Why is there no viable WordPress blog solution for RW? Help with Armadillo

RapidWeaver Classic
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Anybody serious about blogging will quickly outgrow the limitations of the blog page that is built into RW.

Further, it seems like serious bloggers want many of the features already built into WordPress, but would like to connect their WP blogs to their RW built website. SeyDesign had a similar solution for use with Google’s Blogger. That SeyDesign plugin was/is called RapidBlog and was recently acquired by YourHead Software. The problem with that solution is that Blogger is way behind the curve in terms of blog features and so is RapidBlog. Both RapidBlog and Blogger are out of date and out of sync.

There is a little known plug in for WP called WP-Blog (http://nilrogsplace.se/plugins/wpblog/), but since it has not been update in several years, the writing is on the wall for that plugin. Further, I have seen many complain that support for WP-Blog is hard to come by.

I also realize that Total CMS, BlueBall, and Armadillo all offer some pretty sweet blogging capabilities, but they still cannot rival the features and ubiquity of WP blogs. In my humble opinion, each of those products are great solutions in the WordPress/RapidWeaver vacuum.

I am likely missing something here, but I don’t understand why no-one with RW/Stacks knowhow has not created a RW/WP plugin. This seems like a no-brainer to me. I had hoped that YourHead would add WP functionality to RapidBlog once they acquired it, but there is nothing to imply that will be the case.

So, for me and many other users I have read about over in WeaversSapce, the various Goggle groups and here on the RealMac forum, I cannot understand why this has not been done. Any ideas so that I can put this nagging question to rest?

Thanks a million.

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@firedude2894

Hey Brad (Excellent name btw) lol

I am not a user of WordPress nor do I typically visit the “other groups”.

With that being said, @isaiah has just taken the LogHound stuff over and is just about complete making them RapidWeaver 6/7 friendly with UI improvements, speed improvements, reliability improvements. After all that is completed, he does plan on further developing the, timeframe unknown. Your best bet would be to submit a feature request to him for WP integration.

Another option, don’t know if you have tried it or not but there is typed.com which can be a website and/or blogging service that is being developed by Realmac Software. There is currently 1 3rd party theme called Manata by @instacks and he also makes a (Free to Gold Subscribers) stack for integration with the default theme and his theme. There are also several other themes included with your typed account. Plenty of docs to create your own theme that are fairly well laid out and sample themes to play with as well as all the official typed themes available on github.

Just trying to offer you suggestions :slight_smile:

Brad

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There are certainly plug-ins for WP which offer features which are unavailable to RW users but for actual blogging I can’t see that Armadillo is lacking anything.

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@firedude2894 Wordpress and RapidWeaver a different beasts. Very very very different.

  • Wordpress is a database backed blogging platform that runs online dynamically generating pages – that can also be used to build complete sites.

  • RapidWeaver is a Mac native complete website building tool that you run locally that generates static pages – that can also be used to blog.

Basically the two have come at the same set of problems from opposite ends – this leads to some very profound differences in how they’re used, what they’re focus is, and where there limitations lie.

They’re like the flip side of the same coin.

Given that WP started it’s life as a blog, and has gradually grown to accommodate more diverse sites, I think it’s safe to say that it is going to be, in general, a better blog. Dynamic sites that you can edit online make nice blogs.

And I think the converse is also true. That a static site generator like RapidWeaver will always produce, in general, a better website. Static sites that render once are much nicer.

There are, of course, a whole host of site-building tools now for WP. And a whole host of blogging tools for RW. But neither of those is the true spirit.

My personal recommendation would be to use the built in RW blog page only for the most basic blogs.
And use WP only for the most basic sites.

For something beyond the basics – simply link that page – or encapsulate it – or use a 3rd party tool to join it to your RW site.

For blogs I like:
Armadillo, Typed, Ghost, Tumblr, and Blogger. They’re all super easy to use and not tough to integrate with RW.

I currently run the YourHead Blog as a Ghost site. I just link it from our main site. I also like to blog with tumblr – i have a couple blogs there too: http://yourhead.tumblr.com and http://lowcase.tumblr.com

I now maintain the RapidBlog plugin, so I suppose I should try to say something nice about it. But I’ll be honest, I haven’t used it very much. I do like blogger, however, it’s a solid simple blog. And as for things that Ev invented, I like it a lot better than Medium (not a fan of closed systems).

Isaiah

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can’t breath. laughing too hard.

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Word Press is a pain in the arse. I don’t see how anyone would take on a hacker target like that. You would end up in an endless game of supporting hacker attacks for everyone who bought the plugin. I think as a developer you would end up loosing more money and reputation than this would be worth. just my 2p on the subject.

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My experience with WP was not great. The user interface is horrible. I bought a theme and i can configure a part here and configure a part there and the same on a different panel. I am searching the same switch on different places. The first “user” registrations were spam adresses from Yahoo. I installed a plugin to hiding them. The SEO-Tools were very complex and a lot of work. I don´t like WP.
I started with RW again and most of it behaved like i wanted it. RapidWeaver is made for my brain. Can be that my brain is not made for WP.
What i can say: RW with TotalCMS from Joe (are) will be amazing powerful tools and will give you some possibilities, you could not imagine today. There is a bright future for us using these tools.

The only point i have with them: If a company is looking for a WP or Joomla, etc. expert - i have to say: no. But i think i am very happy to become a RW/TotalCMS expert tomorrow. :slight_smile:

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What features of WP do you use that you don’t see available in Total CMS?

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Thanks for all of the great insights.

One of the things I’ve realized after reading these comments is that while Blogger and WP seem similar (they are both blogging platforms), they are miles apart in functionality. When it comes to Blogger, once of the benefits to a RW plugin developer is that Blogger rarely changes and plugins do not have to be re-engineered constantly. Consequently, this is what drives me crazy about Blogger, nothing ever improves. For me it is as quirky now as it was 2 years ago.

WP is the opposite. It is constantly tweaked and updated which probably makes it feel like a moving target to developers. Great for users, but awful for developers.

I made the mistake of thinking they were very similar and that SeyDesign, or YourHead now, could simply add a little more code to RapidBlog so that it would work with both Blogger and WP. I could not have been more wrong. Thanks for the insights, especially @isaiah. This is why I will keep building RW websites, but not venture into developing plugins anytime soon. :grimacing:

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This makes sense now. Thanks

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Very helpful indeed. :facepunch:t3:

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The other thing to mention with regard to WP is that all those plugins make it very vulnerable to hacking. As I mentioned elsewhere, WordFence has suggested the the Mossack Fonseca leak may be down to a WP vulnerability.

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This has all been most helpful. Thanks again.

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I avoid Word press as much as possible and actually there is very little that I need as far as pluggins from them with rapid weaver. I do have a couple of clients and they used to take up my time a lot cleaning up after hackers. no matter what I did. I have a fix now thanks to the company now host word press with. They have a proprietary App that is connected to their servers that locks the wordpress sites in a single click and even if you forget to lock it it locks the word press sites on the servers automatically after a few minutes. None of these clients have been hacked since.

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I’m not so familiar with these other blogging platforms, but why don’t the Rapidweaver folks simply add some additional functionality to their own blog page?This would get me to buy the next version of Rapidweaver. I’d love to be able to drop any of the page styles on a blog page, and not be restricted simply to text.

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If anyone is serious about blogging, they’re unlikely to go with anything built into RW. An add-on such as Armadillo gives one so much more flexibility – such as being able to blog from anywhere.

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Here is an interesting article from WordFence about the various ways in which hackers do with compromised WP sites:

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Is there some reason that the good folks at Rapidweaver would not want to improve the blog feature built in to their existing product, especially if current users find it lacking?

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I use Armadillo and it seems to be updated on a regular basis.

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I just made the leap to Armadillo!

I have been scouring the web looking for these answers but cannot find them.

My blog is at:
https://tandemmarriage.com/blog/
These are the questions I cannot find answers to:
1. Disqus is showing up on the individual blog posts correctly, but it also shows up at the bottom of the main blog summary page. How can I suppress Disqus on the main blog page? FIXED
2. I would like more control over the amount of blog summary showing up on the main blog page. How can I increase the amount that shows? FIXED
3. I can’t seem to figure out how to wrap text around the images in my blog posts. FIXED
4. I have added the Armadillo Sidebar and tried the Armadillo Navigation as well. I have also added the code snippet to the sidebar area in RW. This seems to make room for the sidebar on the page, but incomplete sidebar info. FIXED
5. Can I change the font for the post titles? FIXED

Nimblehost fixes/replies are below, about 6 comments down.

Any help on these would be much appreciated!