Welcome to the forum @rtp , I just want to express great post !
A few years ago in a thread I posted about Mobirise and feel much if not all of that still applies (aside from perhaps pricing fluctuations). Out of curiosity did you also look at Bootstrap Studio? Why do you feel Pinegrow locks you into hosting and online editing, I’ve never encountered either? Pinegrow is also making a no-code app to be released at some point, it was confirmed by their developers.
Trying to sort how to properly quote and unsure I’m doing it (used to UBB, SMF forums, etc…) but…
Yeah - apologies on the insanely long post, but writing it helped me to actually focus on what I’m really looking for the most… and have read and trialed about as much as I can at this point.
Read your linked to comments on Mobirise, and we’re definitely on the same page - seems like it has some good capabilities but the model such as it is today, and possibly management of it - is turning me off from real consideration by me right now.
I have not looked at Bootstrap Studio - just scanned right now and found their reproduction of Apple’s iPhone X era website on Youtube . The tool itself is very cool, and reminds me of my ‘day job’ as one of the teams I manage handles cross-company design and component frameworks. I likely combined Pinegrow’s comments with some others I’d stumbled across - I may give Pinegrow + Tailwind a trial download, but I think they and Bootstrap Studio, while being great in their own right - are a level below what I’d like to do for initial setup and then focusing on content creation.
I think that’s the crux of the issue I’m having. There are times when ‘out of the box’ of some tool isn’t enough and you want or need to override the behavior… or add your own, but for my personal use I want to focus more on the content creation portion vs endless tweaks to layout etc. I’m sort of looking for that in-between which lets me come up with a reasonably ‘good enough’ layout or lets me adjust it (whether by inherent adjustments, CSS modification, etc.) for cranking out lots of articles, where I can make adjustments, but once done for a given site, I want to focus on cranking out content in each category…and finding both the ‘easy’ button (cranking out content + drag/drop images, galleries + auto-menu and nav updates) while also allowing me to adjust what doesn’t fit…is what’s giving me fits. 