Hi Weavers,
RapidWeaver Elements 3.0 is officially out of beta, and it’s our biggest update yet. Seriously, it’s HUGE!
We still have a lot of marketing work to do, but we wanted to get this out and into everyone’s hands as soon as possible. So here it, Elements 3.0!
Elements 3.0 is a FREE update for everyone with an active Elements licence 
There’s a new AI Assistant, more design tools, eight new starter projects, and improvements to everything from editing and saving to galleries, tables and the CMS.
Thank you to everyone who tested the beta, reported bugs and shared their projects with us. Your feedback has helped us get this release ready.
The new assistant works directly in your project. Ask it to build a layout, write content or create a custom component, then see the results live in the editor. You can make changes visually or ask it to refine the design.
The AI features remain in beta. We’re continuing to improve the results, so please review the assistant’s changes before publishing. Please read the AI Docs for details about adding your own API or connecting a desktop client via MCP.
Download Elements 3.0
In order to run Elements you will need to meet the minimum requirements:
- Requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer.
- Apple Silicon or Intel based Mac.
The trial mode in Elements has the following limitations:
- No publishing: You can’t upload or publish sites in trial mode.
- No export: Exporting project files is disabled.
- Maximum of 3 pages: You can only add up to three pages per project.
Save 45% for the launch
To celebrate the release of Elements 3.0, you can currently save 45% on Elements.
If you’re still building with RapidWeaver Classic and Stacks, now’s a good time to move across. The new AI Assistant can help you rebuild your existing site in Elements, from putting together layouts to bringing across your content.
Moving to Elements means rebuilding your site, so your Classic themes and Stacks won’t transfer directly. But with the assistant to help and 45% off for the launch, there’s never been a better time to get started.
Buy Elements Today and Save 45%
Use coupon code crossgrade at checkout.
What’s new in Elements 3.0
Here’s a closer look at some of the major changes.
AI Assistant (Beta)
- Build layouts and pages using components and templates, write or update content, and create custom components with the assistant.
- Get help with SEO checks, page titles, metadata and CMS blogs. The assistant can also troubleshoot your project, update settings and publish your site.
- Connect your own OpenAI or Anthropic API key, or use the new Elements MCP server with compatible AI apps. Settings now show which features each provider supports and link to setup guides.
- AI Memory keeps track of each project’s styles, design guidelines and changes.
- Generate images through OpenAI, with automatic conversion to JPEG for the web. The assistant can also create Markdown and CSV files and search the web for information and resources.
Design tools and starter projects
- Updated all built-in themes to Tailwind CSS 4.3.2, with revised shadows and corner radii, plus new Mauve, Olive, Mist and Taupe colour palettes.
- Added Mask, 3D Transforms and Shapes components, including support for text that flows around custom shapes.
- Added radial and conical gradients, shadow colour and opacity controls, and more hover and mirrored scaling options.
- Added Site Search so visitors can find content on your website.
- Added eight starter projects: Waitlist, Burger Co, Astra, Kinetic, Profile, Yonder, Wellness and Consultant.
- Refreshed existing starter projects with updated content, previews and fixes. Projects are now sorted alphabetically, and Asterra’s Three.js effects run in the editor.
- Improved styling consistency across components, including quote styles, dark mode links, corner radii, shadows and background overlays. A legacy option restores Tailwind 3 tap-to-hover behaviour on touch devices.
Editing your website
- Opening projects, switching pages and working with Globals are faster. The canvas now previews Three.js and other ES modules directly.
- Added Markdown Preview, plus separate Hide in Editor and Do Not Publish options for components.
- Create pages, files and folders from the Pages + button. Rename custom components from their context menu, with automatic numbering to prevent duplicate names.
- Pasting text now preserves links, formatting and line breaks, including content copied from RapidWeaver Classic.
- Improved image imports and editing: more reliable drag and drop, preserved WebP and AVIF transparency, and a Reveal Resource action to locate images quickly.
- Made Inspector labels and settings clearer, improved scrolling, and fixed disappearing toolbar text, image update issues and incorrect resource links.
- Fixed small-screen header layouts, iPhone menu scrolling, menus staying open and active navigation states. Accordions now support full keyboard operation, and modal anchor links work correctly on Android Chrome.
Images, media and content
- Galleries now support lightbox captions and author details, remote image folders, and optional thumbnail resizing and lazy loading for large collections.
- Tables can use Google Sheets or local and remote CSV files, automatically detect CSV delimiters, and include Drop Zones. Search, sorting, pagination and editor previews are more reliable, with optional First and Last buttons and translatable pagination text.
- Audio players now offer volume controls and elapsed time, with a fix for the progress scrubber.
- Video lightboxes now respect playback settings and work independently. Improved Vimeo muting, custom and CMS thumbnails, and poster images in previews and published pages.
- Improved the Online CMS Editor on mobile, added a wider resizable metadata sidebar, and made content handling more reliable when metadata contains errors.
- Fixed CMS post creation and YouTube embeds, improved image alt text support, and made metadata consistent across the Online Editor and connected tools.
- Added configurable upload limits for the Online Editor and MCP server, and control over the number of items in RSS feeds.
Publishing and reliability
- Saving and exporting are faster, especially when pages are unchanged. Published pages are smaller, with more reliable generation of styles.
- Added optional Markdown copies of your pages and a root llms.txt file to help AI tools read your site. Markdown copies are enabled by default for new projects.
- Components that need PHP now prompt you to change the page extension. Containers also support custom HTML attributes.
- Fixed FTP publishing crashes, occasional page markup corruption and shared asset changes failing to trigger publishing.
- Fixed several editing crashes, a rare blank login screen and inconsistent component updates. Diagnostic reports now include recent actions and undo history to help investigate problems.
- Google Fonts now retry loading and show clearer errors. Updated CMS and Forms dependencies to address security vulnerabilities, and fixed a PHP 8.5 issue affecting licence data.
- Component developers can now declare PHP requirements and restrict accepted resource file types.
Give Elements 3.0 a try and let us know how you get on. We’d love to see what you build with the new components and the assistant, so please share your sites below.
Cheers,
Dan & Team Elements
JOB!