Getting Familiar With RW - Part 3 of 3

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I am moving towards going all in with RapidWeaver… But, I still have one top level topic I am trying to wrap my head around, the use of Frameworks in RW. I have a basic understanding of Bootstrap and Foundation and if I had to chose one over the other I may lean more towards Foundation as it seems to take more of a mobil first approach, which I am forcing myself to move towards. That being said both seem to be fantastic frameworks with a fine group of people behind them.

When it comes to how frameworks inside of RW work or are needed, I am a little foggy. I want to be sure I begin down a path that will facilitate my long term goals.

Thank you for your assistance,
Dave

Long Term Goals

  • All architecture and code output from RW will move forward with the ever evolving standards of the web

  • The use of more advanced web app technology (PHP and mySQL)

  • I am currently wearing a lot of hats which includes development of my companies sites so it’s important to keep things extremely efficient. As time goes on others will be taking over what I am personally doing so I want to be sure that what ever development tool I am using is producing a final product that is sensibly laid out so a professional who may work more hands on could pop things into a code editor and move forward.

Questions

  1. It appears to be clear that If I go with RapidWeaver as my development tool of choice, I am also going with Stacks if I want any form of custom control?

  2. Also it appears that RapidWeaver requires the use of a Theme?

  3. I see that there are some Blank Themes which appear to be for this exact custom workflow approach. What do these Blank Themes do/contain, meaning are they the basic shell of a page e.g. HEAD, BODY and such, or do they serve some other purposes?

  4. Does RapidWeaver require the use of a framework like Bootstrap or Foundation in its themes and more importantly the Blank Themes?

  5. I have looked deep into Joe’s Foundation Theme which appears to be quite complete but see that a lot of themes and stacks seem to have Bootstrap in mind. If I go the Foundation rout will I be more limited?

  6. If I go the Blank Theme rout is the sky the limit but the responsibility for architecting my stacks rests on me, e.g. I need to properly float, assign percentages and such?

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You do not HAVE to go with Stacks, if you know enough code, then you can do what you want in a Styled Text plugin page or markdown page, but if you knew that much, why use RapidWeaver? You want to make it easier on yourself is my guess, so then yes, you will need to use stacks.

Also it appears that RapidWeaver requires the use of a Theme?

Yes, you will need to choose a theme to work with RapidWeaver

I see that there are some Blank Themes which appear to be for this exact custom workflow approach. What do these Blank Themes do/contain, meaning are they the basic shell of a page e.g. HEAD, BODY and such, or do they serve some other purposes?

Depends on the theme, you can use the Foundation theme and code if you want. Some blank themes will also give you the navigation system, some you will need to use navigation stacks.

Does RapidWeaver require the use of a framework like Bootstrap or Foundation in its themes and more importantly the Blank Themes?

No, the theme developers can use whatever they want to make their themes, some developers do use those frameworks though.

I have looked deep into Joe’s Foundation Theme which appears to be quite complete but see that a lot of themes and stacks seem to have Bootstrap in mind. If I go the Foundation rout will I be more limited?

Why would you be limited, Foundation is one of the most highly respected frameworks out there, there are many developers that use it to base their themes off of. Both frameworks are good and will make good sites.

If I go the Blank Theme rout is the sky the limit but the responsibility for architecting my stacks rests on me, e.g. I need to properly float, assign percentages and such?

If you go with a standard theme, you will still need to properly float and do other things. Not just with blank themes.

Hope this helped.

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Hello Robert…

Thanks for the input. I do see that you can just drop raw code into RapidWeaver and yes if I had the time or that level of development competence I would use something like Coda to bake up our site not RW. Having said that, I prefer a tool that will generate the majority if not all the code but I do need the ability to get under the hood when necessary. I am learning how to do that in the RapidWeaver app as well as I have been made aware of other 3rd party stacks that allow for some creative ways to deploy code based solutions inside the stacks workflow.

In regards to the Foundation Theme, my question was in reference to using other stacks with it. I do see some third party stacks on the site but I have seen the mention of Bootstrap quite a bit in the RW community. Just want to be clear as it would seem that Bootstrap might take a slightly different approach under the hood from that of Foundation and not sure if the creators of stacks need to be taking varied frameworks in mind when designing and developing them.

Since you represent the Foundation Theme, which is quite amazing by the way, do I have anything to be concerned with in regards to 3rd party stacks? One such example is Will’s “Builder” stack. It looks quite interesting and I could see needing to use it occasionally.

Kind Regards,
Dave

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We have only seen 1 stack that just does not seem to work in Foundation, all other stacks work without issues, UNLESS the stacks need the theme, so the Pure theme/stacks and BootSnap theme/stacks will not work in Foundation, as they need the accompanying theme to work.
Hope that makes sense!

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Thanks Robert… That all seems to make sense, and that is good news because I love what I have seen of the Foundation Theme.

Now it’s almost time to… Go Forth and Make My Website Great. :wink:

Regards,
Dave

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Would value a little more input… I believe I am clear on all other points but still a little foggy on the third question, let me reframe it to better clarify.

Question
Are themes such as the ThemeFlood Blank Theme designed for a total custom work flow, thus requiring the user to either add additional HTML and CSS or varied stacks to achieve the necessary elements and styling to publish a valid page, or do they serve some other purpose? In short what is a blank theme for in the RapidWeaver workflow?

Your patience and input with all my inquiries is most appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Dave