web. Here’s my adventures so far**:

1. iweb – nope, templates pretty much fixed although I hear you can engineer your own… too hard.
2. rapidweaver – as above although I did get some good info from @WebKarnage on twitter on how to modify rapideweaver templates. I need to get savvy with style sheets and the like though…
3. Flux 2 – also on a lead from @WebKarnage. This looks like a great and almighty web design application, however don’t talk to me about learning curve. I can see mountain goats from here. This does seem the most promising though but it does seem a little rough around the edges and there’s very little documentation or tutorial information around. Maybe someone could tell me how to centre my block of text so it’s always in the centre regardless of browser size?
4. Dreamweaver – Another almighty web design application. I think Dreamwever is a career, not a piece of software. Not for me.
5. Nvu/KompoZer – I stopped as soon as I couldn’t drag the furcle logo to where I wanted it to be on the page. That logo image REALLY wants to stay stuck to to top left of the page…
6. Sandvox – I thought it was supposed to be WYSIWYG but turned out to be WYSIWYG in templates. No good.
7. Random searching of google using the same search phrase hoping that different results will be returned… Oh dear.

Sorry for the rant. I don’t like wasting time unproductively. I suppose I could have just have had someone do it for me and saved myself the trouble. In these times of more time on my hands and less cashola rolling in, I need to be able to do more of this stuff myself. Arrgh, the conflict. Maybe it’s time to call in a favour with mates currency – a case of beer.

* WYSIWYG = What you see is what you get = Draw it and they will come

** adventures may be result of incompetence or general lack of interest in spending time on stuff that wont work first time. If you know I’m wrong – let me know!

*** picture from e-magic on flickr