Usually, I always find something good to say about a software...
I'm a Rapidweaver user. Never found better, even though I'd like to find a simple tool, dedicated to productivity, like a text editor that doesn't require any coding AT ALL.
So, I tried Shutterbug.
Gee! Couldn't get it.
Interface is awfully ugly and out of date, text options are... ridiculous. navigation with unnecessary clicks, use of templates is puzzling...
Pagestyles are unique (no, really. Only one kind: picture(s)+text. The legend says you can embed other medias. But really, I didn't like it enough to bother looking for this hidden gem)

Could have been great, like, 20 years ago.

So I get an email telling me that Shutterbug version 3 is available, and as a registered user I can upgrade for $20. It turns out that's the same price new users pay to buy version 3. There is no upgrade discount for registered users. To top it off, this is for an app that was last updated 12 months ago. Needless to say, I'm not terribly motivated to upgrade. In fact, I'm more motivated to look for alternatives.

After years of building websites with a Photoshop plug-in (and enduring numerous crashes and glitches, and spending many hours manually fixing the resulting code), I went looking for a stand-alone app. Although I appreciate iWeb's simplicity, I wanted more than what it offers, so I decided to give Shutterbug a whirl. Wow! I wish I'd tried it sooner, but better late than never!

Shutterbug gets full points for stability, speed and value. It's fairly easy to use, but there is a learning curve. After working my way through the manual and playing around with it for a couple of hours, I was able to quickly build a web site from scratch. As a testament to its ease of use, I've been able to do everything I want to do without resorting to searching the on-line support forum or contacting the developer.

It is incredibly easy to modify or add to a website once it has been created in Shutterbug. I used to delay updating my website because it was a tedious exercise, but with Shutterbug, changes take just a few minutes.

Shutterbug has almost all the features I want. The only noticeable missing feature for me is the ability to easily modify the colour of a piece of text within a larger block of text. It would also be nice to have more options for including and excluding items within navigation elements, but in the grand scheme of things that's only a minor complaint. Overall, I am one satisfied customer!

I wish I had the $25.00 I just spent to upgrade Rapidweaver and the $10.00 I just spent to upgrade the Blocks plugin and the $18.00 I just spent for RWMultitool and the $45.00 I spent on three RW themes just so I could break out of the cookie-cutter designs that are included with RW. Not to mention the money I spent buying them all in the first place. There is more, but I hurts me to talk about it. I could have spent $40 on Shutterbug and been much better off.

I usually use Dreamweaver, but I wanted to try something new, have more options for quick and dirty sites. I've had Rapidweaver for a while and used it very little. I've spent the last three days really digging in and creating a couple of sites and trying almost every aspect of it. I tried to rebuild a site I already had created on Dreamweaver to see if I could possibly use RW in its place. Finally, yesterday afternoon, I quit RW and resorted to Dreamweaver.

This morning, I got the MacUpdate email saying Shutterbug had been updated and I dutifully downloaded it again, since it was on my Watch List and I had downloaded it a couple of months ago, played with it for about 30 minutes and that was that. This time, I put far more time into it and I am floored. I am also mad as hell at myself for not working more with it sooner -- live and learn. It is so EASY to change EVERYTHING in the themes! When I think of the time I spent changing the CSS files and the image files in RW to make the theme more like what I wanted ... please, somebody shoot me now.

ImageWell is built right into Shutterbug -- and I've been using ImageWell as a standalone -- so you can edit your images from within Shutterbug. You can add flash, Quicktime movies, extra HTML ... and it's all so easy. I applied a couple of new themes, just checking them out, making all kinds of changes, then asked it to revert. Shutterbug gave me all kinds of options! Do I want to revert to the first saved version or the autosaved version after I switched to the second theme or the autosave after I switch to the second theme ... how cool is that!

As with anything like this, there is a learning curve, but I can see myself getting done in less than a day what took me three days to do in RW.

I am so sorry that I let the name mislead me. I put off working with it because I thought I don't do that much with photo galleries. Don't make the same costly mistakes I made. Check out Shutterbug -- REALLY check it out.

In response to the comment by SJJ_PUBLIC, I have used both ShutterBug and iWeb (in conjunction with iPhoto and dotMac) to create websites and do not agree that ShutterBug is "a complete mess." In fact, I prefer ShutterBug for its greater flexibility. Personal preference may depend somewhat on which program the user is more familiar with. I started using ShutterBug before Apple introduced iWeb.
As for SJJ_PUBLIC's complaint about templates, he (or she) is looking in the wrong place to start designing a website. ShutterBug has many Themes with preview panes. Templates become useful only after selecting a Theme.