Later this month will mark the 4-year anniversary
of when I joined the RapidWeaver community and
adopted the application as my website design
tool. This has had me reflecting on my
experiences over the past 4 years, and
reaffirming my position on RapidWeaver as the
best solution for web design. Couple that with
the current obsession over my new iPhone, and the
idea that results is this: RapidWeaver is like
the iPhone.
Background Story
Recently, after coming
to the end of my contract with a competing
cellular provider, I made the switch to AT&T
for the sole purpose of owning an iPhone. I've
waited a long time to experience the iPhone -- I
can remember the first iPhone release, and going
into an Apple store that following weekend to
demo a product I wouldn't be able to own for
quite a while longer. As much as I wanted an
iPhone, I couldn't justify breaking an existing
contract and tossing a few hundred dollars to
make the switch early, so after a very patient
wait the time has finally come.
I've had my iPhone for a couple of weeks now, and
it wasn't long after getting it that I started
creating comparisons between the iPhone and
RapidWeaver. Now granted, RapidWeaver does
dominate my thoughts for many hours every day,
but the more I thought about it I determined that
it wasn't a stretch at all to draw that
comparison. So follow with me here for a few
minutes and let's explore this idea a bit.
It Starts With Function
There's no doubt
that Apple created a brilliant product in the
iPhone. It worked the way people wanted a smart
phone to work -- it was intuitive and
well-designed. Of course the loyal Apple
followers would adopt it regardless, but the
massive success of the iPhone can be credited to
the fact that its just a great product.
RapidWeaver is a great product foremost because
it is functional. An intimidating or poorly
designed product is going to struggle to be
successful, and RapidWeaver succeeds because it
makes a very intimidating idea quite simple.
Website design is intimidating. As a young,
creative, techie person I was still intimidated
by the thought of designing websites when I first
started exploring the idea. If a piece of
software is done well enough to clear that first
hurdle, then that's a big deal.
Based on my experience working with RapidWeaver
users, RapidWeaver's demographic is Mac users,
and that's it. As far as I can tell, there is no
specific age or gender that the software appeals
to most. That's a statement to how functional and
intuitive this software is. One RapidWeaver user
is a college kid wanting to create websites as a
source of income to get through school, while
another user is a recently retired woman who
wants to sell homemade creations online as a
hobby. RapidWeaver works the way people want a
website design application to work.
Its Strength is Its Development
Community
At some point in Apple's marketing
campaign for the iPhone, the television
commercials stopped talking about what the iPhone
could do "out of the box," and started talking
about what it could do with the available
3rd-party apps. The iPhone can certainly do a lot
out of the box -- it is a phone after all, and so
it makes phone calls, receives voice mails and
does a nice job of organizing your contacts.
There are some solid apps that come with the
iPhone as well, expanding its usefulness so you
can know the temperature outside, jot down some
notes, or get directions to your destination.
I certainly appreciated what the iPhone could do
out of the box, but it wasn't long before I was
browsing the app store and downloading some apps
to demo. Of course I ended up purchasing the ones
I loved, and I'm always looking for others that
will add new functionality, or that maybe even
improve on the functionality of an app I already
own.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
RapidWeaver's 3rd-party development community is
its greatest strength. Some might say that its
community of users is the greatest strength, but
I would argue that the community wouldn't be as
large and devoted if a 3rd-party development
community didn't exist first. The themes and
plugins available for RapidWeaver take a great
app to the next level, by adding features and
functionality to extend the usefulness of the
application.
The iPhone is a great phone without additional
apps, and RapidWeaver is a great web design
program out of the box, but both benefit
tremendously from the add-ons that are available
to them.
More Love for the Developers
I began
using RapidWeaver when there was just a very
small number of 3rd-party developers on the
scene. RapidWeaver was good enough on its own to
where I committed to it without understanding
what was to come, but when
Yourhead released the
Blocks plugin and
Loghound created
PlusKit, it was as if I
was using an entirely new product for the
first time, and I began to see so much more
potential with the improved flexibilty these
plugins offered.
Jump forward to today, and the 3rd-party
developer community has exploded. I remember when
RapidWeaver users wanted an e-commerce solution,
and now there are multiple e-commerce plugins,
from multiple developers! Of course I have some
favorite plugins, including some that I would
define as "must-haves" -- but even a past
must-have in
Blocks has been almost
completely replaced in my workflow with
Stacks. Major props to
YourHead for one-upping
itself! As I now do my part with RapidWeaver
Classroom, I am regularly having to keep
myself updated with the steady influx of new
plugin offerings from new developers. Where
I could once list the developers and their
plugins by memory, I now refer to one of the
many great resource websites that stays
updated with this information.
Last I heard there were over 80,000 apps
available for the iPhone. With a number like
that, what can the iPhone not do? The RapidWeaver
plugin library doesn't boast a number quite like
that, but the potential is there and I feel that
I can already ask "what can RapidWeaver not do?"
and have it be a legitimate question.
RapidWeaver is Like the iPhone
Convinced?
Regardless of your answer to that question, it's
tough not to be convinced that RapidWeaver is an
incredible web design application, and that with
infinite possibilites brought to reality by its
development community, a very strong future is
certainly to be expected.
-Ryan Smith
RapidWeaver Classroom
Tags: RapidWeaver 4, iPhone
