Learning Foundation 6?

Classic General
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I am brand new to Joe Workman’s Foundation 6 but maybe should have looked more before I leaped. It’s pretty overwhelming but maybe wouldn’t appear so complex if I’d first acquired Foundation 1 to begin with.

As best as I can understand it, the original Foundation 1 set of stacks is an implementation of an open source web design framework–also called Foundation.

Some good news. Joe Workman mentioned in one of his videos that he’s now the primary gatekeeper/master of Foundation, so he’s investing his blood, sweat, and tears in all things Foundation going forward.

He’s got his heart in this. That’s no small thing. That’s a big thing.

Maybe 6-7 months ago Joe released his updated version of the Foundation Stacks, called Foundation 6 (F6), and a few weeks ago he announced the release of 25 F6 tutorial videos here 25 New Foundation 6 Tutorials. Why F6 Changes the Game!.

The link there goes to Joe’s YouTube playlist of these video tutorials https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwL8Kl4ijMq9cBtV5mJAoxqcwDqj1mut.

On the right hand side of the page is a list of not just 25 videos but 59 videos. They are numbered 1-59.

The video in the #1 position is titled, “Why Foundation 6 Stacks Changes the Game.” For someone trying to learn Foundation 6 is this the first video they should watch?

The second video is “Utility Classes in Foundation 6 Stacks.” Is this the second video a person seeking to learn Foundation 6 should watch?

The third video in the playlist is “Utility Class Pros and Cons in Foundation 6 Stacks.”

Here’s why I’m asking. In the first video, “Why Foundation 6 Stacks Changes the Game,” Joe mentions how “swatches” in F6 changes everything, but of the 59 videos, the first one that mentions the word “swatches” in the title is 28th on the list; It’s not even in the first 25. I find this more than confusing.

The second video that mentions the word swatches is 30th on the playlist, “Site Styles Swatch Selectors in Foundation 6 Stacks.”

The third video in the playlist of 59 videos that includes the word swatches is the 33rd video, “Organizing Swatches in Site Styles for Foundation 6 Stacks.”

Question: Is the most recommended sequence for learning F6 the sequence as it exists in the YouTube playlist? What about the other 34 videos? Are they in the most-recommended order? Some of the videos are over an hour long. I’m not complaining; if it’s well worth it to spend an hour+ to figure out how this all works, I’m all in, but I’d just like to know what’s the most-recommended order of things, because right now there doesn’t seem to be an orderly order to these tutorials.

I’m asking because conceptually, I’m still working to first wrap my head around Foundation 6 because it appears to be so, so different from building a web site in RW via the traditional theme.

If there’s a way to learn F6 faster and less haphazardly, I’d like to do that.

  1. In comparison, I have looked at Foundry 2 as well, but in the end I opted to go with F6 because it looks like the real juice of Foundry can only be acquired through the purchase of additional addons that could cost an additional $150+, plus the lower-than-Foundation6-cost-of-just-$89.

However, Foundry does include a dedicated web page of an entire series of well-organized tutorials to walk Foundry users through how to build sites quickly in a step-by-step process.

For those who own both Foundation and Foundry, would it be helpful to watch the Foundry video tutorials to also better understand Foundation?

Thanks.

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Thanks for the great feedback. I saw your email as well from Friday night but have not had a chance to reply yet. Last night I did reorder the YouTube playlist video a bit in order to be a bit more logical in its progression.

I am also working on a new dedicated website for Foundation 6 with full blown demos that will give users a better overview of the vast features that F6 brings.

Remember that the Foundry 2 update and Foundation 6 updates are completely different. Foundry 2 was an update onto an existing system/website/documentation. While I gave everyone an upgrade discount to Foundation 6, it’s not an upgrade. It’s a completely new product in every sense. There is literally zero code that was brought over from Foundation 1. Since everything is new I could not piggyback on the 5 years of docs and tutorials that I had for Foundation 1. It’s getting there though.

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Thanks @joeworkman. I’m looking forward to the F6 tutorial site.

I did watch the 3 Swatch videos, which are helpful, but I felt like this was the tip of the iceberg, and that the iceberg really isn’t just an iceberg but more likely all of Artica and probably Antartica too.

F6 does look like it could be a major timesaver, but there’s a conceptual framework I’m still working to understand.

A couple of requests.

Can you provide a list of five or six (or however many) must-do’s to be included in every F6 built site?

For example, what’s on the Home page? Is that where Site Styles and Swatches live? Or are those partialed and placed on every page?

Maybe to better explain these things, can you build out a simple 3-page (or so) web site as a Project File or demo file that’s built with F6 that we could download? Nothing fancy, just something basic that we could look under the hood to see the underlying architecture? Maybe something that’s got a home page, a contact form, a photo gallery, and an about page, something like that?

Another question. Are other Stacks compatible with F6 or is that something we’ll just have to try out and see? I’m wondering specifically about the Poster 1 stack from @instacks.

I’ve got a blog-site project that I promised a client, and I wanted to build it with F6 so as to build their site while also learning F6, as I promised them a super-fast site that’s likely to reach strong rankings fairly quickly.

Thanks Joe.

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There are some downloadable project files here:

In case you did not know.

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I did not know. Thank you very much.

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Yes. It definitely is the tip of the iceberg. How big is the iceberg? I have no clue. I like to build products that are infinity extensible by you. I don’t want to hinder your creative abilities with artificial constraints and limiting settings. I have already seen users build things with F6 that I never imagined doing when I created this.

Site Styles needs to be included. That is really it. There are no “must dos”. I am not sure what you are looking for.

Site Styles can be placed in a partial so that your styles can be leveraged across your entire site. Have to watched the F6 for beginners live stream? I think that it’s the 2nd video in the playlist mentioned above.

This has already been done. The link to the project file is on the Foundation product page. It also has a link there to the live stream of me building that project. This is the same page that @zeebe linked to above. (Thanks Robb)

Also make sure that you check out the free templates (download on the product page). They are a great way to get started and with using some pre-made components.

Always assume that any stack will work in Foundation. In fact I will go as far as saying that you should always assume that any stack will always work with any other stack.

The only exception to that rule is trying to mix frameworks. Eg. Using Foundry inside of Foundation. Some devs make extra addons that only work in their framework. I don’t do that. All of my stacks will work in any framework.

Nothing has the combination of power and performance of F6 at the moment.

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Is there a showcase for some of those on your website? I would love to see what we are creating!

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We have been posting a lot of great content on our instagram feed…

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@davidfreels: Thanks for posting. I am in the same boat. I’m a retired non-programmer volunteer using Rapid Weaver to develop some web sites for a few environmental non-profits in my area. My first site was with Foundry, but switched to Foundation 1 for the second and vastly more complicated site. I just can’t get my head around F6. It’s not that I am incapable—I just can’t figure out how to even get started. It doesn’t seem that the conceptual framework that is used everywhere else in Rapid Weaver is of much use in F6. I have spent days (weeks!) trying to recreate my existing site, and seem to be stymied at every turn. Most of the YouTube videos weren’t up at the time. I don’t mind starting with a blank page. But in my case, I am starting with my existing site, and thus I know what the F6 end-product is supposed to be. So, conceptual framework of Foundation 6. That’s what I’m not getting.

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@YankeeLaker Please go through my replies above. I would be interested to know if you viewed the current state of tutorials better for you now.

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@joeworkman: I will do that.

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Brad–thank you for your reply. It’s always good to know that I’m not entirely crazy. There is a lot to bite off and chew with F6. I downloaded the project files and have been going in and playing around with those to get a handle on this.

It looks to me like we could probably build out a site and then save the whole thing as a template for other/future sites.

I own several ElixirGraphics themes as well as many from Nick Cates as well. These guys have incredible art direction skills that I don’t have, and their themes come with pre-built color selections for various sections of their themes. I’m going into the Master Styles of those themes and choosing their color choices to build out color choices for Site Styles in F6, then saving those Site Styles as Externals so I can drop those now-pre-made Site Styles into F6-built projects. I don’t know how else to do this.

It would be great to have some pre-built Site Styles, but there aren’t any Master Style settings in F6, so it’s a DIY.

Still, once built, these pre-builts become the basis for future projects and probably 90% of building a site (for me) is in the art direction component, which I do find tedious.

Another real advantage of F6 is it dramatically reduces the site load time required for site visitors. This will become increasingly important for SEO and can’t be overemphasized.

I think the web frame skeleton is probably the future for RapidWeaver. We hardly see the release of purely new themes anymore, but we are seeing more and more releases of specific-framework-based themes/stack collections, first with the original Foundation1, then Foundry, Foundry2, Source, UIkit, and then there’s another term I’ve seen floating around for awhile Bootstrap, which I’m guessing is another framework, though I don’t know for sure.

I started using RapidWeaver originally because its basic promise was drag-and-drop web site construction. You didn’t have to first learn coding.

As time has gone on, I’ve learned it’s helpful to learn some coding. When @joeworkman constructed Weavers.Space, he promised “Amazing Websites. Zero Code.” I guess this is technically true with Foundation 6. There is some manual entry of data to direct Site Styles and Swatches to do what you want them to do, and that data in turn becomes code–as best I can tell.

I’m not complaining. I’m learning.

Even if I’m still not technically coding, I might be rubbing up right against it with F6. So far I haven’t been bitten. It doesn’t hurt.

There’s something else about Joe Workman and Foundation 6. I think he’s not only changed RapidWeaver but also Stacks. He’s making both RW and Stacks better, and that’s incredible. One more thing. Since Joe’s overseeing development of the actual underlying Foundation Framework, he is fully-invested in this.

He really does have his heart in this. He is emotionally invested in making sure you and me and all other F6 users are successful in our endeavors, and you can bank on that.

That’s not a small thing; that’s a huge thing.

That’s why I bought in.

Fasten your seat belt. We’re going places.

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Wow. Thank you for the very thoughtful response. I am glad that the hard work and dedication has come through. :slight_smile:

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I have switched from F1 to F6. Struggling with some concepts, but I am very enthusiastic. It seems indeed like a great product… I am very confident my new website is going to be 100x better…

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Can you provide a list of five or six (or however many) must-do’s to be included in every F6 built site?

Site Styles needs to be included. That is really it. There are no “must dos”. I am not sure what you are looking for.

Maybe to better explain these things, can you build out a simple 3-page (or so) web site as a Project File or demo file that’s built with F6 that we could download?

This has already been done. The link to the project file is on the Foundation product page. It also has a link there to the live stream of me building that project. This is the same page that @zeebe linked to above. (Thanks Robb)

Also make sure that you check out the free templates (download on the product page). They are a great way to get started and with using some pre-made components.

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