Hello, I’m really new in web design. Did it for 10 years in iWeb and now (yesterday) I changed to RapidWeaver8. It´s great and I understand a lot to create a new website.
After watching some tutorial I’m asking myself: Do I need Stacks4 or Foundry or Foundation and what is this all about. I downloaded Stacks4 demo and it looks and works fine for me. But there are so many other Plugins. Do I need Stacks first to install the other ones? What is Foundation or Foundry. I think Stacks4 is a good tool to make it easier to work more freely. But before I spend another 60 dollars I want to ask you if you have some recommendations for me - should I buy Stacks4 or what is a good way to extend my RapidWeaver8 and to have good fun and good workflow with it?
Thank you
Dirk (from germany)
In my personal opinion to get the best out of RM I would get Stacks 4 and then have a play with all the free stacks and themes that are available.
Foundry and Foundation are both excellent groups of resources but there are others also available.
Hi Dirk,
I would heartily recommend buying the Stacks plugin. This will allow you to create nice looking pages with columns, headers, text, pictures, buttons straight away. After that you can try many of the free ‘stacks’ that work with Stacks and offer all sorts of other design possibilities.
To be clear you need Rapidweaver and the Stacks plugin from YourHead and then you can add any of the 100s of stacks (small ‘s’) that extend RW’s capabilities.
I wouldn’t worry about Foundry and Foundation for now. Just use the free built in themes and Stacks until you find your way around.
Rob
Thank you, Nick,
that helps me. I’m going to buy Stacks4 and work until I come to my limits.
Thanks
Dirk
Thank you Rob,
that’s all I need to know at this time. I’m gonna buy Stacks4 and use it til I need more.
Thanks
Dirk
Hi Dirk,
I totally agree with Nick and Rob. As you, I did some stuff in iWeb before switching to RW. It became really fun and friendly once Stacks plugin became available. Over the years I invested a lot of money in ‘stacks’ and ‘themes’. No regrets here, but I should have invested a lot sooner in Foundry (my personal favourite for the moment) or Foundation (really solid as well) for these solutions offer a great freedom in designing and both come with some very useful ‘stacks’.
So, once you get hooked to RW you can consider investing in Foundry or Foundation. They’re worth their money.
Success with it,
Hans
Hey Hans,
ok, that sounds good, but it´s not wrong to try Stacks4 at first or do you recommend Foundry as the first investment?
Thanks Dirk
Hi Dirk,
Stacks4 is a must have. It’s the base to run all of the other free and paid ‘stacks’ you want to use. Why don’t you experiment a bit with the free Themes and ‘stacks’ that are available? As said, I bought a lot of very useful ‘stacks’ over the years. I spent quite some money on it, only to find out I could have saved a lot by investing sooner in Foundry (along with Potion and Thunder). I am very fond of this solution, the documentation is very good and if needed one can ask questions in the Foundry Community Blog (similar to the Realmac Community). As a designer, rather than a programmer, it gives me a lot of freedom to do what I want to accomplish.
The well respected Joe Workman offers Foundation, which is a bit similar to Foundry, but has a higher learning curve. So my preference for Foundry is very personal. My point is, for the price you pay for Foundry (plus Potion and Thunder) you get a bunch of great ‘stacks’ to build a solid and professional website. It’ll cost you a lot more if you want to buy all the similar ‘stacks’ separately. Foundry works also great with 3rd party ‘stacks’. So, yes, I’m very happy with Foundry.
But again, this is my personal choice and I’m not judging all of the great ‘stacks’ that have been developed over the years by some clever developers.
Choices, choices… 
Hans
ps. If I can be of any help (since I made the transition from iWeb to RW as well) you can always contact me by mail. Info in my account.
To be clear, you have to have the Stacks plugin to use Foundry (or any other framework) so I’d buy Stacks first and play with that.
OK, now I got it.
Thank you guys.
Hi all
Im also new here & I was going to go straight for Foundry as I like the user interface & the flexibility but from what I read Stack4 is a prerequisite & a must.
In fact I think Stack4 will do the job for me except that I want to have a different banner on other pages of my website & don’t want the repeat of the Master & also maybe the ability of changing the font size which I can’t find in Stacks4 (but this is not as important as the 1st requirement for the repeated banner). The question is, is there a free stack somewhere that gives me this ability so I can save paying for Foundry?
Thanks in advance for your help
The banner format will depend on the theme but to change the banner for different pages is explained here, hopefully. It is relatively simple.
If you’re starting out, I’d offer the same advice. Start with the Stacks plugin and experiment with that and the free themes that come with Rapidweaver before buying anything else. I like Foundry a lot but you may not need it - you can certainly change the banner image on a per page basis with RW8’s free themes.
Rob
Thanks so much that’s great!!!
Thank you, Hans,
I´m sure I will contact you.
Lovely website … and nice jobs you do.
Dirk
@elkart, thanks. As I said, glad to guide you trough the basics to get you going with RW.
Hans
As to your question about changing font sizes, there are so many font helpers but with just Custom Font Stack you can do quite a bit and the page has much useful information about using fonts…
Scribe by Big White Duck is one that I am grateful I learned about on this forum and I wish I had known about when I first started.
Those are great thanks so much will try them out!
Many thanks again for all your help
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