Reviewing Adobe Muse
Since I am fortunate enough to be graduating in May (fingers crossed), I planned to recreate my portfolio website in Adobe Muse before Spring Break. I was very disappointed to find out that while I did get my website created in the general fashion that I had intended, it was very much not something I was comfortable showing potential employers. Unfortunately, Muse just isn't ready to meet the needs of the web design world. Let me tell you why.
For those of you who are not familiar with Adobe Muse, it is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web design software created for designers or users who would rather focus on building a design rather than touching traditional code. While I can code, I am not a traditional web designer and I do prefer to flesh out a site visually rather with lines of text, however Muse is not going to meet those needs.
In my opinion Muse should still be in BETA testing. It is not ready to be publicly available. The reason why: bugs, bugs, and more bugs. I can't tell you how many times my files have crashed or gotten corrupted. Very basic, functional elements have become broken across updates which now require patches or work-arounds to fix. Normally this would be tolerable with new software except that professional designers who have put their faith in Adobe have been building client websites that are now broken or have errors. As I was trying to find solutions for my own problems in Adobe forums, I saw many of the same complaints from designers with unhappy clients. As service providers our reputation is on the line with every mishap in a new update and who knows what will break next.
My recommendation is to stick with traditional, reputable WYSIWYG editors for now. Personally I love WordPress, and it is my belief that it offers most of the same features you'll find in Muse if not more.
Things to Consider:
Pay for a good theme. You'll be better off to pay a little money for a good theme (preferably with the Visual Composer plugin) which offers very similar editing features but is much more friendly to those who don't dabble frequently in web design.
You'll have a much larger selection of free widgets and plugins to suit your needs. Unlike Muse where the selection is quite small or pricey for a good widget, WordPress has a ton of choices. Some can be very expensive, such as the Visual Composer that I mentioned above, but if you use it once you'll understand why it's so great (also another reason to purchase a theme with that built in, because it's usually less expensive).
Creating a responsive website is easier in WordPress. Muse's new breakpoint feature to rearrange your site to literally any size of device could be very helpful in the future, but WordPress still has a much simpler option. Some themes let you view your site across different sized devices such as desktop, tablet, and mobile to rearrange and hide elements for optimal viewing and performance.
You can still code. I'm very stubborn and meticulous and if I can't accomplish something within theme settings I will usually code it in myself. It's very important to me to be able to tweak things and really make my website my own.
You'll have better troubleshooting support. WordPress has been around for a long time. If you have a question, most likely someone else did too, and in my experience with a little research and Google you can solve just about any problem.