RapidWeaver: A Beginner’s Guide

Web Design can be a very complex thing. Incorporating coding languages such as HTML, CSS and Javascript, it can be difficult to learn. Luckily there are alternatives-such as iWeb, for those who do not want to learn the languages.

But what happens when iWeb is not enough? For those who want complete control over their websites and have a knowledge of HTML, CSS etc., there are programs like Dreamweaver. For the average person (like me) though, these applications are simply too much. So where is the middle ground? The middle ground is RapidWeaver.

Just recently, Realmac Software released a paid upgrade to their website creation tool RapidWeaver. RapidWeaver is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, meaning you can type things in the Edit tab, and clicking on the Preview tab will show you exactly what the page will look like when uploaded.

RapidWeaver is a template based application. It supplies you with all of the tools to create a website, all you really have to do is supply the content. The first step in building a website with RapidWeaver is choosing the theme. RapidWeaver 3.6 comes with 36 themes pre-loaded for you to choose from. Online, there are many different places where you can purchase a theme, or you can even create one yourself! But more on that later.

Each theme is customizable to some extent, with some being more customizable than others. RapidWeaver 3.6 allows users more control over certain aspects of the themes design. Instead of having to edit the “styles.css” file to change things like the color scheme, you can do that right within the Theme inspector. Unfortunately, like I said before, each theme’s “edit-ablilty” in the Theme Inspector varies. In one theme you may only be able to select the placement of the sidebar, whereas in another theme you might be able to edit the colors, headers, icons etc. If you want full control over every theme. I recommend RWThemeMiner from To The Point Software.

RWThemeMiner allows you to get into the package contents of each theme so that you can edit them to your hearts content. All of the images, Javascript, CSS and HTML files are all right at your fingertips for easy access. This way, you can basically change any aspect of a theme to suit you. In order to edit the files of a theme though, you must duplicate it (which you can do right within RWThemeMiner). This is sort of a fall-back, so if you end up doing something wrong, the theme isn’t destroyed.

I have found RWThemeMiner very useful, as I can go ahead and change the header of a theme if I don’t like it, or change the color of any element of the design. If you are an avid RapidWeaver user, and have often wondered how to get this type of functionality, RWThemeMiner will prove very helpful. RWThemeMiner is shareware and available for $15USD here.

Once you have found a look and feel that you are satisfied with, the next step in creating your website is adding pages. RapidWeaver has 10 built-in page templates for you to choose from. The process of adding content is pretty straight forward, as most of it is drag-and-drop. This goes for almost all of the pages. There is plenty that you can customize, and it is great that RapidWeaver does all of the coding for you. You can set up an entire blog complete with an RSS Feed without having to write a line of code.

At this point, your website should be starting to shape up. You have got the design and the pages down, all that is left is populating it with content. Earlier we talked about changing the header image, now we will talk about changing the header text.

To change the header text for the entire website, you must go into the Site Inspector (Command+1; Site>Show Site Setup). Here you will see input fields for the Title, Slogan, Copyright and Email. Changing any of these fields will automatically show up in the site Preview Window. If you just want to change the header text for a certain page, you must bring up the Page Inspector (Command+Shift+I; View>Show Page Inspector). Here you will find input fields for the Page Title and Browser title, but also a place to override the default site settings. Adding text to the Title, Slogan or Copyright fields will only show on this page, and not the others.

Then, it is time to populate your pages with content. Since it is pretty straight forward how to add things to each respective page, I won’t go over how to do it on each type of page. In the screenshot below, you can see that on a File Sharing page, all you have to do is select the file or URL, and RapidWeaver does the rest. This ease of use applies to all pages.

Edit Window

Preview Window

Lastly, it is time to upload your new website to the Interweb. Doing this you have two options: FTP and .Mac. For FTP, just enter in the Server, your username and password and click Publish. Additionally, you can choose the site path, log on anonymously and use SFTP. .Mac is a similar process. All you need to do is add your username and password, then you can click Publish. Additionally, you can choose the site path, delete the current site first and publish to the subfolder of the sites folder.

One of the great features of RapidWeaver is Smart Publishing. It will only upload the pages that have changed since you last published. This way, if you have a large website, and only make a few changes, the upload time is cut down significantly. As your site is publishing, RapidWeaver gives you a list of all the files it is publishing, so you know exactly what is being updated. When it is done publishing, RapidWeaver’s icon will bounce once in the dock.

As I mentioned earlier, it is possible to create your own RapidWeaver Themes if that is something you want to do. There is a great tutorial on Realmac Software’s Forums about creating your own themes. I recommend checking it out.

So there you have it. From start to finish, a basic RapidWeaver website. There are hundreds more features than the ones that I talked about here. These are just a few basics of creating a website in RapidWeaver. If you can believe it, there are still many other things that you can customize and tweak to your liking.

If this sounds like something you are interested in, there is a free trial of RapidWeaver that has everything unlocked. If you would like to add more than 3 pages though, you must purchase a license. If you already are a RapidWeaver user, taking a look at some of the threads in Realmac Software’s Forums would be well worth your time. They are littered with great tips, tricks and resources. RapidWeaver is shareware and available for 55.51CAD ($52.04USD) here.

What other “middle-of-the-road” website builders do you use? What is your favorite feature of RapidWeaver? I have been using RapidWeaver since December 2006, so if you have any questions, I should be able to help you. Keep an eye out for future posts that will delve a little deeper into what RapidWeaver has to offer.