Before I reply on this, note that I’m a big RW fan and I use it a lot
That said, i’m also a big WP fan and for me, WP is as flexible as RW BUT you have to know how to handle it. The standard WP setup is indeed boring and very static. After some projects you will find some plugins that will give your creativity in WP a boost and you can make whatever you want with a WP blank theme or a premium theme.
This plugin has it all + is a little bit like stacks because it has an addon function with 1000+ addons.
RW is in my opinion very nice and for small companies or personal websites that needs a personal focus. For mid + big companies WP is more suited, they won’t take the time to ask every time to make changement, they will do it via the backend.
Again… I love both platforms but you have to be realistic about mid-big companies and RW
(of course you can make RW sites for mid-big companies if the client like the personal aproach).
I think the bigger problem, @thebugnut, is that many people feel they need a blog without knowing why. They’ve been told that it can help them promote something – an idea, a product, a service – but that is very doubtful. In mosty cases it takes up a lot of time and is read by very few people. Of course, there are blogs which work but they are very much in the minority.
No, I gave up on WordPress for my iPhone projects, coz the site loads in minutes. WP is becoming more and more bloated and it needs high-end hosting plan to make the site running smoothly.
I’m moving away from WP. It’s popularity is not without risk. Maintaining WP sites is quite time consuming and WP seems to attract hackers. I also prefer the migration of an RW site to another server than I do WP and backing up RW as opposed to WP. A lot of the extra functionality of WP can be created with stacks and RW does produce a simple blog.
As soon as you add a database to your website you start creating more work in terms of backup and security. The only real benefit for me with WP is the ability to edit the site on another computer. However, I have a macair so this is not a problem.
In 10 years of WP I’ve had a number of sites hacked. This was not through a lack of my own security, but security issues with WP. In the last week Elegant themes sent out an email because a security hole had been found in their Divi theme. This meant all sites using the theme needed to quickly update the theme.
In the end I kind of like the ease of RW. I always have a local copy of my site and it’s pleasant to work in. WP is not pleasant to work in and uploads are awkward.
You have some good points there. But then again, every platform that has a database is at risk of being hacked. That is just the way it is.
If you use WP there are some golden rules:
Have a good hosting platform that uses daily (hourly) backups. Don’t go to a mass-hosting company, you won’t get the backup you want if anything goes wrong.
Have a good (even free) security plugin. There are 2 main plugins that is stopping 99% of the attacks.
Have heavy passwords so that the chance of being hacked via your password is zero.
Have a cloud backup system for your own daily backups -> backupbuddy is very good and cheap.
If you have this for every site you will be fine. I have over 20+ sites and I had never been hacked.
I own Divi too and it’s indeed not cool to have this situation but it takes 10 minutes of your time and everyting is back to normal.
That said, Rapidweaver is a wonderful platform for non-database driven websites so it’s really no shame to build websites with RW. It can be very professional.
Having both gives me an advantage by giving my client the choice between the 2.
