Strategic questions

I request high-level advice regarding the conversion of my ancient website, erasmatazz.com, to a modern format. I began this site in 1997, IIRC, and developed a simple structure using the simple tools of the time. It is not a blog, but it does consist almost entirely of essays on a broad variety of topics. The core structure is more like that of a library than a blog — the essays are organized in a tree structure, and the date of creation (or editing) is not relevant to the structure. Over the years I have made major expansions and minor design improvements to the site, but it remains at heart a big library. I do not wish to alter that basic organization.

The site is BIG — there are more than 700 pages of material, and some of the pages are themselves rather lengthy. The standards of graphic design are execrable, as I have no talents whatever in graphic design.

Right up until 2010, I used a simple combination of HTML editor and FTP program to manage the whole site. However, in 2010 I got ambitious and decided to move into the 21st Century with something a bit more technically advanced. After much research, I settled on RapidWeaver, a Macintosh program that was highly recommended. I then converted my entire website to run under RapidWeaver.

What a mistake that was! RapidWeaver is excellent for professional or semi-professional users who want to build small, graphically snazzy websites. My lumbering brontosaurus of a website brought RapidWeaver to its knees; everything happened at the speed of molasses. Worse, RapidWeaver requires that every page know of the existence and title over every other page on the site, so adding a new page altered every other page in the website — a tedious process.

But the real killers for me were the user interface, which is atrocious, and the attitude of the developers. The UI is an assault on every principle of good software design. I could tell you stories… and when I pointed out some of the UI problems in the company forum, I was politely told that the programmers were very busy and would get to them someday — which never came.

So I have decided to pay the price, abandon RapidWeaver, and start over. I am tempted to revert to the ancient system of HTML editor plus FTP program, adding some CSS (which I have never bothered learning but seems straightforward enough). I have written code in BASIC, FORTRAN, Forth, several assembly languages, Pascal, C, C++, and Java, and understand basic HTML, so learning a new mini-language like CSS should be nothing more than a pain in the butt.

But before I retro-evolve, I thought it prudent to at least consider some of the modern tools. I must confess, I’m quite lost in the latest jargon, which has made it very frustrating to try to figure things out by simply searching. What search terms should I use to locate themes with “tree structures” as opposed to “blog structures”? I suspect that “category” and “sub-category” are the current terms for this concept, but searches using those terms have not given me the answers I seek.

So I have come here to ask for sage advice (not technical answers) to the broad issues I face in making my decision. It appears that WordPress is a better fit to my needs than Joomla. There are a few other tools such as iWeb and Image Cafe that are designed for absolute beginners to get something up and running. Yes, I’m lazy, but no, I’m not an absolute beginner.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time getting the website revised; I’m willing to put about 50 hours into making the transition, and then would like the addition of a new page (other than the composition of the text) to take less than 15 minutes. This is possible with the ancient, obsolete technology, but again, I’d like to at least learn a bit about all this new-fangled technology before making a decision to revert to Cretacious technology.

So, would anybody like to weigh in with some words of wisdom for an inquisitive old fogey?