# web page -- rapidweaver or iweb?



## imeldamac (Aug 20, 2005)

I need to do a web site where I will be posting research results. I will be using my university server as the host. It is going to be text heavy, no photos or graphics, except for a banner.

i will probably be buying iLife 06 for other reasons and have been paying attention to reviews of iweb on this forum and others. But I am thinking that iweb is not going to be right for my web "design" needs. It sounds like it might be difficult if you are not going to have your website on a .mac account. also, I ahve looked at some of the sites people having been posting after using iweb and the templates look great for personal webistes but maybe not for my needs.

Anyone use rapidweaver? Is it easy. I took at intro course on Dreamweaver and found it cumbersome. After using it to create a webpage, I rarely updated the material. I don't own Dreamweaver anymore anyway and my old licence was for Windows version.

So should I buy Rapidweaver?

Thanks in advance.


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## SoyMac (Apr 16, 2005)

I haven't made my purchase yet (lack of time), but I've found these posts to be quite helpful in making my decision:
(Hope this helps. Good luck...)


enaj said:


> There is a real easy web program out there called Rapidweaver:
> http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/index.php
> 
> It integrates so well with iPhoto/iMovie/iTunes that I could see Apple buying them or doing somthing the same.
> ...





Macaholic said:


> I use Rapidweaver for my professional site. It does the trick alright. It's a little clunky, but it works and the learning curve is pretty flat.





Macaholic said:


> I'm an owner of a Rapidweaver license, will be getting iLife 06 for sure (for more than just iWeb) and look forward to seeing how iWeb is. It's version 1 Apple title. SO, tghere'll probably be a nigggle here andthere (probably many intentional limitations if Apple sticks to their iLife gameplan tptptptp ).
> 
> Here are some VERBOSE overviews and reviews of iLife 06:
> 
> ...


Also, this thread:
http://www.ehmac.ca/showthread.php?t=33676&highlight=rapidweaver


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

OK, after MUCH tolerance of iWeb's weaknesses, I caved in with its blatant image/css duplication for every single web page. There is no way on gawd's green earth that I will ever use iWeb as it is today to manage ANY decent site. Sure, it's pretty, but managing a site without a customisable template comes down to two actions: CUT & PASTE. Over and over and over... To get one giant sluggish site.

Nope, after reading lots of reviews, I decided to bite the bullet and try RapidWeaver (or "DreamWeaver for Dummies"). Wow... Intelligent templates that don't duplicate every single wallpaper, banner image, footer image, css for every single page!!! W00t! Not just that, I duplicated one of the existing themes, opened the "contents" directly from within the RapidWeaver theme options, which opened the entire template contents in Finder. I hacked the hell out of the template HTML and CSS files, images, etc and voilà! A reusable template for my site! Not just that, oh no, I can actually create different "styles" or variations of the theme (just changing images and css) without having to duplicate the html, etc. NICE! Now I can keep my look and feel accross my siteS and just flip "styles" at will. Sure, I had to get my hands real dirty to get my template just right (figuring out the RapidWeaver "syntax" wasn't that hard actually) and code some (except for the actual page content that varies from page to page), but I'll never have to ever do it again! No cut & paste hell like in iWeb! Oh, did I mention FREE blog comment? (I'll subscribe and add it later) Another bonus: the menu items are plain text, no images... Even less duplication... Ahhhh... And yes, I can change all the colors and backgrounds, etc I could ever want! ;oP

Anyway, if you saw my iWeb site earlier, I replaced it with a few pages (RapidWeaver allows you to generate 3 pages with the demo) that use my custom theme... Look at the speed, reusability and beauty... It even made a nice flash slideshow with iPhoto-like UI for my gallery!!! I don't even have to pay for .MAC to have it work... Nifty. I'm going to play with this a little more, but I'm probably going to buy it. 40$ USD... So worth it!

Ok, ok, I am no fantabulous web master, but I like having my own site and I find my theme (based on my old manual labor site) is pretty decent and original for my own needs:

http://www.cyberus.ca/~ishmael/Fly High/

Enjoy!
P.S. Comments? Your own content management experiences on the mac?
P.P.S. My old site is still active till I make the switch: http://www.cyberus.ca/~ishmael/


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## IronMac (Sep 22, 2003)

green_ears said:


> P.S. Comments?


Yes, paragraphs improve readability.


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## Ottawaman (Jan 16, 2005)

looks good


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## imeldamac (Aug 20, 2005)

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I agree with green_ears. I bought ilife 06, mainly for iphoto and it was only $55 at my univ. bookstore. iweb is easy and I've decided to help my 10-year-old build a site with it where he can showcase his hockey team etc. But for my purposes, it's not good. 

I've also downloaded the rapidweaver demo and played with it. Much better. In particular, the styled text format is perfect for my needs. I can't believe that iweb doesn't offer this page style. Unless you are doing a website for which photos are appropriate on every page, iweb doesn't work. Also, rapidweaver has so many more templates and there are tons of third party templates available. 

There is still a big learning curve though, for a newbie. I've been to the user forum and also watched screencastsonline tutorial. But I still need more help. Someone should write a manual. I'd buy it.

I am going to pay for rapidweaver. Once I get used to it, it will meet my needs.


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## rogueToe (Dec 13, 2002)

Rapidweaver is a good choice. Another easy way to create a website is with Shutterbug. It's primarily designed for creating photo galleries, but you can easily use it to make text-oriented websites.


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

You can create Web sites for free with just a text processor like TextWrangler. Learn to write HTML. Maybe even CSS and Javascript.

Sure, I use WYSIWYG apps too (GoLive and iWeb), but just as timesavers for large projects - if you don't know at least the basics of HTML, you're working on the flying trapeze without a net, IMHO.


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## green_ears (Feb 26, 2005)

Gerbill said:


> You can create Web sites for free with just a text processor like TextWrangler. Learn to write HTML. Maybe even CSS and Javascript.
> 
> Sure, I use WYSIWYG apps too (GoLive and iWeb), but just as timesavers for large projects - if you don't know at least the basics of HTML, you're working on the flying trapeze without a net, IMHO.


No offense, but I think most people want a site for 3 reasons: photos, blogs and a personal space to share other things like links. Also, most people want to be able to have all that with minimal coding while maintaining a common look and feel accross the site because maintenance of all of the above with TextPad = time consuming redundant work.

My old site was 100% manual editing in gEdit. But enough is enough. Some kind of content management system is a must for anyone. Agreed, knowledge of HTML/CSS allows you to tweak your site more within the confines of a content management system. But gone are the days of 1 or 2 page sites.


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## Gerbill (Jul 1, 2003)

green_ears said:


> No offense, but I think most people want a site for 3 reasons: photos, blogs and a personal space to share other things like links....


The original poster said the site he wants to build "...is going to be text heavy, no photos or graphics, except for a banner." I would think that simple hand-coded HTML would do very nicely for such a site - GoLive or Dreamweaver would be like shooting mice with an elephant gun.


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## mac_geek (May 14, 2005)

Gerbill said:


> You can create Web sites for free with just a text processor like TextWrangler. Learn to write HTML. Maybe even CSS and Javascript.
> 
> Sure, I use WYSIWYG apps too (GoLive and iWeb), but just as timesavers for large projects - if you don't know at least the basics of HTML, you're working on the flying trapeze without a net, IMHO.


Aw, c'mon... we're not all hard core, you know.. if there are apps out there designed for speed of set-up and ease of use, what's wrong with that?

What's next? Getting rid of our compilers and jumping straight into machine code?


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## minnes (Aug 15, 2001)

When I started learning web programming we logged into out unix server through a terminal window on a remote box, using SSh we wrote everything with VI and used command line ftp.
Now I just use dreamweaver for everything and like it much better, and find it much faster for everything especially when trying out different, CSS styles, and dragging and dropping table and frames, no Im never going back to command line for html, its pointless. I just want to get my page designed as fast as possible so I can place the content in it , upload it and put it to use.
Why use MacOS when we can use a Unix command line?
If it makes you happy to use command line tools, go for it, I do know someone who does lots of web programming for a living, who usesCL for most of his web creation, but he is in the fast growing minority.


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## min_max9000 (May 15, 2005)

I hope I'm not bumping an old thread here, but this one is right up my alley. I have been a rather quite member here for a while now just popping in from time to time. Seeing this post got me excited to know that there are other local RapidWeaver users around here. For those that fequent the RW forum, I am Adam of the same user name (min_max9000 or some of you might know me as seyDoggy). If anyone has any questions about RapidWeaver, please feel free to ask. I know quite a bit about the app.


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## thejst (Feb 1, 2005)

Yeah, 

Where do I find a template, or write the HTML so that my pages have columns?
I want to make a "newsy" looking site. 

Any thoughts?


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## min_max9000 (May 15, 2005)

thejst said:


> Yeah,
> 
> Where do I find a template, or write the HTML so that my pages have columns?
> I want to make a "newsy" looking site.
> ...


 All of the known theme developers can be found here: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/rwresources/index.php (I'm "seyDesign")


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