2 Mac Web Page Builders: Sandvox vs. RapidWeaver.

Protonic said:

I can’t comment about about Sandvox, but as a Joomla user at work and Rapidweaver user at home I can safely say this… Rapidweaver wins hands down against Joomla, Drupal and all the other ‘biggies’ in every department bar one - it’s not a CMS. You can create very sophisticated websites in Rapidweaver - I’ve got full ecommerce, rich media (with both embedded and hosted FLVs and MP3s) and user adninistered websites (thank you Webyep, and the even easier Rapidblog plug-ins) - but these are ultimately all static web pages with a limited bit of php interactivity. Now, if only somebody would write a plug-in that connected Filemaker web-access XML directly to Rapidweaver HTML, what a world that would make! (There was a beta of a product called easyrapidcms floating about a while back, but this seems to disappeared off the face of the planet, so I guess the project is not as easy as I might imagine…)

noforkinway said:

For what it’s worth I used to use Dreamweaver but started looking for a less complex alternative - looked at both Rapidweaver and Sandvox but finally settled on Freeway 5 Pro - if you have any background with page layout programs but don’t want to be boxed in to a templated format it’s absolutely the best way to go - grab the demo and give it a try - you can get it at softpress.com, and it’s got a terrific manual and support system - very deep and very fast - can’t say enough about it…oh maybe I just have…

Irfan Chaudhry said:

Thanks for the review -

After trying both, Rapidweaver gets my vote too -  RW plugins, snippits and Theme SDK pushed it ahead of Sandvox for my requirements - not that Sandvox is any less capable!

One more thing to mention with regard to RW - the introduction of the Blocksbox theme combined with the Blocks plugin, now gives the creatively inclined the option of producing a theme without touching any code (SDK) at all - for me as a graphic designer this is gold!

seyDoggy said:

@dawg I guess all cars look the same because they have wheels and doors and windows Just kidding.

As the saying goes, a circle can’t fit where a square should be. Check out any css gallery and you’ll see the same design styles. It’s just the nature of web design. They are all just pixels with a different color. That goes for any web platform, RapidWeaver, WordPress, Joomla, Sandvox, Drupal, Flex…

tcrooks said:

Have tried both and for me RapidWeaver is a clear winner. And in particular there are two plug-ins - WebYep a simple CMS and Gdoc which inserts Google Docs files into web pages - that greatly extend the flexibilty of the software.

What attracts me to RapidWeaver is that at the basic level it is very easy to use and yet has the architecture to be able to build complex web sites for which there is a steeper learning curve. You can evolve towards the higher end, or not, as you choose.

dawg said:

seyDoggy sells Rapidweaver themes. I looked at all those on the link and they look pretty much the same style to me. Colors and logo are different but the layouts are all very similar. Boxes, boxes, and more boxes.

Kenny Gee said:

How is it that you disagree with Ron when he said the same thing as you. Rapidweaver does more than Sandvox. Sandvox is easier to use than Rapidweaver. I’ve tried them both and find each has a place.

Rapidweaver can get confusing because there are so many add on utilities.

jan croft said:

RapidWeaver is an absolute pain to try to figure out. Sandvox is far more elegant and easier to use for those of us who don’t bang our heads against web site creation every day. It may not be quite as feature laden as RapidWeaver, but it is worth my time. Not so with all the so-called bells and whistles of RapidWeaver. One thing I don’t like about either one is the templates. They’re all variations on the same theme. Header. Footer. Right or left column. Menus. Body. Different background colors and logos but otherwise the routine for layout is the same.