Web Sites: Point And Click To A Beautiful Site.

You’re right Dan, on a couple of points. Rapid Weaver is not the optimal blogging tool if you post often. I’ve used both Wordpress and Movable Type to create blogs with over a 1000 posts. I wouldn’t think of trying that with Rapid Weaver.

I’ve spent a bit over $100 for Rapid Weaver and plugins, so it’s not free. But it is still a very price attractive program for a small business owner who wants to maintain a site.

Many of the available templates are much better than any beginner could compose. I’ve taught web design for over 5 years through a community college and have not seen but two or three out of hundreds of beginner websites that even meet the default RW templates.

As a professional web designer I would like people to come to me for their sites. I can create a better site than any do it yourself (DIY) application, but I understand that cost is a consideration. Of the available DIY options on any platform, Rapid Weaver is far and away the best for a brochure site. Yes it costs money, but then real business people understand that a site that reflects well on their business is worth paying for.

It is not the best blogging tool. It is not the best option for any kind of sophisticated user interaction. It is not the best e-commerce solution. It doesn’t do forums. It is not free. However, for the average user RW offers the best quality look / ease of use / low cost option.

I would have to agree that the value of Word Press and other free web site managers is great-- they seem to work well and they’re priced at free.

The problem is the level of complexity required to set up, run, managed, and update such an environment.

WordPress is not for the average web site builder. HTML and CSS are complicated enough to understand and tweak, now add PHP and MySQL database management to the equation. Yuk.

One commenter, Serge, said RW was confusing. Imagine the poor guy trying to build a design in Word Press.

RW, like Word Press, is a tool to be used-- fully dependent on the type of job needed to be done and the skill and experience of the user.

I cannot recommend Rapidweaver enough for building quick and simple web sites that can grow in complexity. They’re just point and click. Try adding a photo gallery, a movie gallery and a podcast to Word Press without some headache.

I confess I have only limited experience with RapidWeaver and none with these brand-new themes.  But as I run two blogs and no other sites, I was looking at RW primarily as a blogging-site creation tool.  And in that regard, it came up quite short, in my opinion, when compared to free products like WordPress.

Start with the fact that WordPress has that magic price-point: free.  And it runs on top of two other programs with the same price point: the by-now rock-solid MySQL and PHP.  These days, it’s difficult to find a web-host who DOESN’T support both of those, and it’s even not all that much work to tweak OS X’s built-in Apache server to turn on php, and to install MySQL as a preference pane.  When stacked up against, say, Dreamweaver, RapidWeaver might seem like a great deal - and I don’t deny that it has many web-creation tools for more general websites which WordPress, being specifically blogging software, lacks.  Enough to put RapidWeaver in the class of WYSIWYG editors, and making its price point versus Dreamweaver quite attractive, indeed.  But versus WordPress, as a blogging tool?  It’s hard to beat “free,” as we’re told often on this very site, folks.

Then, there is the not-inconsiderable fact that virtually all of the plugins and themes worth having in RW cost additional money.  It’s a bit deceptive to say that a product costs $49, if, in order to really trick it out the way you’d want it to be, you have to spend another $60-70 on add-ons, plugins, themes and the like.  And here again, when stacked up in the blogging world against the cost of the average WordPress plugin (again: FREE), RW seems to seem like even less of a good deal.

Yes, iWeb creates ridiculously complicated code for many of the things it does, and Dreamweaver is expensive - but they are different beasts, too.  I’d say if you don’t mind mucking about in your Apache server, and you know a bit of code yourself, you can save yourself a tidy bit of change AND have the comfort of a widely-used, secure, tested platform for blogging in WordPress.  And if you really feel like you need or want the power of a top-flight web editor, you can pop for Dreamweaver.  And if you’re a complete n00b who doesn’t know a stylesheet from a div tag and just wanna put your stuff on the web, iWeb already provides you the means to do this.

I’ll agree that RW is cool, and well-written...but so are a number of other programs out there now, and two of the ones I mentioned, iWeb and WordPress (not to mention php and MySQL) are free (or nearly so), while another is admittedly costlier, but is still the acknowledged absolute king of commercial HTML/XHTML/CSS/etc. editors: Dreamweaver.  I guess I just sorta feel like RW addresses a need that really doesn’t exist so much.

I agree, the packages look great, but of all the different packages I’ve tried for the Mac in this category, I have found RW to be the most confusing of all… and though I am not a pro web designer, I ain’t a total green horn, and RW, I looked at it several times, read manual, and just decided to not bother at this point in time… can’t figure it out.

Masud, what would you suggest we do to ‘freshen’ the Mac360 site (we did a complete new look back in November, about six months ago)?

Yes, these are nice themes, better than nice. I’m glad to see that there can be a quality, affordable and relatively simple option for people who want to create and maintain their own websites.

As a web designer I’m glad be able to tell mom and pop businesses that can’t afford a custom site that there is a viable option. RapidWeaver a couple of plugins and a template run a bit over $100.

Honestly, most people could stand to buy a couple of hours of consulting from a web pro. Nice templates aside, most totally amateur sites suffer from poor focus, poor copy and poor organization. Even then it’s possible to have an effective site for a fraction of the cost of full custom design.

Alex and Mac360 team, while I thank you for finding RW, please why don’t you uplift the look and feel of your own site which appears quite dated!

Can’t say enough good about RW the app and the themes and tools you mention. All are top notch. RW makes the difficult seem easy. YourHead adds all the Web 2.x goodies in a purely point and click fashion, and RapidIdeas’ themes are simply the best, most flexible available for RW, though others are good.

Kudos to Alex and Mac360 for another excellent find.