I've used all the big WYSIWYG applications: GoLive, Dreamweaver, and the clear winner, Freeway, and I've always been frustrated by the fact that, no matter what they say, they're not quite WYSIWYG. They're close, but no cigar. And when they're only close, you have to learn a bit about HTML and lately, CSS. This is very daunting for a 59-year-old photographer (me!) who already devotes most of his time to that craft. I swore I'd never code, couldn't spare the time, it'd be like learning French or German only worse, all those semicolons and <> brackets and well, you know ...
I got RapidWeaver on a whim, thinking 'Well, it's a template-driven application, but it might come in handy for those jobs where there's no budget but I don't want to turn it down'. I get a lot of those down here in Cornwall; there are dozens, if not hundreds, of one-man firms offering a four page site for £125. No kidding. I didn't realize what I was up against until I was asked to quote for a local holiday cottage site; the guy wanted eight pages, lots of photographs, contact form, the whole bit. I quoted him £600, hating myself for being so cheap. He vanished so fast he left skid marks, and I was left wondering what I'd done wrong.
But I looked down a bit on templates. I was a real designer, dammit, and I wasn't going to have my layouts dictated to me. Every site had to be a concise and definitive design statement ...
