@dylan is correct in that Ben does not work on the RapidWeaver app (to my knowledge). I know that he maintains the RapidWeaver community site and is in charge of producing the training videos. I am sure that the paid courses help fund the efforts to maintain and keep improving those components of the community.
You cannot fault Realmac for developing apps and trying to grow their business. While all of that was happening users would whale on Realmac for not giving more attention to RapidWeaver. Now that RapidWeaver is their main focus, we are continuing to criticize them for those attempts. FYI, ButtonBuilder/ThemeBuilder became RapidWeaver.
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If it wasnāt for those free tutorial video by Joe on RW + Foundation stack, I would never had brought RW and stacks in the first place.
If a course was created with a series of video along with project files to practice with then yes I can understand the need to charge for the time to create those courses but this is different than creating a 15-30 minutes tutorial video and charging a hundred or more for it.
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All - I just thought I would remind you that the MOST comprehensive set of training videos can be found on http://www.rapidweaverclassroom.com created by Ryan Smith. You pay a monthly fee - there are 2 levels āUndergradā & āGraduateā. Charging therefore is similar to Lynda.com. In my opinion, these videos are hard to beat. I havenāt used the site for awhile but might go back for a 1 month period.
Ryan modifies developers videos, adding more detail & clarity - so am surprised that this classroom is not the main depository for all training videos.
The quality of http://www.rapidweaverclassroom.com videos is exceptionally good, and Iām amazed that any one might want to compete.
The point is, that a FREE MARKET exists and as with everything in the RW ecosystem there are cost comparisons that can be made.
I suppose the limitation of http://www.rapidweaverclassroom.com is it takes some time for Ryan to catch up as when @joeworkman launched such large projects like Foundation & Total CMS. Joes videos were good enough to get me going with my new, wonderful tools.
VIVA Rapidweaver: VIVA @joeworkman et al.
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It seems to me that RW has stalled. Since it became little more than a Stacks platform, it has lost value. Plugins that I relied on in the past have been replaced with awkward stacks that are extremely inefficient and frustrating to work with. Itās a platform running a platform with a bunch of third-party add-ons.
It doesnāt seem like a good design, anymore, and has become increasingly daunting to work with.
Iām switching.
@iansinclair Youāre in a minority with this criticism. I know you canāt switch to some easier or better product. So good luck and goodbye.
@iansinclair Hi, I understand your point of view. For me, Stacks is a gift and I can finally use a framework like Foundry to built sites the way I want to do it. I do not have to rely on default Plugins and/or themes any longer. For you, you can check out blocs (https://blocsapp.com) but from what I read in the forums, there is still a lot to do manually. Other than that you can use Wordpress - but please use a secure builder like DIVI (https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/) otherwise you are in severe danger of your websites being hacked.
All the best for you!
Jan
Thanks for the tips.
Editing a plugin like Accordion was a breeze. None of the accordion stacks are useable in the same way. Stacks is not practical for large content. And there is very little interest in developing stand-alone plugins. Yourhead apparently has no plans to make a responsive version of the Accordion plugin. The add-ons list includes 1031 stacks. But there are only 16 stand-alone plugins, including The Stacks platform and Blocks.
Rapidweaver is clearly no longer practical for sites with large content the way it once was.
I am in the minority because no one who doesnāt like Stacks is still using RW for large sites.
Sorry. I this is my last rant.
Yes, I agree totally.
I have wondered for a while now what the future holds for RapidWeaverā¦is there a future for RW??
Is it still in development?
Will there be a RW v8?
It seems to be a bit stale at the moment and full width websites are now the only way forward and RW and Stacks has an issue here. Yes I know ExtraContent and Foundation are part solutions but then what is the future for theme developers?
Just questions and I sincerely hope that RW has a long and prosperous future as Iām a big fan and look forward to version 8.
Cheers to allā¦
Scott
Iām amazed that you think it seems a bit āstaleā at the moment. Thereās new stuff coming out all the time that really pushes the boundaries of what you can do with RW. In terms of technical development I think the Rapidweaver scene is in rude health.
Rob
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@iansinclair You seem to view āPluginsā as something different and preferable to Stacks etc. The Plugins were OK in the past but they lacked variability and Stacks with its hundreds of (some very powerful) stacks surpassed their usefulness. There are some fantastic āaccordionsā designed for stacks which are much more impressive than that plugin.
Since its early conception as a replacement for Macās Web Builder, Rapidweaver is now 100 times more powerful with its supports for addons. Realmac & Yourhead have a symbiotic relationship. A couple of versions ago Realmac had to take a big developement hit, converting it to 64 Bit (canāt use 32 bit applications on new versions of MAC OS), plus it had to conform to what MAC call Sandboxing - if they had not done this work RW would have stagnated. MAC Format rates it as the best Web Builder and that takes some doing.
Iām pretty sure RW Version 8 will come sometime, but with 7.5 as a very stable version there is no rush. In the meantime the devs are producing Framework solutions (Foundation, Foundry etc), CMS solutions and some great stuff that takes advantage of HTML5 & CSS3. Rapidweaver can compete with old biggies like Dreamweaver (which WAS my favourite), but really RW is so much faster to use to get the same results.
With all the tools available it is possible to produce sites that are the ābest on the WEBā. The area that could be more powerful I suppose is for large scale E-Commerce, but maybe thatās a bridge to far. Having said that @joeworkman is not afraid of jumping into the big stuff.
Finally, I think a lot of the downside reflected in the Forums are from users who clearly have not tried to exploit the application to its fullest ( @dan ).
Hi Rob,
Yes, there is new stuff coming out and yes it does push the boundaries on what you can do within RWā¦but that is within RW.
I still feel that RW and Stacks need to do more on the full width 100% front.
Not sure what you mean by ārude healthā?
Cheers Scott
Can you explain this a little more?
Google is your friend.(Or, given recent events, not).
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rude-health
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Thereās new stuff coming out all the time that really pushes the boundaries of what you can do with RW
RW or Stacks/Themes? The page type plugin that holds RW up and the theme files being produced by forward thinking third party designers? Just checking.
In terms of technical development I think the Rapidweaver scene is in rude health.
The RW scene or the theme and Stacks scene? Again just checking.
Why do I say this? Well, lets look back at the RW core release notes from oooh lets say October 13th 2017 till present. A mere six monthās -ish of updates. About eight bugfixes, if I am reading it correctly. I think thats it; happy to stand corrected.
Show us the innovation roadmap. Is there one? Where are we going and how will we get there? What is the future for the RW Core? An annual message on the forums from RMS inviting us, yet again, to suggest features?
Hinting that things are going to improve, but for reasons which cannot be disclosed to minions like me is not worth the breath used in the saying of it and is instantly dismiss-able.
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I think you seem to be missing the point.
Stacks is a platform for plugins. Everything that is stacked on top of stacks is a plugin with built in limits. As such, the Stacks plugin is a dead end for Rapidweaver. With no other significant plugins under development, RW is soon going to perish.
From a design perspective, Stacks is an appealing trap. But it is a trap nonetheless.
Editing any significant amount of content in an accordion stack is a F@##ing NIGHTMARE, and no one worth more than 0.5 quid per hour is going to have time for that.
Free-standing plugins allow for brilliant and continuous design innovation. Stacks-on-Stacks is like a game of Jenga. It looks orderly and pretty at first. But it quickly becomes slow and stress-inducing with an inevitable point of failure due to its very limited directions for expansion.
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@klaatu @iansinclair The pair of you talk such rubbish, that itās difficult to have a discussion on the future of RW and I wonder if either of you have actually published a WEB Site.
@robbeattie got it right RW is in even āruderā health and will remain so in the long term.
OMG. I cannot stand this thread any longer. RW8 exists. I have a beta of it on my machine right now. I like it. When its ready for public consumption, I am sure that you will hear about it. I will not say any more than that. As I said before, the future is bright. 
@dan, I am sorry for letting the cat out of the bag.
I graciously disagree with many of your opinions on this thread. However, you are entitled to have them. We will simply have to agree to disagree.
The old paradigm of page plugins do not hold up to todayās web standards. The Accordion plugin is a prefect example actually. What (good) webpage have you see today that has just an accordion on it? Maybe with a bit of content above/below itā¦ The Stacks plugin has perfected content creation. Does that mean that RapidWeaver cannot come up with new interesting page types? No.
It also does not mean that there isnāt the possibility of creating more plugin types by 3rd party developers. I have ideas for non-content plugins that will help us manage our website and related data. In the mean time, Realmac has actually added some of my ideas (some based on my feedback) into the core of the product, making my plugin ideas obsolete. However, I still have not completed my vision for what we can do on the content side (with Stacks). I am almost there.
We can talk all day with theoretical discussions about where would RapidWeaver be without Stacks. But I live in the real world, where the fact is that RapidWeaver and Stacks do co-exist. Its a beautiful system that allows us to create amazing websites and together, while simultaneously building a wonderful community.
Both RapidWeaver and Stacks get their power from their extensibility. On their own, without 3rd party developers, neither would be as successful. Why? Because instead of having 1-2 developers making one product work, you create an ecosystem where there are dozens of developers making the entire system better for everywhere.
So letās revisit the title of this thread. What is Realmacās purpose? I think that their purpose if to give they entire ecosystem a solid base. To me, this meansā¦
- Have a theme engine so that users can easily create beautiful webpages.
- Give the ability to generate basic content for a webpage.
- Provide a publishing platform so users can publish a site to their server.
- Provide the basics that we need for every webpage: meta tags, page title, analytics code, custom CSS/JS, etc.
- Generate required data for basic SEO: sitemap.xml & robots.txt data
- Make all of this extensible so that 3rd party developers can allow for more advanced workflows. 3rd party developers can also roll with the design trends and release smaller components faster. Remember, dozens of developers is better than 1-2.
I think that RapidWeaver accomplishes all of that and more. By itself, it allows you to create a decent basic website. You can take it to the next level by purchasing 3rd party themes and Stacks. The latter obviously, unlocks an entirely new part of the ecosystem.
Funny enough, if we look at the Stacks plugin itself, it takes the same exact approach as RapidWeaver does. It provides a solid base for a better way to create content. Have you looked at the default stacks that come with the plugin? You cannot get much more basic than that. So why is Stacks so powerful? Because it allows 3rd party developer to extend upon that content foundation and make things that are more advanced and can take advantage or fastest design trends.
The Stacks API is so powerful that is has allowed developers like myself to really take things to entirely new heights. While my Foundation theme and stacks were not the first of its kind, I definitely feel that it was a major motivating factor in the ecosystem to thinking bigger. I have been working for 3 years now on my Total CMS product. I feel that this another ground breaking product that has unleashed new levels to how we all build website for ourselves and our customers.
So I say it again, the future is bright! RapidWeaver is providing a stronger foundation that allows theme developers and Stacks to do more things than we could before. The Stacks plugin is becoming more powerful which allows developers like me to make things that will blow your mind. I will do that this year, I guarantee it. I look forward to enjoying the ride with everyone here.
[drops mic]
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I think this thread has been great, donāt think anybody has gotten suspended from the forum yet.
I donāt think anyone doubts that there will be an RW8. I think people would like to have some idea of what features are coming. Itās in private beta testing now, so one would assume thereās a good roadmap of whatās to come.
How bright the future for RapidWeaver is only time will tell.
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The original post was questioning the selling of tutorials by Realmac:
The subject has wandered around because of the title.