I’m now about 100 hours into trying to create a personal RapidWeaver website for myself to share with friends, family and whoever else might stumble on to it. I’ve graduated cum laud into the “golden year” thing – now approaching a state of octogenarianism! 
Well, two more years to go! I’m retired with a mountain of crazy photos and tales that I want into my own site. I was teased into the RapidWeaver-dom with an email solicitation from MacPaw “Build your own website without coding.” Sweet. You have my attention! (big sigh)
Confession: Now hopelessly lost.
As I said, now a 100 hours later - it’s time for a builder-tutor. 
I’m looking for a local San Francisco person to assist with “the build.” What I need is the foundation, a theme that has a bit of ‘cool’, a framework that allows me to load picture galleries and sub galleries - handomely viewed on desktop browsers, tablets, iPhones with image to image swiping/squeezing.
With my “beginners” slim awareness of RapidWeaver, once my tutor has created the framework I can hopefully speed forward in ‘solo’ with this “my legacy” website. (I guess a tutor being from San Francisco isn’t the biggest deal breaker in our world of screen-sharing.) Thanks for reading and here’s hoping for some connections.
If, when you say Foundation you mean Foundation, then maybe all you need is this http://hipsterweaver.com/photographer/
I’m sorry - when I wrote “Foundation” it was meant to say I’m hoping the tutor I’m searching for - and I would end with a Template – a pre-made framework ready for additional content to be added. A prefabricated site created with RapidWeaver constructed by someone who has the skills that I haven’t been able to learn.
Also, I did try using “Foundation” the theme. And before jumping into that theme, one of the developers wrote me “Foundation does have a learning curve. Best get some coffee, lol.” Indeed he was right. My trial and errors produced more errors and frustration for me. But that’s me. Foundation the ‘theme’ appears to have high ratings.
I have looked photographic based sites and the best option I can see now is using Joe Workmans Total CMS with a pre-made theme. Using Total CMS (TCMS) gives you the ability to have a blog for content that become ‘new pages’ automatically and it can add photographic galleries so easily and it compresses them so you don’t have to bother doing that yourself before adding them to your site. The ‘template’ LaPan suggested http://hipsterweaver.com/photographer/ is very good and looks superb, I bought it last week. It is configured for a stack called Photo from Nick Cates Design https://nickcatesdesign.com/preview/rapidweaver/photo/?utm_source=realmac-community&utm_medium=listing&utm_campaign=Photo it can be integrated easily into TCMS. Joe Workman’s TCMS isn’t particularly cheap but is evolving at a rapid rate, it is $99 for use on one domain. Hipster Weaver’s theme http://hipsterweaver.com/products/bridge/ would also be a good choice if you wanted to add new galleries regularly as it is already build for TCMS.
I know there are a LOT of choices out there even in a relatively small Rapidweaver universe but you will get an unique looking website in the end.
Hard to say how far you got, Michael, during the first 100 hrs spent with RW. I’d start out simple, simple, get the hang of plain old RW, no fancy plug-ins to enlarge basic functionality from the outset. There’s enough to learn within plain old RW.
Once preliminaries are clear (e.g. general and page specific settings, the stuff under the wrench in RW6 or 7), I’d do a minimal site, entry page and two or three topics with very few nested photos, a short text about circumstances surrounding the images and all with just two plain page types, Text and Photo Album. Deploy one of the free RW 6 or 7 themes and get handy with that ‘wrench’! (E.g. saving custom styles.)
Then view the first effort by exporting (not publishing) the RW site for viewing it locally with a variety of browsers. Now think about page width, fonts, size of photos (check out imageOptim!), backgrounds, link colours. Use the handy preview in RW for different screen sizes.
Then it’s time to explore responsive themes (i.e. new stuff from the last couple of years and preferably with demo site; call it up on a smartphone!). Currently I reorganize my hotch-potch picture site with Rapid-Ideas theme ‘struct’.
After 200 hrs (?!) enlarge your site, with a site layout on paper next to the 'puter. 
I’m in my mid-70s. I’d rather have a simple ‘opus’ done before I fancy it up in demanding frameworks. At my age who knows when it all becomes an estate? It’s not a costly business site, I simply mean to bypass Facebook, Flickr, Pintrest &c., a site for family & friends, easy priced, well structured. But you may be farther ahead and more demanding than me.
Rather distant from SF – Ren
Another option, pending your budget, is Rapidweaver Classroom. The owner offers one-on-one consulting via Skype. Even a quick one hour session might get you sorted and pointed in the right direction and your subsequent questions could probably be covered by video tutorials or forum posts.
Of course, if you can find someone local to go through it with you that’d be great but just another option to consider.
Another option, pending your budget, is Rapidweaver Classroom. The owner offers one-on-one consulting via Skype. Even a quick one hour session might get you sorted and pointed in the right direction and your subsequent questions could probably be covered by video tutorials or forum posts.
Of course, if you can find someone local to go through it with you that’d be great but just another option to consider.
This. RapidWeaver Classroom sounds like it would be right up your alley. Especially his one-on-one services!