Hi, a friend of mine has contacted me about making a blog website for her. All the sites I have made so far have not used stacks and I would go with the standard rapidweaver blog page if I could find a way for her to update the blog without the rapidweaver software. I have found a few posts here that address this but all are a year old a minimum. This has led to a few questions:
I see there is a Rapidblog - Plugin that uses Blogger.com blog and then BlogStack that uses typed.com blog. How does a set up like this work? Is the blog just hosted on Blogger.com / typed.com and the rapidweaver site just mirror this? Are these sites just a portal and everything is hosted through our rapidweaver site? I assume using WordPress and WP-Blog plug in is the same set up like Blogger.com and typed.com?
I have looked into Armadillo and there is alot of information on their website and I am still trying to absorb it all but is their $40 price a one time price or is there a monthly fee as well? I have also read that it is overkill but I am not sure why.
I am seeing people mention the tumblr stack but I am familiar with tumblr and don’t really consider it a blog, is there a separate tumblr blog?
Does anyone have a way to do this they recommend? Is there a method I have overlooked so far? There is alot of information and alot of ways to do this it seems and I am in a bit of information overload.
You can use Armadillo on as many sites as you want. There is not a monthly fee: just a one time purchase. (I suppose there could be upgrade to pay for at some time in the future, but that’s not unusual.)
Armadillo is a multi-purpose CMS. It will allow your friend to create blog posts from a web login. But it will also allow her to change entire or partial non-blog pages if that is needed.
Great product. There are other options out there also, but it’s the best one I know of given all my needs taken into consideration. There’s a very good more high-powered solution by Joe Workman that is $99 per site. If you need the extra features then it might be the way to go.
I’d second everything @Mathew said about Armadillo - it’s a great product - but like most of the other offerings here it’s Stacks-based.
I’d recommend you steer clear of the RapidBlog plugin. In its day it was a fantastic product that did a great job of integrating a Blogger blog pretty seamlessly into Rapidweaver. Indeed, it still works and I have it running on a few sites. But the developer has said he’s unsure about Rapidblog’s future, so at the very leas, approach with caution.
I think the easiest way to get a blog your friend can update is to use Tumblr and then integrate it into Rapidweaver using Will Woodgate’s free MicroBlog stack. Unless she’s doing anything fancy, I would have thought that Tumblr will be a good fit. It’ll certainly handle text, photos, galleries and videos.
There’s also RW Writer which has a small one-off cost and then a monthly subscription fee - or it did when Blueball sold it; now it’s under the Yuzool banner there might be a slightly different pricing model. Yuzool also sells the Pulse CMS which has a built-in blog.
Like I say, for a quick and dirty - but effective - blog, I’d look at a Tumblr/MicroBlog combination, on the understanding that anything that relies on a third party to deliver the functionality is subject to that third party’s whims.
If you want to control your own blog and store everything on your own server and still update it from anywhere, then I think Armadillo’s a great choice.
You can also use Total CMS by Joe Workman. This will give you the ability to set up your own look of the blog and the look of the admin section. https://total-cms.com
I have used RapidBlog to turn unranked websites into Google top 10 rankings. I think RB is the biggest weapon in RapidWeaver’s SEO toolbox, and it’s my wish that Isaiah and YourHead create an update.
I’ve asked several times for insight into whatever issues are preventing ongoing development but to date I’ve not heard any specifics.
Thank yall for the answers. I have been reading the faq’s on Armadillo and I think I grasp the concept. So if I go with something like Armadillo, you really only use rapidweaver to set the theme, colors, logo, etc with your homepage being a stacks page to start into the Armadillo blogging stacks and let Armadillo handle it from there?
Yes, you use Armadillo to add new posts and photos, edit old ones, remove old ones and so forth. RW and Armadillo stacks are there to define where the blog goes on the page, where the blog-related elements go - there’s a blog headlines stack for example which will take a snapshot of the latest blog posts and put them elsewhere on your site - and get the thing set up and linked to your site in the first place.
I am interested in using Armadillo, but these posts are several years old. Is it still being supported and updated. If not, is there anything better for blogging on Rapidwaever?
Hi @barryuk - As @teefers has said, yes, Armadillo continues to be updated and supported - likewise, v3 continues to be in development. Fun fact, I got the idea for Armadillo way back in 2009 and started working on it in 2010, and the version 3 upgrade includes, among many other things, a significant overhaul of the underlying code to bring it in line with how modern standards have changed since that time.
I do, however, prioritize answering support queries over v3 development, and with a full time job as well that means progress on v3 is not as quick as I would like. But rest assured it continues and announcements will be made as we get closer to release.
Hi Jonathan. Delighted to read this. I used Armadillo several years ago, until circumstances in my life changed. I remember it fondly, and I was always delighted with it. Now that have returned to the UK, I have started blogging again, looked for several alternatives and can find nothing better than Armadillo. Thank you for your reassurance, I will start using it again this week! Kind regards, Barrie