I’m planning to migrate / redesign a current website that I’ve been hosting on my portfolio site to Rapidweaver. It’s currently built using Squarespace, an adequate but woefully slow and clunky platform. It’s apparent that I’ll have to rethink the approach to building the site. I’m beginning to believe that I should build the new site using Stacks 3 and Bricks 2 along . However, I’m open to being persuaded there are better ways to skin a cat!
The last time I used Rapidweaver was 2009 on a rather unusual political website. I’ve been watching RW mature as a product and a development environment but haven’t had hands-on for six years. Can any of you “old-timers” help me climb the learning curve a bit quicker with any (brief) insights you have on how RW has changed and what I’ll have to do differently?
Welcome back to RapidWeaver. I’m sure you will love the way the product has evolved - with the right toolset complementing RW6 there is now next to nothing you cannot do. You also come back to RW at a time when the community is really buzzing with new people, new products and a very positive vibe is in the air.
I looked at your site and thought it was very nice. I did not see anything there that RW + Stacks could not handle. Easily.
RW6 + Stacks3 + A “good” theme + well chosen stacks will see you a very long way.
There are some incredible themes to choose from from the likes of Themeflood, Nick Cates Design, Elixir Graphics, Michael David Design and others too. Check out the Add Ons pages from RealMac and Rapidweaver Central for more details.
Very popular in RW at the moment is building your site to a design of your own making using an ‘open’ or ‘freeform’ theme/template such as Foundation by Joe Workman or Freestack Responsive by BlueBall design, the “Blank” theme by Will Woodgate or even a theme based on the “Pure” framework…
My advice to get moving quickly is to get yourself into RW6 and Stacks3 as soon as possible, download Wills FREE Blank theme and practice arranging stacks on your pages and play with layouts and generally use it as a sandbox to familiarise yourself. Then, if you need to… look around for a different theme (but loads of amazing sites have been made from Blank, so you might not need to).
Post back if you hit any issues or have any questions and I’m sure you’ll get plenty of help.
Thanks for the response. I’m in the process of finishing up the final Musical Notes shows for the year and I’m gradually working into my workflow the tasks necessary to get to the starting line on my site redesign.
To that end, what stacks would you recommend to build my new site to resemble fairly closely my old site? I’m leaning heavily toward using Foundation by Joe Workman as a theme. Not sure why this whole “roll your own” approach didn’t take off many years ago. Maybe it required standing on the shoulders of giants before it all came together.