Sorry, not really sure what forum this belongs in. And it's an ironic question. I'm very comfortable in C#, VB, SQL, JS, and to a lesser degree even C++ and MSIL. It's always the basics that trip me up.

I tried Dreamweaver, didn't like it. It was better than FrontPage, but I managed to break my template, had to fix things by hand, and then have just been hand-coding ever since. I'm building a CMS for my photo site, but at the same time, I'm also taking some of the software I've written and hosted on my photo site, and moving it to a new site. This new software site, I'm doing by hand, but just really don't want to get into that again.

It's based on a template, and looks like it was meant for a blog, but it's a static html with a css. I don't know WordPress well enough to break up all the elements and turn it into a theme, to use WP as a CMS. Putting in the time and effort is an option, and might be the best one, but I'm hoping for some advice first.

Since it's a template, there are some things that change - title, meta description, unfortunately the nav links, although just the values, not the structure ... and then of course the page content. I'm thinking I can put all of this in XML, and then encode the html template into an XSLT stylesheet that outputs html. I'm not sure how I'd handle the changes in the nav, though ... fearing the worst, a different XSL for each software app, although maybe I could put this into the XML?

This is an app I wrote pretty recently, and only host on this new site:

http://exo-brain.com/WebDomViewer/About.html

This is an app I'm moving from my photo site to my new software site:

http://forrestcroce.com/Software/WebMaestro.html
http://exo-brain.com/WebMaestro/About.html

I haven't filled out all the pages for the new software - features, version history, etc - but they'll be the same as on the other app. Maybe relative paths will save the day. Then I have other pages I'll need to create with a different set of links ... if you go to the home page, the right nav-bar is a list of apps the site will be hosting. I haven't thought enough about what these will be on the other pages, products, services, etc. I just know I don't want to manage all of this in raw, static html files.

So, what's my best bet?

Finally, how would I go about producing an RSS feed most easily? Updates to software, new articles, stuff like that is what I envision using it for.

Since it's a template, there are some things that change - title, meta description, unfortunately the nav links, although just the values, not the structure ... and then of course the page content. I'm thinking I can put all of this in XML, and then encode the html template into an XSLT stylesheet that outputs html. I'm not sure how I'd handle the changes in the nav, though ... fearing the worst, a different XSL for each software app, although maybe I could put this into the XML?

Theorically, yes, it's something that's perfect for xml+xslt, but you will face a problem that I've been facing some times ago.
You can ask a browser to apply the stylesheet, and it goes without problem in most of them, except safari.

Sadly, Safari have no xslt engine available, maening that it will display a raw xml page....
My company use an oracle web server, which is designed for serving xml+xsl, and can be parametred to make the transformation on the server for some user-agents, and that's what it does for safari right now, but you'll need som server-side transormation available if you go that way.

Finally, how would I go about producing an RSS feed most easily? Updates to software, new articles, stuff like that is what I envision using it for.

I have one time used a particular method. A customer wanted to be able to simply update the files from a ftp server, and that the site reflect the changes.
For that, he just write a small description in a text file that was parsedon page access, and from when some datas liske revision log, version number and update date where pulled of.
Was simple for him, didn't needed a db with an interface and saved his time.
If you are (and you should/seems to be for me) confident, why not simply upload an xml file with your application, and use it to describe the application page ?
Simply composing the page from whatever informations you want to display to the user.