Doobox has commissioned RapidWeaver Classroom to produce quick overviews for use on the Doobox website, and I have made them available as part of the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum as well.

These overviews are 2 minutes or less in length. Some of these stacks are so simple to use that the quick overview will provide all the necessary information. Others will benefit from more detailed instruction, and so full-length tutorials will be produced for those stacks in the coming weeks.

Doobox has created some outstanding stacks for Stacks 2, so be sure to check out these quick overviews to see them in action!

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Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, stacks, Stacks 2, DooBox, screencasts

Stacks 2 exited its public beta stage this week and is now available in its final form. If any of you have been waiting, now is the time to grab Stacks 2 and see what all the excitement is about!

One major change that occurred during the beta period is how Stacks handles images. Initially, images were not saved directly into the RapidWeaver project file, but they are now. The “Stacks Media Library” tutorial found in the Stacks 2 series has been updated to reflect this change. This basically means that a portion of the tutorial was eliminated, as that information is no longer valid.

Now that Stacks 2 is officially released, you can expect to see future Stacks add-ons tutorials produced using Stacks 2! Stay tuned for more updates.

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Tags: Stacks 2, yourhead software, RapidWeaver 5.0, screencasts

I have added two more Stacks 2 tutorials to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum. The first of these details the Stacks Media Library, and contains some very important information on using images in Stacks 2. The other tutorial discusses some miscellaneous information, and includes details on the updating of 3rd-party stacks in Stacks 2. Let’s just say that Stacks 2 has delivered a huge improvement in how it updates stacks add-ons!

Stacks 2 is currently still in beta and it can be downloaded here. I can speak from experience though and say that it is very stable, and I have already published updates to RapidWeaver Classroom using Stacks 2!

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Tags: Stacks 2, yourhead software, RapidWeaver 5.0, screencasts

It is a very exciting day as the Public Beta release of Stacks 2 has been released! Stacks was a “game-changing” plugin for the RapidWeaver community, and Stacks 2 promises to take things to a new level with some very exciting new features.

Along with the Public Beta release of Stacks 2, I have published Stacks 2 tutorials to the curriculum here at RapidWeaver Classroom. There are currently 5 tutorials available, running just under an hour in length, and there will be at least 2 more tutorials published later this week.

Also, for this week only, these tutorials are available for free to the public, along with a contest to win a FREE Stacks 2 license. You can find more information here:
Free Stacks 2 Tutorials and Contest

Finally, please keep in mind that this release of Stacks 2 is a beta, so please take precautionary steps and back-up any projects that you will be using with Stacks 2. Check back here soon for more details and important information regarding Stacks 2!

Tags: Stacks 2, RapidWeaver 5.0, screencasts

I have updated the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum with a new series of video tutorials on the Lockdown Plugin from Loghound. Lockdown makes it easy to password-protect pages on your website. Protected pages will prompt for a username and password in order to view them, and you create these credentials with user accounts in the plugin. You can add multiple user accounts and have each one access specific pages, or even have multiple accounts all access the same content if you wish.

Lockdown is a great solution for password-protecting content for clients. A photographer can password-protect clients’ photo galleries, or a web developer can provide previews of a website in progress that is viewable by the client with a username and password. These are just a couple of examples of how Lockdown can be used.

This series contains 5 video tutorials for a total runtime of just under 30 minutes. Check back soon for updated tutorials on RapidCart 3!

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Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, Loghound Plugins, Lockdown Plugin, password-protect pages, screencasts, RapidWeaver video tutorials

I’ve updated the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum with two new tutorials covering the Hunter and Hippo stacks from Doobox. The Hunter Stack is an awesome solution for filtering content on a page by category, and the Hippo stack creates a styled content area with buttons that load new content when selected. Both stacks provide a lot of functionality and flexibility, so check them out to see if they might be a helpful solution in your project!

You can expect to see many more updates on Doobox stacks in the next several weeks, so check back soon for more details!

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Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, DooBox, Hunter Stack, Hippo Stack, screencasts

I have completed the series of tutorials on the Page Lime CMS and those tutorials are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. This 45-minute series details how to use the Page Lime CMS, along with Joe Workman’s Page Lime Stacks, to create content that can be editable through a web browser using the Page Lime service. Even better, content edited through Page Lime is not overwritten when changes are published through RapidWeaver!

A total of 7 tutorials are now available. If you got a head-start and began viewing these tutorials during the past couple of weeks, you will want to revisit the 4th tutorial “Setup and Configuration” -- that specific tutorial has been updated with more important information.

The coming weeks will consist of new tutorials on more Stacks add-ons, along with some plugin updates as well, so check back soon for more!

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Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, Page Lime CMS, Content Management Systems, screencasts, Joe Workman Stacks

I am very excited to announce the addition of a new series of tutorials covering the Page Lime CMS Stacks from Joe Workman. Page Lime is a content management system that integrates with RapidWeaver using Joe’s Page Lime Stacks. Content created with these stacks can be edited with a web browser via the Page Lime CMS. Even better, content edited with Page Lime will not be overwritten by RapidWeaver if the page is re-published!

This is an excellent solution for editing content without needing RapidWeaver. If you design sites for clients, then you can integrate Page Lime to allow your client to make changes themselves!

This new series is available in both the Joe Workman Stacks section and in the CMS section of tutorials. There are currently 4 tutorials available and more will be added in the next several weeks. Once the series is completed, it will be a very comprehensive resource for training on both the Page Lime system and the Page Lime Stacks.

Check back soon for more news on the Page Lime series!

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Register here.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, Page Lime CMS, stacks, Joe Workman Stacks, Content Management Systems

I am excited to announce the addition of a series of tutorials on installing and customizing a PunBB discussion forum and integrating it with your RapidWeaver website. This new series of tutorials is now available as part of the Grad School curriculum, as the steps involved require some knowledge of HTML and CSS, which is covered in Section 101 of that curriculum. The PunBB tutorials walk you through every step of installing the forum software, customizing it to match the look of your RapidWeaver website, integrating it with your RapidWeaver project file, and administrating the forum.

I’ve also published a tutorial on Joe Workman’s X-Ray Stack to the regular RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum, and this week I will be starting a series on Joe’s PageLime stacks for use with the PageLime content management system. This will be an exciting series to demonstrate the potential uses of PageLime for remotely editing website content without the use of RapidWeaver, so check back soon for more information on these tutorials!

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Register here.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, PunBB Forum, Grad School, X-Ray Stack, Joe Workman Stacks

I’ve released a new tutorial for RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers on the RSS Stacks from Joe Workman. There are actually 7 RSS Stack varieties, and all of them are covered in this new tutorial. If your website has a blog then I highly recommend viewing this tutorial, as it is likely that you will find a good use for one of these RSS stacks on your website.

More Joe Workman tutorials are coming soon, along with a new update to the Grad School curriculum as well. Check back soon for more details!

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Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, Joe Workman Stacks, RSS Stacks, screencasts

This week brought the long-awaited release of Mac OS X Lion, version 10.7 of the Mac’s operating system. Realmac Software has released RapidWeaver 5.2.1 as the official Lion-compatible release of RapidWeaver. It is available directly through Realmac’s website, and in the Mac App Store. If you are already a RapidWeaver 5 user, then you won’t notice any big differences in this release of RapidWeaver, it is simply an update for compatibility with Lion. However, Lion brings about a couple of features/changes that might impact how you use RapidWeaver. These are outlined briefly below.

Resume

Lion includes a new feature called Resume, which reopens your apps “right where you left off.” This means that if you quit RapidWeaver with a project file open, Lion will re-open that project file the next time you open RapidWeaver. If you don’t want this to occur, simply close the project window before quitting RapidWeaver. Another option is to completely disable Lion’s Resume feature, though this will affect the feature for ALL apps on your Mac. You can adjust this setting in the General tab of the System Preferences panel, as shown below.

Manage Themes and Plugins

Lion hides the Library folder in the Finder, which prevents you from browsing to the Application Support > RapidWeaver folder to manage your 3rd-party add-ons. You can still reveal the contents of a theme by right-clicking on the theme in RapidWeaver’s Theme Drawer, but if you want to access other add-ons such as plugins or stacks, then you can do so through the “Manage Themes and Plugins” option in the RapidWeaver menu. Simply click on RapidWeaver in the menu, and you will see the option there.

If you want to access your add-ons outside of RapidWeaver entirely, you can still do so using the following steps.

• 1. Click on Go from the Finder menu


• 2. Select Go to Folder


• 3. Enter ~/Library and click the Go button

This will take you into your Library folder, where you can then browse to Application Support > RapidWeaver. For quick access in the future, simply drag the RapidWeaver folder into the Finder’s left sidebar to permanently bookmark it.

Auto Save, Versions and Full-Screen Apps

These are 3 new Lion features that RapidWeaver 5.2.1 doesn’t currently support, and while there’s no official word one way or another, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see them implemented in a future RapidWeaver release.

Are you currently “on the fence” about upgrading to Lion? I know the feeling. Personally, any time there is a major OS X release, I wait about 2 months before upgrading my “production” machine. This gives Apple and software developers time to address any issues that might be a “show-stopper.” I have installed Lion and RapidWeaver 5.2.1 on a non-critical machine, and everything has run smoothly so far. Regardless of your decision to upgrade, please be sure to always check for updates to your 3rd-party RapidWeaver plugins, as staying up-to-date will significantly decrease your chances of crashes and other performance problems.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, OS X Lion

This week brings several updates to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum. I have added 2 new tutorials to the CartLoom e-commerce series: “Selling Physical Products” and “Shipping Rule for non-U.S. Sellers.” This unofficially concludes the series on CartLoom -- I say “unofficially” because there is always a chance of future additions once I receive your feedback on these tutorials. The total run-time for this series is just under 90 minutes, so rest assured that there is a lot of detail covered in these video tutorials.

Joe Workman released the Liftoff Stack this week, and a new tutorial for that stack is now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers as well. Liftoff creates a very cool countdown clock that is great for product launches or other big announcements for your website, so check out this latest stack from Joe! More great Joe Workman stacks tutorials will be available next week as well, so check back soon for more details as the list of Joe Workman tutorials continues growing.

If you’re not a subscriber to RapidWeaver Classroom and want to view these and 100’s of other video tutorials, sign-up here!

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, CartLoom, Joe Workman Stacks, Liftoff Stack, screencasts

This week brings 3 new tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. I’ve added tutorials for Comment Stacks, the Scroll Stack and the Tumblr Stack. Each of these stacks offer some pretty awesome functionality for your website.

If you are a photographer or artist, or have a need to feature images on your website, then I encourage you to check out the Scroll Stack. Joe’s Comment Stacks make it easy to add commenting to any page -- not just a blog -- so you can give customers the ability to review or comment on your products, or simply create an informal discussion board on any page of your site. Finally, the Tumblr Stack is a powerful stack that offers a completely new option for blogging in RapidWeaver. Personally, I’m quite tempted to switch this blog over to Tumblr after having played with Joe’s Tumblr Stack!

Joe continues to develop awesome stacks for our RapidWeaver toolbox, and I will continue bringing tutorials on his products to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. Next week I will be expanding the CartLoom series with tutorials that detail the process of selling physical products with CartLoom. Among other things, these tutorials will address tax and shipping calculations for physical products being sold online. Check this blog next week for more information, or you can subscribe to the blog feed at the top of the blog sidebar to the right.

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Sign-up here.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, stacks, Joe Workman Stacks, Comment Stacks, Scroll Stack, Tumblr Stack

I’ve published the first 6 video tutorials of the new CartLoom series here at RapidWeaver Classroom. CartLoom is a web-based e-commerce solution that offers a lot of flexibility in selling both physical and digital products through your RapidWeaver website. CartLoom has a ton of features and can integrate with RapidWeaver through either a plugin or a stack.

This series of tutorials will detail how to utilize the CartLoom service and how to integrate its shopping cart with your website in RapidWeaver. These first 6 tutorials provide a good overview of the CartLoom backend and both the plugin and stack, but more tutorials will be added to this series over the next several weeks in an attempt to thoroughly cover different scenarios for how the service might be utilized.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, CartLoom, E-Commerce, stacks, screencasts

I've updated the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum with 4 new tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks. Two of the tutorials are brand new: HTML5 Video and RSS Feed Stacks. The other two, Lightbox and MovingBox, were previously available but I have refreshed them as the versions of those stacks have changed significantly since the original tutorials were created.

The HTML5 Video Stack is a great solution for presenting video on your website while maintaining compatibility with iOS devices. I actually use this stack in the header above to present the “2-minute Overview.” The RSS Feed stack is free and allows you to make RSS feeds available on any page, through the address bar of Safari. The Lightbox and MovingBox stacks have received some great updates, and Lightbox is easier to use than it has ever been before, so I highly recommend you take a look!

I will be working on more of Joe's stacks this week, along with the first tutorials for a new series on CartLoom.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, Joe Workman Stacks, lightbox, movingbox, RSS Feed, HTML5 Video, screencasts

This week’s update to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum includes 3 new tutorials. The first of these, “The Resources Macro” can be found in Lesson 6 of the RapidWeaver 5 curriculum. This is a slightly advanced, but important element of RapidWeaver’s Resources feature, and I would highly encourage everyone to become familiar with it, especially if you are using Stacks add-ons in your project. In the case of certain Stacks add-ons, the Resources macro is used to reference the location of your file in the stack’s HUD, so it is pretty important to understand how the macro is used.

The other two tutorials released this week are the Power Grid and Like It stacks from Joe Workman. Power Grid is a great solution for creating tables on your website, and Like It makes it very easy to add social networking widgets to your pages.

Next week will bring more Joe Workman stacks, so stay tuned!

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, stacks, Joe Workman Stacks, Resources Macro, Power Grid Stack, Like It Stack, screencasts

We continue with new Joe Workman Stacks tutorials this week, as the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum has been updated with tutorials covering the Cycler Stack, Mask Stack and Totem Stack. Cycler and Totem create awesome content sliders, and Mask makes it easy to create rollover/mouseover effects for images, or to hide and reveal content.

More Joe Workman Stacks tutorials will be made available next week, as I continue to produce content covering all of Joe’s available stacks.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, stacks, Joe Workman Stacks, Cycler Stack, Mask Stack, Totem Stack, screencasts

Now that the redesign of RapidWeaver Classroom is complete, a lot of work is underway to produce and publish new content for the curriculums, and we start this week with 4 new tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks. The stacks covered in this update are Flash Embed, Google Maps, Image Safe and HTML5 Audio. These are some exciting new stacks from Joe Workman, and over the next several weeks you will become acquainted with all of Joe’s offerings, as the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum gets updated with every Joe Workman stack available!

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, Joe Workman Stacks, Flash Embed Stack, Google Maps Stack, Image Safe Stack, HTML5 Audio Stack, screencasts

I have published a new series of screencasts on the ExtraContent feature found in some 3rd-party themes. ExtraContent has become more popular in 3rd-party theme development, and the feature offers increased flexibility in how your content is displayed inside the layout of a RapidWeaver theme.

Some tutorials discussing ExtraContent in specific themes have been available here in the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum, but I felt it was necessary to cover the topic in a more linear way, as is the norm for series of tutorials here at RapidWeaver Classroom. This new ExtraContent series will take you through the different methods of utilizing this feature, and each video tutorial works with a different ExtraContent-enabled theme, so you will be able to see a number of different examples of how ExtraContent is enabled in these 3rd-party themes.

There are currently 4 new tutorials that take you through the ExtraContent feature, and at least one more will be added to the series in the near future.

For more information about ExtraContent, or to see walk-through videos I have created for specific ExtraContent-enabled themes, please visit ExtraContent.info.

Tags: RapidWeaver 4, RapidWeaver 5.0, ExtraContent, screencasts, RapidWeaver training, RapidWeaver video tutorials

I have updated the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum with two new tutorials. The first is in response to a common question I receive, that until now was not addressed in the curriculum. This question involves the use of a RapidWeaver website to build an email mailing list, and whether or not RapidWeaver is capable of creating HTML emails to send to a mailing list. This new “HTML Email Newsletters” tutorial addresses these questions, and can be found in Lesson 8 of the Section 101 curriculum. I discuss a couple of different solutions, including the one I use for RapidWeaver Classroom.

The other tutorial discusses how to create a splash page in RapidWeaver, and involves a special theme and a few customizations to make it perfect for this purpose. This “Create a Splash Page” tutorial can be found in the “How to...” lesson under Section 301 of the curriculum.

Tags: RapidWeaver 4, RapidWeaver 5.0, RapidWeaver video tutorials, screencasts, Splash page, HTML emails, mailing lists

I have added an 8th lesson to the core RapidWeaver 5 curriculum. Lesson 8 under Section 101 discusses a variety of subjects that are important for anyone designing a website. This lesson starts with 4 new tutorials: Measuring Space, Resizing Images, Finding Images, and Setting Up Web Hosting. These are all important topics to supplement the prior lessons, and I will be considering more topics to include in this lesson, so please leave a comment here if you have any requests!

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, screencasts, RapidWeaver training, RapidWeaver video tutorials

Lesson 7 of the RapidWeaver 5 curriculum in Section 101 has been updated with new tutorials using RapidWeaver 5. These tutorials are primarily targeted at advanced users, or those familiar with HTML and CSS code, as they deal with theme modification. These tutorials provide an overview of the structure of a RapidWeaver theme and the specific files that are involved with making modifications. If you are interested in the information provided in these screencasts, but are not familiar with HTML and CSS code, then you might find the Grad School curriculum useful.

The updating of Lesson 7 marks the completion of the original RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum, using RapidWeaver 5. At least one additional lesson will be added to the “core curriculum” in the coming weeks, detailing many additional topics that any website developer should be familiar with. Not every topic will be directly related to RapidWeaver, but knowledge of these topics is important and should be very helpful when building and publishing any website.

Thanks for your continued support!

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0, RapidWeaver training, RapidWeaver video tutorials, screencasts

Big news was released this week regarding features for RapidWeaver 5.0. This is official news straight from Realmac Software and the full details can be found here. I would love to make some comments of my own regarding the announced features, so I will do so below.

What’s New?

Over a dozen brand new themes, designed by world-renowned designers.
The current offering of built-in themes is severely lacking in flexibility and design that is up-to-par with current trends. While I love 3rd-party themes and the theme development community, I think it’s important that RapidWeaver ship with some high-quality themes in order to be taken seriously as a website design application. There’s no doubt that people demo RapidWeaver and drop it before even realizing there are 3rd-party themes, simply because they are less than impressed with the built-in theme selection. Also, the mention of “world-renowned designers” really raises expectations for these themes, so they had better be great!

Site Resources: we’ve entirely re-worked the ‘Assets’ feature of RapidWeaver to allow folks to add global site resources (now found in the sidebar) that can be linked to from any page.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!! RapidWeaver’s ‘Assets’ feature has always been one of the very few poorly implemented features of the software. I am thrilled to see this change to a global setting, and I can only assume that it will be well-executed. This change should make it far less intimidating to work with assets added directly to a RapidWeaver project.

Automatic built-in XML Sitemap generation and All-new, built-in Sitemap page type for creating an HTML sitemap.
This is good news and a feature that I do think needs to be standard with RapidWeaver. In the official news posting it is mentioned that this does overlap with Loghound’s Sitemap plugin, but the Sitemap plugin will still have its place for power-users. John at Loghound does outstanding work and it should be evident from the RapidWeaver Classroom tutorials that I think very highly of his products, so I did have mixed feelings about this news for John’s sake. All-in-all, though, I do think it is important for Sitemap generation to be standard with every website RapidWeaver creates.

CSS consolidation to speed up page loading.
Many users may not see the importance of this feature because it’s something that will occur in the background (I assume), but it is a big deal and I am very excited it will be included. In an attempt at a quick and simple explanation, every theme variation under the Styles tab is tied to a separate CSS file. Each of these CSS files must be uploaded to your server and referenced by the HTML files associated with your webpages. CSS consolidation will take all the code in those individual CSS files and place it all into one file -- this means that only one CSS file will need to be published to your server, and only one CSS document will have to be referenced in your HTML files. This should speed-up your publishing time, the load times of your webpages, and create cleaner HTML code in your pages.

FTP bookmarks
While I wouldn’t consider this a major feature, it is a welcome convenience for the large majority who publish their sites with RapidWeaver. FTP bookmarks would allow you to save multiple instances of publishing settings, so that you wouldn’t have to clear the fields and re-enter your information in the Publishing Settings whenever you want to change where your site is being published. In the RapidWeaver Classroom tutorials I recommend publishing your website to a test directory before publishing it live -- typically the first time you publish and then when you make major updates. In this scenario, you could have an FTP bookmark for the test directory on your server, as well as a bookmark for the root folder. This feature will save time and the hassle of looking up usernames and passwords for publishing.

What’s Missing?

Inevitably, there will be features that are hoped for but not included in an update to any software application. There are some widely requested features, and others that are more specific to a niche and ultimately not useful to the regular user. I’m sure that Realmac Software chooses to focus its efforts on features that will affect the widest range of users, and I am certainly excited by the features announced so far. For the sake of discussion, though, here are just a few requests that have been tossed around somewhat frequently, and don’t appear to have made the cut.

Updates to built-in page types
This is a very general request, but aside from the addition of a Sitemap page, there hasn’t been any mention of updates to any of the page-types. The File-Sharing, Movie Album, QuickTime, and Photo Album pages are a few that could benefit from some kind of refresh. I think this could be done without any major impact to existing 3rd-party plugins as well.

Improvement in functionality of the Master Styles feature
Working with Master Styles for your theme can be maddening at times, and in my opinion it is neck-and-neck with Page Assets for the poorest implemented feature. At this point there doesn’t appear to be any improvement coming for this feature.

A built-in ExtraContent-like feature
ExtraContent is a brilliant enhancement to 3rd-party themes, but official, built-in support for a feature that accomplishes the same goal has been widely requested for some time. It is confirmed that we won’t be seeing this type of feature in the version 5.0 release.

Content Management System (CMS)
Version 5.0 of RapidWeaver will not include any native support for a CMS. I certainly understand why this is a widely requested feature, but I am torn in my opinion on it because I don’t want to see RapidWeaver become too complex. If CMS support is ever added to RapidWeaver, then it needs to be very well-executed, resulting in an intuitive, easy-to-use solution. I have no expectations for this in terms of if and when, but for now there are certainly other ways of integrating a CMS if needed.

When is the Release Date?

The official details state “mid-2010” for the 5.0 release. This will be a paid upgrade, and by the time version 5.0 is available it will have been about 3 years since a paid upgrade was released. I am certainly looking forward to the new features announced this week, and whatever other surprises that might be in store. In the meantime, we will be seeing a version 4.4 release in the very near future, so that will have to tide us over for the time being.

Tags: RapidWeaver 5.0