RapidWeaver: Make web sites with ease
Do you want to create a professional looking website in just a few easy steps on your Mac, without having to know how to code web pages or learn any confusing interfaces? By just selecting a template and adding some pages and text, you can have a professional looking website online in no time with RapidWeaver. It is a very easy to use application and is highly recommended.
If you’re looking for an easy way to create websites with one click uploading, you can’t go wrong with Apple’s iWeb application (Part of the iLife suite). It has to be the most simplest to use website creation apps, but with that comes some major drawbacks. First of which is that there’s only a few templates included and even though you can buy more online, these can prove costly. Secondly, is that iWeb only allows basic customization of your web pages, and third, uploading to any other service other than MobileMe can prove to be a hassle in iWeb ‘08, and the FTP uploading functionality in iWeb ‘09 has proven to be shaky at times.
Thats where Real Mac Software’s RapidWeaver comes in. RapidWeaver has to be one of the easiest to use and feature-rich applications for creating stunning and professionally designed websites on your Mac, it has a simple layout and style that anyone can learn to use with little effort. RapidWeaver also includes over 4o professionally designed themes, that you can change ever aspect of by using the simple Inspector dialog (That means no coding involved!), RapidWeaver also includes 10 pre-defined page styles, including ones for a Blog, Photo Album, Contact Form and a File Sharing page.
If you’re the type who likes to code some aspects of their pages within their website, RapidWeaver allows you to switch to a “Source” view. This allows you to see all the code of your website, and change every aspect of it. In this view, RapidWeaver also includes and Errors and Warning Pane – so it should be able to tell you if any of you code is wrong – which is a nice and handy feature.
However, one of the major advantages of using RapidWeaver is because of the huge user community behind it, and the variety of Plug-Ins and additional Themes available on the Real Mac Software website. In theory, its like the Firefox of Web Design. The add-ons directory of the Real Mac Software website contains over 390 additional add-ons and plug-ins including Themes, additional Page Designs, Snippets and more. (Snippets are little lines of code that you can insert into your webpages that will perform certain functions). Some of the add-ons worth a mention are those from a company called Yabdab Software who make some fantastic plug-ins including page designs for a PayPal Shopping Cart and easy to create Web Forms.
After you’ve created your website masterpiece and are ready to show it to the world, you’ll need to upload it to your web hosts server. RapidWeaver includes an FTP up loader which works very well, allowing you to upload directly from the application, which is a very nice feature. However, one of the selling points for me was MobileMe integration, RapidWeaver supports one click uploading of your website to the MobileMe servers, and works great. One point to note however, MobileMe does not support PHP.
RapidWeaver sells for $79 on their online store, and the team here at AppYourMac highly recommend it. However, there’s only one drawback that I can think of, and its that the plug-ins and themes available can prove to be costly, usually between $10-$30. All in all, RapidWeaver is a fantastic website creation and design application for Mac.
