Here is something that I learned after a long time and I hope will be useful to some other people as well. I was similarly frustrated with RW for the same reason that Gerry talks about, specifically since Themes are always almost but not quite what you need. Eventually I found out two things: (1) If what you are trying to do does not EXACTLY fit the presentation model of an existing Theme then the minimum package that you need is RW + Stacks + Foundry. At that point you need to look for other stacks that solve specific problems (like Alloy for blogs). (2) RW is not a tool for making HTML; it is a tool for presenting content in a way that looks good on multiple devices, display resolutions, window sizes, etc. The key phrase being “looks good”. As a result the tool guides the presentation. I am able to push the edges of that a little bit with Responsive attribute in the stacks and things like the Conditional stack in Alloy but as a rule it is more effective to think of your content in terms of what RW can do than it is to try to use RW to generate a preconceived presentation model.
Unless I missed it, most of the replies here go along the lines of ‘buy more stuff’. You want a simple page. You probably don’t want to add the bells and whistles. Why would you?
The more experienced people here will cringe at what I am about to say, but I remember what I did when I just started, and it will probably work for you.
Simply put: if you create a simple page/ site using a standard theme, and export it to your local machine instead of posting up online immediately, then you end up with a folder of stuff.
The images used by the theme you chose will be inside a folder
RWCOMMON/THEMES…
Find the images, replace them with images of your own, of the same size.
(True , you don’t see the banner images while designing, you would have to amend the actual theme to do that and for a beginner, thats not so easy.)
But for a really simple page, pick a theme that has colors and fonts you like.
Probably turn off the sidebar.
Design and just ignore the actual images for a while.
Export the site.
Change the images
Publish to your website using FTP
Keep a copy of the images separate because the image replacement may need doing when you next amend.
Hope that helps.
As you gain experience, you can add the frills.
I think that makes it even more complex. If you don’t use stacks you could create all your pages of content using the styled text page, markdown text page or HTML page.
To then export and and start editing the exported content? That might work for a one page site, but would quickly become unmanageable. You’d be better editing the page styles in RW. Plus many themes allow you to change the images anyway.
If you only need a one off site a template would be the easiest way to go. More than that and you’d be making your life massively more difficult without Stacks.
I only maintain and develop charity websites and without Stacks I wouldn’t use RW, I’d be using Blocs.
I read that your wife is musician and a politician : this means 2 sites, 2 different needs, and a larger budget.
What time would you intend to spend in this project. Are you a designer, a coder, a marketing oriented guy? If not, look out you could make a site that will not fulfill your needs, or will give the wrong image of the politician or the musician.
Little time means 2 things :
you will produce a very simple site (does that match your needs?) RW8 may do that with the built in themes and the possibilities offered in RW8 without any extra cost of bying Stacks/stacks or framework or whatever.
or you need a professional that will make your site(s). Certainly if your are not a designer or marketing addicted.
There are some professionals around here that may make your site.
Do you have more time to spend? Your design or marketing abilities and sufficient :
Then learn and spend time to learn techniques, the RW possibilities, the different frameworks and be sure to choose the one that will meet your needs. This will prevent you from buying too many stacks that you will never use, and that will make your budget grow.
Read Will’s post again.
Find the correct hosting.
Reanalyse your budget, reanalyze the time spent : is the pro solution not better?
Then you discover like many of us here that you still want to do it yourself. Then be ready to spend money and time.
I’m thinking I’ll buy Stacks hoping that it gets me enough flexibility. I’m used to a WYSIWYG, but that’s not RW is it? There are things that I still don’t understand though.
It seems like Styled Text is the standard page format. To add a picture to my page, I drag it into the text. What if the picture is too big? Do I go back to photoshop and adjust it, resize it, then drag it back in? That doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t I be able to adjust the size of the image in RW to get it to fit the layout of my page?
And what is the Resources window for? In there are Photos, Unsplash, and resources. Photos says No Photos Found, what’s that for. Unsplash has stock photos that I don’t need.
The other thing that seems wrong, the themes don’t adjust for different devices. If I simulate an iPhone it is just a cropped page that doesn’t fit on the iPhone.
Sorry, it just feels like RW didn’t get installed correctly. Maybe I should delete it and reinstall it. Feels like it is missing stuff.
Thanks for the link to the videos. They are very helpful. One question though, when the image (avatar) is dropped into the sidebar text, it seems to automatically scale to fit the sidebar. Mine isn’t doing that. It hangs off the edge of the page. What am I doing wrong?
Totally agree in the rush to frameworks as being the answer to everything. If you just want to go shopping 3 times a week, there’s little point in building your own car - not knowing what a car looks like. Let someone else build the theme and you can adapt to suit. For some one beginning & starting from scratch, a framework will be very challenging, and so much to learn. With a theme it’s a gentle introduction to RW and it will give you chance to learn about how RW works, then introduce other stacks etc at you own pace. But your website will look a lot better, it you use the right theme, regardless of your skill level. My bit, for what its worth.
There are many interpretations of WYSIWYG, between different web design software. WYSIWYG has been a marketing buzzword for a long time.
The trend nowadays is more towards visual website builders. Simply because the concept of opening some web design software and dropping-in the content to create a page design that fits perfectly within a 1024px by 800px box is largely irrelevant nowadays.
Modern web design in 2020 and beyond is all about fluidity - the process of allowing elements to adjust and reflow to fit any screen size. And there are other factors and standards websites need to adhere with, like accessibility and privacy laws.
Stacks will certainly help you with visually creating flexible layouts that comprise of grids or multiple columns. But Stacks may not necessarily be the magic antidote you are envisioning, for slicing a complex PSD design into a WYSIWYG web design that instantly works everywhere.
If you double-click the image, you will often see controls to resize it and apply other effects. This is a basic fundamental of RapidWeaver. So again if this seems somewhat alien to you, consider going back to follow some of the earlier tutorials. These will help you get up to speed on all the basics, like working with images. Do a web search or use the help menu in RapidWeaver.
As a general rule of thumb, most expert web designers do all their image editing and resizing prior to adding images to a website. Then you have complete control over the size of images, their quality, and their format. There’s no point lazily throwing dozens of multi-megabyte images into a webpage, if those images need to be shown considerably smaller! This would otherwise result in slower loading webpages, that a lot of website visitors would give-up on trying to load.
Resources is a depository in your project, where you can store items such as images or download files for inclusion in your website. Again the concept of Resources is already covered extensively in the introductory tutorials. Photos probably refers to the Photos software on your computer, where you might choose to keep your photographs. Unsplash is only needed if you want to use stock photographs you are licensed to use from an Unsplash photographer.
You have to make sure you are using a recent theme (one shipped in RapidWeaver 7 or above). Or look for suitable third party themes (many exist). Anything in RapidWeaver marked as a ‘classic’ theme is unlikely to be mobile compatible, because they were made over 10 years ago, before smartphones were a thing. You want themes marketed as responsive.
Again you are probably not going to like to hear this, but I feel it needs to be said. I think the problems possibly correlate with your approach to this. You obviously have your own ideas of how the software should function. But you are at odds with what is provided. It sounds like you have skipped straight past all the introductory user guides and tutorial videos. So you are fumbling around in the dark trying to find the light switch!
Try following some of the excellent tutorials and written guides on getting started with the software. Like with any software you are new to, set your expectations low to start with, and build up your knowledge by learning the basics. Build a simple website to start with.
Excellent point. I built a site last year for a real estate agent who is halfway across the United States from me. He had a lot of experience with iWeb, but it was no longer capable of what he wanted his site to accomplish. He liked the idea of RW since it would allow him to get up to steam quickly and relatively inexpensively. In addition to my fee for creating his site, he also agreed to purchase the theme, Stacks (from YourHead) and all of the Stacks I used to create his site. Once I completed the site and handed it off to him, it all worked perfectly since he owned the stacks required. I spent an hour with him in GoToMeeting, and he’s been updating it ever since.
Full of respect for all the advice from the professionals. Back to yr original question,
You can actually easily replace the images in a theme. Click on the theme dropdown. Right click on the theme you want and make a duplicate copy. Find the new copy in “All Themes”, right click “show in finder”. Find the image in the banner or image directory. Open the image in preview and you can see the size. Replace that image with your own image. Experiment with the size of the image. Remember to select the revised theme.
Just play around with the stuff that came in the box and learn the basics. If you buy stacks, which you will want to when you get into it, stacks comes with most of what you need, images you can drop in, text, headers, columns etc.
You might want to find a better theme than the ones that come with RW8, but there are some good free ones out there to get you started.
Better not invest any more until you have built your website and happy with it. By that time you will know if you need anything else.
Happy Weaving.
Good point but an upgrade would only overwrite the original, not the copy which has a different name.
If you want to use the upgrade you just change the image again.
And how often do they upgrade the basic themes that ship with RW? By that time Binks will be years ahead.