I first planned it out using graph paper because it's much easier and faster to erase and move things around then using the program, then I put it in the program and saved it. I was limited to a max size of 25x25 in the program. Unfortunately, the JSON output of the program is shit so I had to manually remove spaces and line breaks to clean it up and change "null" for blocks to "#" like the ipuz format wants. Without doing this, the formatting of the file was so fucked up the
PDF converter on crosswordnexus would just shit the bed.
I originally had the bonus words setup as their own individual scrambles using circles, stars, hearts, and spades as the background shapes for the letters to unscramble. Unfortunately, it looks like no one else wants to add support for anything but circles besides that Linux program even though they are even listed in the official
ipuz spec. So I just had to change the clues to incorporate them as all being circles. Which is fine, I guess, as it makes it a little more challenging if you have to try and unscramble four words from one jumble of letters instead of smaller jumbles, or instead of knowing what it is based off the clue. I tried to make those clues harder, but not to much harder, so people have to unscramble. Didn't quite work out that way if you keep up with the Sektur at all.
Yes, I did look at online crossword makers but they are all shit and hard to use. One even appeared to be trying to censor words and another wanted you to pay to get usable exports.