A site for sore eyes

I wonder if there's a degree course somewhere in website optimisation?  Even leaving aside the search engines completely, actually managing a site isn't a one-click operation.  Over time, the contents get more complex: this is true even (especially?) of a site like mine, which has been in existence for at least five years, albeit woefully lacking attention.  During this time, I occasionally discover new tools and new systems that get tried out, leaving remnants of pages and folders containing code that I have no way of identifying or managing properly.

It must take a very organised and disciplined approach to keep a site clean over time: even something as simple as multiple copies are likely to proliferate as local machines are replaced or new server installations come into play.  For instance, I have at least two copies of my own site on my home machine, and no real way of keeping them synchronised: Filezilla gives some help in this regard, but it's not really able to deal with things in the same way as, for instance, SyncToy or Microsoft Live Sync.  These latter two are very nice, but I haven't managed to get hem to support an FTP folder yet, so they don't quite fit the bill.

Once I have a local copy that I can depend upon, usually achieved by creating a new folder (don't want to risk losing old data.  Oops, there's another copy now!), I can check the contents out, and this is where I get really confused.  Some of the pages were created in MS Word (I know, I should have used Notepad, but I was feeling lazy); some were creating using whatever the tool of the moment was on the hosting company's site; some are straight from Photoshop or Lightroom; some are out of Blogger.  So far, I haven't gone as far as using Expression or anything like that, but I am seriously considering junking nearly everything (bar the contents of the blog) and starting again, with a properly designed site and a tool that I can stick to.

Whatever I select will need to have certain features:

• Photo management.  Part of my lazy approach is that I don't like emailing pictures to all and sundry.  However, neither do I trust Flickr or the like to hold my photos.  (The truth is probably that I don't reckon they'd stand up to the public scrutiny there.)  So I like to just upload batches of pictures, mail interested parties and leave it up to them.
• Blog integration.  I like Blogger, and also Live Writer's integration.  It may not be professional, but it sure is easy.
• Ease of experimentation.  There's no way I'll be able to resist trying something new.  Pages will find their way in which aren't published via the approved route.  A site management tool must be able to integrate these back from the web into local storage.

I think the search is on.