So I now have RapidWeaver 8 and Foundation 6 and have created a basic website using one of the stock templates. I am not a developer by any means I used to have a Word Press website which I paid someone to create for me. However, I found WordPress has an almost endless amount of free plugins.
These plugins in RapidWeaver seem to be called stacks and almost all of them cost something.
I have to admit I am not really that impressed with Stacks foundation 6. Example it has a contact form inbuilt with it which seems to be worse than the stock contact from inbuild in RapidWeaver 8.
*Even this native contact form I can’t get to work!
With WordPress, I could easily install a plugin and test it and if I didn’t like it I could remove it.
But with RW I have to pay it would seem then if I don’t like it …i loose out.
Maybe it is just me but all I want is to have a nice contact form and I’m struggling to even do that!
@ukmercenary I understand you are frustrated but you are also over generalizing. Yes, WP has a lot of free plugins. But it has more plugins that have a free and a paid version (obviously the paid version has lots of extra features). Then there are plugins that are paid only that tend to be super flexible and powerful. I’m glad you found free plugins on WP that work well for you, but the world of plugins goes well beyond free.
It’s unclear what you are using for your contact form: probably the stack that comes with Foundation 6. I don’t use Foundation 6, but it’s very hard for me to believe it looks worse than the built-in RW contact form. You might want to contact @joeworkman directly who can probably help you with the Foundation 6 contact form.
You may want to check out:
and
Both are run by @willwood. You can download demos of his stacks and see if they meet your needs. If they do then you need to pay.
@ukmercenary I used to be heavy on wordpress. Now it’s down to just three sites and one of those is inherited. The inherited site can go wrong every time there are plugin updates which then leaves me having to enter a shell to fix. Just too many plugins used of dubious quality.
What I have found as a RW and Mac user of only 3 years is the quality of the stacks available and the depth of knowledge amongst the developers. I’ve had to learn a completely new OS and then get my head around RW, Stacks and for my choice Foundry where you chose Foundation. I’ve only bought other stacks as my requirements changed so certainly less than half a dozen in total.
Almost all stacks give demos on their pages before you have to part with cash and quite a few are free.
Which bit of the contact form are you having problems with? It will only work when loaded to a website so not possible to test inside RW.
ok thanks a lot something which I have been doing(which I know is a terrible habit) is using my live site as a development platform. This seems like a dumb question but is there an easy way to create a non production website that I can just use for testing? I don’t particularly want to have to create a server just for this.
@Pyrobrit I’m a Windows support Engineer by trade however I bought my MacBook about 3 years ago and am still struggling with OSX! Foundry does seem very popular but I will stick with Foundation 6 for now.
Foundry or Foundation. Both excellent choices amongst others. Either will make great sites.
As Mathew suggests. A subdomain or a subfolder on you hosting will work well.
If you have any virtual machines then you could knock up a webserver for localised testing although a test site a hosting would at least mean you are using the same version of PHP etc as your live site.
I usually do my testing in a subdomain on the main site that I don’t advertise to the general public. So if my main site is https://mywebsite.com I would publish my test to test.mywebsite.com and give that URL to the client for their view and approval. It is just a matter of moving it to the main site when approved for production.
Of course, whether you use a subdomain or sub-folder don’t forget to turn off indexing or password protect it. Otherwise, search engines may find the test content and not only direct searchers to it, but could penalize your sites for duplicate content.
I am considered use AWS Lightsail however I have an issue because I assume I have to run it in Linux/Unix? I am currently using IONOS as a webhost and I assume I would need to use Linux/Unix with Cpanel ?
The problem here is I have an IP Camera that is currently using some software called “motion eye” on my Raspberry Pi however I find it unreliable and want to move to a Windows box which is running “Blue Iris”.
Do you think it would be possible to host my website and Blue Iris of the same Windows Server on AWS Lightsail?
I realise this question might be outside the scope of this forum though.
From what i can see/read; BlueIris will work best on the local network where the cameras are. It’s going to create a lot of network traffic and the web front end is for remote control.
Running a web server in AWS or Microsoft Azure or many of the other hosting providers can use Linux or Windows OS. The web service will then most likely run under Apache or IIS. RW won’t really care what OS so long as it ticks all the boxes and has certain services installed such as PHP.
To be honest selecting a provider that gives a fully built instance will get you going faster and with less headaches. I personally use xilo.net in the UK and can spin up a new site in a few minutes using their reseller platform. It’s Linux, it’s basic but it works for me and it’s cheap.
There are much worse ones around but also some very good high performance ones too. However, if you are just starting out then a few coins per month whilst growing will help until you know exactly what you require once you have the website sorted. Moving websites between hosts is a pretty simple task.
Thanks Nick, sorry for slow response, when you say xilo.net has a fully built in instance do you mean like cpanel? ( I used to use 5quidhost until they got bought out years ago they use to use cpanel). I know that my current provider Ionos don’t they use there own bespoke one.
They offer Shared SSL, do I really need that? I mean I do now have a customer contact form.
I would need an SSL certificate do they charge extra for that?
SSL (secure sockets layer) is tech-speak, for the encrypting of data submitted over the internet.
If you have a form or shopping cart that is collecting sensitive information such as address or credit card information, you can ensure customers that their data is safe, secure (and encrypted).
Xilo uses Cpanel. The shared SSL they offer works for me. It’s standard and on by default when you create a website account. You could use a bespoke (Dedicated SSL) but unless your are into banking or highly secure websites that require you to provide your true company identity then there is little point.
For using a shopping cart, it is safe as most carts will push the payment procedure to the banking sites which have their own SSL. If you wanted to display a certified SSL certificate badge then I suspect you may have to purchase a Thawte SSL or similar.