The creation of this web site has very much been a work in progress. There have been a number of considerations that have affected the how and why of page design. One of the first, is that I (the webmaster and Kirk's son) firmly believe in the original intent of the World Wide Web. By this, I say that I believe in content over and above presentation. There is a growing trend to make the pages have a universal look and feel. The designers wish to control the look the same way that printed material is controlled.
Thus, I will state the obvious that the Web is not print. It should not be thought of in the same line. Different people have different equipment, software, and preferences. When you force them to look at the information in the same way, you have placed presentation above content. But then, often presentation is the only thing many seem to have to offer.
When we started the site, my dad would compose the articles in Front Page and then I would place them on the site with FTP after modifying a javascript file for the menu. Around 2007 we moved to a Content Managements System (CMS). I chose Joomla at the time for reasons I really don't recall. I have kept in in Joomla partly because it is there, and partly because I appreciate that the menu system is completely separate from the articles. Most other systems don't have the separation between content and menus.
Today, I believe that most people should just start a web site using a CMS (even with only a few pages). Many providers have setup scripts that remove any need to know how to set things up. Also, if you have the right system, it will take care of adapting to the device on its own.