RapidWeaver Elements 2.4.3 Now Available

Announcements
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Hey Weavers,

We’ve got a great little release for you today, it contains a whole host of component fixes as as a tonne of CMS fixes and improvements :tada:

What’s New in 2.4.3

  • Added a “Start At” time property to the Video Component
  • Ensured the lightbox close button is clickable, including for video on mobile
  • Deprecated the Image component’s imageAlt field in favor of the standard alt attribute
  • Added Hero and Tabler icon sets to Core resources
  • Upload to support now goes to new support system
  • Fixed dark mode icon colors, including Accordion SVG close state icons
  • Fixed the search input background color
  • Prevented the Modified date from wrapping in editor folder listings
  • Allowed folder relocation for all plans
  • Preserved post bodies when an MCP update omits the body field
  • Improved content path resolution by using the referrer page directory and avoiding duplicated paths
  • Prevented the API from running when the PHP sodium extension is missing

Crossgrade to Elements

Not using Elements yet? Get 25% off when you crossgrade from Blocs, Sitely, or any other Mac-based website builder. The offer also applies to RapidWeaver Classic and Stacks users. Feel free to share the link below, it automatically applies the discount at checkout.

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Get 25% off Elements for macOS today

System Requirements

In order to run Elements you will need to meet the minimum requirements:

  • Requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer.
  • Apple Silicon or Intel based Mac.

The trial mode in Elements has the following limitations:

  • No publishing: You can’t upload or publish sites in trial mode.
  • No export: Exporting project files is disabled.
  • Maximum of 3 pages: You can only add up to three pages per project.

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Download Elements for macOS

How to rollback to a previous build

Should you run into an issues when using a new build of Elements you can always rollback to a previous version via the Release Notes page while you wait for a fix.

The Future of Web Design

Thanks for being part of Elements and for helping us shape the future of web design on the Mac. Your feedback during the beta has been hugely valuable and played a big role in where Elements goes from here.

We’re excited to keep building, refining, and shipping, and we really can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

Thanks
Team Elements

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Oh, and if you’ve yet to dip your toes into the world of the online Elements CMS, now’s the perfect time, check out these two new getting started videos :smiling_face:

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I’ve been following the rollout of Elements and have a few specific questions.

Elements looks great for new users, but I have complex sites that I want to continue using. Will Classic support now end?

I have been using RapidWeaver since 2013 and have four sites:

www.gscookie.co
www.gscobadge.info
www.gsleader.online
www.gsuniform.online

The first two sites use Classic (9.6.8) with Stacks. The second two used pre-Classic RapidWeaver, but www.gsleader.online is based on a stack that was not supported in Classic. It is a static site (magazine archives) but it would be nice to continue modifying it without having to relink 400+ pdf files.

How backward-compatible is Elements? Realmac docs says "The Classic Project Importer is an experimental feature. It can bring over the page structure and settings from your Classic project, but content import is less reliable because many page types cannot be mapped directly to Elements components.”

That is frightening. I am concerned that Elements is another “upgrade” that doesn’t play well with its older versions.

Furthermore, I have not been able to open www.gscookie.co in at least four months without the program immediately crashing. I’ve filed close to 30 reports trying to find a solution and have heard back absolutely nothing. This is not encouraging ahead of a major software change.

All of my sites are hosted thru Bluehost which no longer supports RapidWeaver, only WordPress. Will Bluehost now support Elements?

Right now I have RapidWeaver sites that I can’t edit and a stack of unanswered support requests versus a working WordPress blog supported by happy people who respond to questions within minutes.

Why should I roll the dice with Elements?

Thank you,
Ann Robertson

Ann Robertson
ann@robertsonwriting.com

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Classic is supported and going no where!!! You’re good… :+1:

You would notice speed changes as elements is leaner and faster delivery to client

Even google and duck duck go will rate your website higher for this…

We can help with questions for elements…

Watch some videos on converting classic to elements movies… :movie_camera:

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Hi @arobertson66

Thanks for the thoughtful questions. I’ll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

We are still offering customer support for RapidWeaver Classic, and it is still being developed so that it works on the newest macOS releases when Apple pushes those out.

With that said, new feature releases for Classic have obviously slowed down as we have shifted focus to RapidWeaver Elements, which is the future of RapidWeaver and where we are firmly headed.

Your Classic built sites should continue to work however for the foreseeable future, and if you want to continue to use the RapidWeaver Classic app after we finally close the curtain on its development, you can perhaps keep a copy of the app on an older Mac that you aren’t updating to newer macOS versions on, then you could theoretically use it for a very long time.

This is correct, the Classic to Elements importer is a Beta feature and it cannot import everything from your old RapidWeaver project files. If you are looking to convert your old Classic (or prior) built websites over to Elements without having to do the heavy lifting yourself, we recommend https://pretty-good-websites.com/ (@Fuellemann) as he is offering this as a paid service.

Oh dear, I’m checking in our Help Desk and I’m not seeing any ticket submissions under your Name or email address. Did you submit those support tickets under a different name or email address perhaps?

ann-no-tickets
ann-no-tickets1930×644 33.4 KB

ann-no-tickets-2
ann-no-tickets-21976×644 44.8 KB

I would imagine any crashing is due to a third-party plugin however that is not playing nicely with RapidWeaver..

While RapidWeaver will usually work on any Linux based web hosting provider, most are not tuned specifically for RapidWeaver built sites. That’s why we are recommending our new hosting service https://elementshosting.io/ as we control the web hosting and make sure it works flawlessly with RapidWeaver built sites. :slightly_smiling_face:

If you can send us a support ticket at support@realmacsoftware.com we can certainly take a look and see if there’s anything we can do to get you back up and weaving!

Because Elements is a winning game. :game_die: :game_die: :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I’m pretty sure you’re going to need a reply from @dan to resolve some of this.

First, Bluehost supports sites done with products other than WordPress. No reason why they couldn’t support an Elements site.

“Sites I can’t edit and a stack of unanswered support requests.” This is most likely due to the third-party stacks you’re using, as many have been abandoned by their creators and never upgraded to work with new versions of Rapidweaver or the macOS. This a classic “technology moves on” problem. I’ve been dealing with this problem for 50 years now as file formats change, functions get deprecated, products get abandoned, and more. It’s a bit of the price you pay to try to live in the tech world, unfortunately. However, I hope @dan pops up and tries to resolve whether or not any of your issues are actually RapidWeaver issues.

As to Elements, it’s a big learning curve up front with a huge payoff downstream. There are people here on the forum that can help you deal with getting a RapidWeaver site into Elements form, but that’s going to be a fair amount of work, even though some of it will be automated.

As for WordPress (WP), it’s an interesting case, and as long as all you want is a blog, then a perfectly fine answer. Once you start trying to use it as a site designer, you get into the same issues you do with every other product that opens up an API to third parties. Frankly, virtually all of the WP sites are starting to look alike these days, and because its run on a live database, subject to the usual security issues and necessary updating. There’s no free lunch; every site building choice has its pluses and minuses.

Personally, I’ve look at all the current site design/maintain offerings. I’ve chosen Elements because it allows me to be creative in space where everything in my niche is looking non-creative, provides all the tools I need, is using very current underlying technologies, and should have a long lifecycle (as did RapidWeaver, which lasted over a decade as the premiere Mac user choice).

But no one gets fired for choosing IBM (old quote). These days that would be WP. But my guess is that duplicating your current sites in WP would require just as much learning and work as it would in Elements.