Can someone point me to a video with step by step blog creation in Elements? I know that it replaces the old system and uses CMS. I’d really like a video walkthrough. Thanks in advance!
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This video from Steve W helped me get things working. You have to start and stop it, step by step.
There are 17 steps to do that in my Little Book of Elements CMS. Some of them are a little tricky, plus you have to understand YAML and twig to fully use the CMS. I’d say a video isn’t the way to learn how to do this, as you’ll be stopping it a lot (assuming it explains everything). That’s why I wrote the book. And it’s free at the moment, so I’d try that first.
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Thom, thanks for the reply! where can I get the book?
Mike, thanks for the reply! I’ll check this out!
I have deleted the video as my cleanshot account is nearly maxed out.
Sorry can’t resist
As for videos to explain, YouTube got it wrong, can you read and type or do you have to stop and type in from the page
If you need a video to explain the basics no probs can do another one
@thominator Thom’s written instructions were very helpful to me as well. I sent you Steve’s link only because you asked for a video. I’d also like to know where to get Thom’s Little Book.
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I’d love a video!
Thanks!! I’ll check it out now!
Thom, reading your book now. I’m a musician and have written books about music. Curious to what you have written!
You know, I’m on page 65 of your book and into my second beer. Then I had an epiphany. It was this: “Jesus fucking Christ. This is too goddamn hard to create a simple fucking blog post.”
For Rapidweaver to be WYSIWYG, this is way too fucking complicated.
I truly appreciate you writing the book, Thom. You’re a TRUE HERO for doing that! But the sheer fact that you had to WRITE A 110 PAGE BOOK ABOUT HOW TO CREATE A FUCKING BLOG POST IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM! That’s like GE making a dishwasher and a user decides to write a 110 page book on how to use the dishwasher. It shouldn’t be that complicated and the fact that you’ve had to do this is ridiculous.
So I guess I’ll just wait until RealMac releases a blog editor that mere mortals can use. I don’t want to be “screaming at my Mac”.
Goddamn this blog creation sucks ass.
And again to be clear…. I’m not mad at anyone contributing to this thread. I’m mad at the ENITRE PROCESS OF CREATING A BLOG IN RAPIDWEAVER. Creating a blog should be just as easy as writing and editing this forum thread. It should be that simple.
Chris obviously the beer has kicked in! 
I have a dishwasher and my instruction book is over 100 pages I aslo have the safety book which is extra and thats got 50 pages and then all the Electrical bits thats got 20. So question do you have a dishwasher!
Seriously I was once asked if a Martian knocked on your door and you invited them in for a cup of tea and they started asking why/what all the time how would you describe to them “how to make a cup of tea” - this was a process mapping lecture and boy just making a cup of tea, explaining about safety, tea, electricity, boiling, and even what cup to use, whether to put milk in first or after made etc. etc. this alone comes to multiple pages.
So breaking the book down - and any instruction book - it’s done for guidance, did you read the instruction book that came with your car over a few beers? What is learned does not have to be instructed, the nuances and anything you’ve not encountered before do.
Example “TWIG” I thought this was to do with a tree - then I started paying around with custom components and I have a list of about 10 TWIG commands I use a lot of time. Do I need to read about TWIG in instruction book for CMS - NO, did I need to look and see how TWIG commands work - YES! I have used Markdown pre ELEMENTS and have a very basic grasp of it, Do I need to read this NO. Therefore my instruction book read becomes less.
I appreciate your not mad at contributions and I am not trying to teach you to suck eggs but perhaps leave the beers until after you have read your dishwasher instructions! I can assure you toull need more than a couple! Take care and BLOG on!
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Paul,
Thanks for your reply. I actually do appreciate it.
I do have a dishwasher. I’ve never read the instruction manual. It’s a dishwasher.
Oddly enough, the heating coil broke on it last week and I watched a YouTube video about how to replace the heating coil. I only watched it once. I guess that’s why the dishwasher was on my mind…
After watching that video I:
- Located the circuit breaker to cut off power to the dishwasher so that I didn’t die.
- Removed the front panel, located the cap nuts that supplied power to the washer and successfully removed them (I made myself a handy diagram of what was connected to what - so I didn’t die).
- Removed the water intake line.
- Removed the water drain line.
- Loosened the screws that held the unit to the counter.
- Disconnected the old heating element.
(Then repeated the entire process in reverse to put it back in)
That process involved live electricity that could’ve hurt somebody and it was easily done in one hour by me (who has never done that before).
I just think that creating a blog should be easier than replacing a heating coil on a dishwasher.
I did a quick YouTube scan of adding a blog to a WordPress site. Most videos are between 4 to 7 minutes. That’s reasonable. Can you imagine if WordPress suggested that their users read a 110 page book in order to add a blog?
And again - THANK GOD THOM WROTE THAT BOOK…. But he shouldn’t have HAD to write the book.
I can understand why RealMac would want to move to a content management system for blogging but I can’t understand why they simply can’t have a (click this button and it spits out this code feature). After all, that’s what the rest of elements does. It’s not like I’m checking markdown in the code when I drag and drop a header or text area. It just works (like the markdown in this post). I click the “B” on the toolbar above, it adds the ** to the code and we all see it as bold. And that’s why I’ve always used RapidWeaver.
This process,… not the logic behind why is what’s infuriating.
Also - I’m drinking coffee now.
I was mad at the process of creating a blog last night. I’m still mad at the process this morning - I’m just using less colorful language.
Again - not mad at anyone in this thread for your contributions. I’m SUPER HAPPY about that!
This should just be easier.
See your dishwasher was easy answer look at how many lines you wrote on that! So now add the following - I’m a Martian dont forget? What’s a dishwasher, what are dishes, what are they used for etc. what’s a circuit breaker, what’s power, why did you have to cut it off? What’s a panel? What are nuts? Ok you get my drift, if I was to do a video and not a book it would take a few minutes and I think Thom writes books as an instruction too himself, he’s shared this one which is kind of him.
Personally I never read instruction books I play with tools and when I get stuck ask a question or look it up. Learn and move on. As I’m nearly 70 I don’t have much time to read long books or watch long videos before I get to the point!
The coffee’s kicked in and you’re super happy! Thats great! I do now have a black eye and a few missing teeth though! Why I just told the wife I am writing a book about her! She asked Why? I told her I need an instruction book on my dishwasher! (Apologies I am a scouser!)
Several things:
- Even if Realmac creates an external editor to create posts, you’ll still need to set up your Project for your blog. That was true of Rapidweaver and most other Web-creation software, as well.
- In the chapter that steps through adding a blog section to an existing site, there are 17 specific steps. It takes me maybe 10-15 minutes to do those. Yes, it’s geeky, but it’s one and done.
- The actual creation of posts is pretty simple, and I provided two ways of doing that. The only complication I see is that if you want images with your posts, you have to make that linkage manually at the moment (one thing the external post editor will eventually fix, I assume).
- It doesn’t even take 4 minutes to set up a WordPress site on my host. It’s a single click. However, now you have a mySQL database running on your site that needs to be managed and maintained, and you’re going to find that designing your blog to look different than every other blog in the world is going to take a lot of time, energy, and probably money.
- You can thank Google, et.al., for why things are the way they are. It would be easy to create a blog system for a static-size screen. With the requirement for responsive layout (and a bunch of sub-requirements where Google will complain about font size and a bunch of other things if you do it wrong), you need modern tools to do modern work. I started on the Internet on day one (literally), my old boss was one of the ones who started Netscape (the first ubiquitous browser), and I’ve used probably five different tools over the years to create sites. Four of those are now 100% deprecated. They not only don’t keep up with the changes to the standards being used by the big boys, but some don’t even run on modern OSes.
- Probably the real problem here is two-fold: (1) you simply don’t want to use one of the existing Projects (such as Maximillian) that you can buy that already incorporate a blog, and (2) you object to the file-in-place Markdown page creation of the present system. #1 is seeing more available options every day, and #2 will eventually be solved by an add-on from Realmac. You’re trying to do #1 yourself, and I applaud you for that, but it requires that you do some geeky work one time.
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Thom,
You are correct. I’m the guy yelling: “Get off my lawn, kids!”
I’ll do the thing….
And I don’t mind buying a pre-built blog template. #2 is the issue….
And to be clear: If I buy Maximillian, I can re-use this format in my other sites?
Where do I buy Maximillian?
That is simple @ChrisMitchell.
Follow the link Maximilian. 
You can re-use the template as often as you would like on as many sites you need. It is a lifetime one time purchase. And if you totally dislike it - due to whatever reason - there is a 30 days money back guarantee.
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Click on marketplace link on side menu, theres lots of blog preset themes there including Maximilian. Thoms book is based on the rapid blog download.
Thanks Markus! I’ll buy it.
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