Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
RapidWeaver 3.2.1 is a basic entanglement site - creation tool that anyone can apply — even people without internet - publication experience or HTML cognition . I used RapidWeaver to design and build a personal site complete with a Weblog , pic , and contact - information pages , as well as a four - page site design for a home concern . Despite some minor problems , I found RapidWeaver to be a very effectual program for simple entanglement publication .
Easy site creation
RapidWeaver use predetermined design template , or themes , to help you build a website . It come with more than 20 of them , and users can either download additional I from Realmac or create them in a text editor in chief . you could give themes to Weblogs , photo and movie albums , or customs pages you create yourself . It ’s promiscuous to exchange theme across your entire site with a mouse click of the mouse , or to set some pages to one idea , and others to a unlike one .
It was also easy to make basic alteration to themes ( though power user might require a program with more tractability ) . For example , when I made changes that affected the elbow room varlet exhibit — such as adding a computer graphic or inserting an iframe ( inline frame ) that was wider than a base ’s nonremittal width — RapidWeaver ’s Page Inspector allowed me to change the varlet width so that it would render properly . you may also use Page Inspector to add metadata , CSS , and JavaScript elements , or even make website - wide changes .
For create personal home varlet , RapidWeaver is hard to top . It use an interface similar to Apple ’s iLife apps , so it should instantly feel intimate to most Mac drug user . Photo pages seamlessly integrate with iPhoto , making it a cinch to publish complete iPhoto record album or individual pictures . RapidWeaver generates attractive on-line albums , and I actually preferred them to the default album in iPhoto .
Rapidweaver pee it easy to apply a novel theme to individual Thomas Nelson Page or to your total site .
Easy blogging
Designing and publishing a Weblog to a .Mac address and a personal area is much simple with RapidWeaver than it is with most online - only tool . To produce a new blog , simply select a theme , enter your server information , and you are on the Web . To generate a new web log entrance , all you have to do is tap a clit ; plus , RapidWeaver will mechanically make index and archive pages for all of your posts .
The program also includes puppet for creating feeds with your web log , and you’re able to confine audio file for podcasts via drag and drop . When I take to these feeds in NetNewsWire and iTunes , they work perfectly .
FTP trouble
Although publishing to a .Mac history was a breeze , I fly the coop into problem trying to upload a site to my personal server via RapidWeaver ’s FTP routine . Publishing repeatedly stalled out during the upload unconscious process , and it ended up take in more than five minute to upload my simple four - page land site .
When I contacted Realmac about the job , the company noted that my experience was not distinctive and suggested I judge write from another physical emplacement . That did not improve performance , nor did publishing from a 2nd political machine . However , I did bump a answer to the job in RapidWeaver ’s help lodge ( suggest that it is a known issue ) . By exporting the site ( so that those files are converted to HTML , PHP , or another markup language , with the file tree diagram structure the same way it will be online ) and then using the third - party FTP syllabus Transmit ( , July 2005 ) , I was able to upload files to my server within a few mo .
Macworld’s buying advice
RapidWeaver 3.2.1 is an first-class program for building personal and small - business enterprise vane website . If you just need a Weblogging service , you might desire to stick with online - based tools . But for more full - featured sites , RapidWeaver greatly expand on what those serving offer .
[ Mathew Honan is a San Francisco - based freelancer writer and photographer . His blog can be found atwww.honan.net . ]
