Web Skills and Decision Making

I've been wanting to give my Website a facelift. It's current form evolved from being a graphic design/web/art showcase to just art. There are some artifacts hidden in the coding. Plus the large section heading, even though I like the blocky graphic treatment, seems redundant (the section name is in the navigation) and takes up too much real estate on the page. And it's dark. So very dark.

First I got caught up in wanting to retain the nifty Javascript (I needed help with that - see source code for contributors) that loads images as their own page without me having to physically create individual pages. I though of doing something like my current site but with larger thumbnails. I would need multiple pages with different thumbnail navigation for all the images, and navigation to get to the different thumbnail pages.

Something like this...

Then I was trying to figure how to do a rebuild, what program to use...I was running in circles and making myself nuts.

So I backed off and pulled out my skills from my graphic design/Web design toolbox.
I thought about the GOAL of the site: show off my art.
(I find this helps in a lot of projects - figuring out the goal/setting a target).
Ok. That gave me direction for what's important and for setting up a visual hierarchy.
Art is #1
Information is #2
Plus I want the site to be SIMPLE, EASY to use/update and as CLEAN as I can make it.
No scrolling/minimal scrolling. I want the images to load and fill the screen.
As few clicks as possible to get to images or other content.
I want each image to have a URL that can be bookmarked, and so the image can be shared easily.
I want to show information about each image (title, media used, copyright owner, sold/available, prints available...)
Plus I want to stick with my current hosting plan and keep costs down.
I'm sure there are lots of other ways but this is what seems important to me.

I visualized how it would be to use a site with multiple thumbnails navigation panels. I decided people would have to remember what page the image was on if they wanted to see it again. There would be lots of clicks to get to an image. Plus there would be too much work debugging multiple pages with Javascript and I am NOT a programmer and would prefer to put my energy and time toward making pictures.

All this gave me direction for creating a plan and what to use for the rebuild.
- Remove the current section head. Instead let the navigation at the top do double duty and make the selected page name stand out. This will bring the images up higher on the page
- For each initial main page, I can display decent sized thumbnails in a grid. They'll all be visible with minimal scrolling. A visitor can click on a thumbnail which will take them to a unique page including information about the selected image.

 Something like this...

- Keep it simple. Just use a basic HTML editor or simple WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) program. Create templates to make the workflow as smooth/easy/fast as possible.

After experimenting with a few trial versions of programs, I think I'll either use KompoZer since that seems to have some things I'm familiar with (and it's free), or maybe WYSIWYG Web Builder (I like the interface, the features, and it's only $45). I also tried Visual Site Designer by CoffeeCup (only $49) which could be a nice tie in to their HTML editor. There were a few things I found frustrating. That might just be a case of getting used to their interface but I felt more at home with WYSIWYG Web Builder.

Now all that's left is to commit to a program, carve out time and do it.