Overview please

Hi,
I manage a web sites for my local camera club and have used Rapidweaver for some years. The site is pretty static which means that I only use Rapidweaver a couple of times a year. I have upgraded to version seven of RapidWeaver and have been watching tutorials including those that describe using the stacks plugin combined with “Foundation” and/or “Foundry”.

In the past I have purchased and used 3rd party themes (e.g. from Henk Vrieselaar) and if I remember correctly have edited some of the themes to modify items such as background images etc. Unfortunately I did not take notes and have forgotten what was changed which means maintaining the site has become difficult so I decided to rewrite it.

What I would like to know are the advantages and pitfalls of building and maintaining websites with various RapidWeaver configurations such as:

  1. Vanilla - RW as downloaded with supplied themes.
  2. Additional 3rd party themes.
  3. Plugins such as Yourhead Stacks.
  4. Stacks used with either Foundation or Foundry.

I realise that my questions probably fall into the “how long is a piece of string” category so perhaps I should ask what do I need to buy and use to meet the following requirements:

  1. Site setting made using RapidWeaver GUI rather than editing (hacking) lines of code.
  2. Minimum of HTML etc to be added via GUI.
  3. Reasonable looking site that scales well on phone, tablet and desktop. (Foundation and Foundry make a point of this feature in their videos, is it unique to them?)
  4. Display photos in galleries with titles derived from Exif/IPTC data. (I wish to reduce the time I spend adding titles of images to the site and would like to pass the responsibility for adding titles to the original authors of the images. I would like to tell them to populate the Exif/IPTC data with information they wish displayed.)

Thanks for reading,

Simon

Henk’s themes have been taken over by the excellent @willwood and he may be able to advise you on any specific theme-related queries.

All modern Rapidweaver themes are responsive but the ones that ship with RW are quite limited in what they can do. Nothing wrong with them, but they’re ‘lite’ versions.
I along with almost everyone else in the Rapidweaver universe, would recommend you purchase the Stacks plugin. It gives you access to over 700 little plugins called ‘stacks’ (small ‘s’) which handle all sorts of different layouts like columns and grid, to things like slideshows and galleries and shops and lists, and feature panels and all manner of other great things. Additional ‘stacks’ cost anything between free and about $30.00.

If you only use Rapidweaver occasionally, I’d suggest you find a third party theme you like the look of an use that. Foundation and Foundry are brilliant but they’re frameworks which allow you to build sites from scratch, defining menu type, width, fonts, colours etc. A ‘standard’ theme will do all this for you.

Some developers (for example, @willwood) offer trial versions of their themes so you can try them out before deciding to purchase.

So in your case, I’d recommend buying Stacks, and checking out third party themes to find one where the heavy lifting has already been done for you.

Best of luck,

Rob

ThemeFlood https://www.themeflood.com (proprietor @willwood) has some very good, flexible themes. I particularly like Media.

Thanks Rob,

Your post is really helpful, thank you. I have arrived to much the same conclusion meaning that I need to find a theme rather than purchasing a framework. The problem is finding which one, although thankfully most vendors allow trials before purchase.

Simon

What kind of site? I’ve got a reasonable knowledge of different themes and might be able to recommend a few - at least to start you off.

Well, its nothing to taxing just a site for a local camera club. I’m looking for a theme and/or plug-in that allow slide shows to be displayed across various screen sizes.

It is surprising how many image viewer plugins are available and according to their web sites they are wonderful!

My ideal slide show will read author and caption from an images meta-date and display the information as a title, it would also ensure that each image was displayed against a plain background at a percentage size of the screen real estate.

If you go this route then look at:

I use this stack with files exported from Lightroom where it reads Lightroom’s Title, Caption and Copyright.
Gallery3 can also import from Apple iCloud Albums and Adobe Behance Projects.

Phil, the reading of the image meta data and the ability to create dynamic galleries are exactly the features I’m interested in. My goal is to do as little work as possible when creating the galleries of images. If I can just tell club members to populate a couple of fields of meta data before they send me the images to me it will be a great time saver and the prospect of just adding images to a folder on the server is even better. Thanks.

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