Tutorial - How to remember what Theme, Plugins and Stacks you used for a project

RapidWeaver Classic
1

Hello Weavers…

I’ve seen the question asked a few times on how to remember what Theme is used for a project, what plugins were used and what stacks were used so I thought I would make this little tutorial.

Applies to RW6.x (as I don’t have or use RW5) and assumes you have Stacks installed, but will work if you do not, you just won’t be able to favourite stacks.

  1. Create your Project File (you can skip this step if you already have a site) ex. MySite

  2. Open RapidWeaver -> Manage Addons…

  3. Select the ‘+’ symbol at the lower left of the window (This creates a new 'Collections" folder)

  4. Name the new folder to the same name as your project ex. MySite

  5. Select All (top left menu item) so you can show your master list of Themes, addons and stacks installed into RapidWeaver.

  6. Select addons from the left menu bar (this will show you all things installed into RapidWeaver)

  7. Drag each item used on your site into the new Collections folder as you use them in your site.

  8. As you fiddle with different items used on your site, it is easy to add or remove items from this Collection to keep track of what is used in that specific site.

NOTE 1 Do NOT right click on the Collection name to Delete it unless you are no longer doing that project.

NOTE 2 Do click on the Collection to show it’s contents and right click on items in that collection to remove them

  1. As you create more and more projects, just repeat theses steps for each additional project.

NOTE 3 This is not printable, I have no idea in the file system where these are stored for saving external of RW6

ALTERNATIVE

Use the Notes feature of Site Settings to manually type your ‘Materials List’ (NOTE 3 applies), but this WILL stay with your project file and be useable IF you have to uninstall and reinstall RapidWeaver or work on the project on a different computer. Using this method, be sure to include the Developer Name, The Item used and the Version Number of that item as per the example below (You can add other notes to each as well such as URL where the download is available, registration code if one is required, anything special you did to customize the project such as adding your own JS, CSS or HTML and locations of those additions):

Theme
Developer: Joe Workman
Name: Foundations
Version: 1.5.5

Plugins
Developer: YabDab
Name: FormLoom
Version: 3.0.7

stacks
Developer: Joe Workman
Name: Easy CMS
Version: 1.1.1

Developer: 1LD
Name: Optic Stats
Version: 1.1.0

Developer: Nick Cates Design
Name: SuperFlex
Version: 3.0.5

NOTE 4 You will have to manually add/remove/Update these items as these items are added/removed/updated on your site

NOTE 5 The ALTERNATE method STAYS in your project file, the PRIMARY method does NOT, so I should have reversed their order… :frowning:

Hope that helps some of you folks out there asking how to manage add-ons for a Project inside RW6.x

Brad

3 Likes
2

The famous ‘Turtle’…I have heard your name so many times on the Podcasts. Thanks for this suggestion. Of course, this would have been nice to know three years ago when I first started my site :frowning: It would be nice if there were a feature in RW7 that can compile this list automatically – or maybe a plug-in or stack that did that.

3

@luckylindy

ahaha… yes, this is true about recording what stacks/Plugins you use on a site and would be a good feature request for RW7 but I think they are pretty much locked in with features at the moment due to what I heard on the latest Podcast that they wish to release over next couple/few weeks if at all possible.

There is another method

You could add a Styled Page
Mark it as ‘not in navigation’ in the page settings
keep track of your stacks/plugins there

This page will get published but will not be linked to and you can easily view it on the live site should you know the direct URL.

HTH
Brad

4

You could also mark that page as a draft and then it never gets published.

1 Like
5

@zeebe, yessir, that will work as long as your project file doesn’t go corrupt, my thinking on the last one was to have a reference on the project website in case of emergency.

Brad

1 Like