We've taken a break and been quiet this year regarding Rapidweaver theme development and the Realmac forum here at Blueball Design, but we've been keeping an eye on a trend that started appearing the past year for Rapidweaver themes: The reliance on javascript gimmicks and the huge unnecessary amounts of theme variations added into themes to help market them.

This has made the use of Rapidweaver themes in general much more difficult for the average to new Rapidweaver users then it should be. For advanced users who have the knowledge to fine tune and adjust the code to get it to work like they want for their sites it's not been a problem. But we've seen more and more support questions and posts about problems with these types of themes in the Realmac support forums.

So a couple of observations and comments on Rapidweaver themes:

1. There's a reason the stock Rapidweaver themes are kept simple. They just work with minimal effort required. The only thing they really need added to them are some custom image slots.
2. More is not better especially where web sites are concerned. The more javascripts you use on a site page, the greater the chance your pages will not load correctly, especially in IE6 and IE7. Also the chance for a conflict happening with a third party page plugin or stack is much greater.
3. There's a limit to the number of css files that IE6, IE7, and IE8 can apply to a site page. Currently these browsers can only apply up to a maximum number of 31 css files to a single site page. So if the theme you are using has more than 31 theme variations, any css file past the 31st css file listed in your web page will not be applied to style your page.
4. With web sites the simplest solution is always the best one. If someone goes to your web site and has to wait for the page to load, guess what? They go somewhere else. If someone goes to your web site and focuses on how nice the layout looks before seeing your site content and images, how effective is that theme layout? The viewer's focus should always go to your site content and images first before anything else. If the theme layout overwhelms your content instead of enhancing the content, you may want to review how effective your site is and if the layout used is acheiving your current goals.

This is not meant to detract from other theme developer's efforts as many outstanding themes have come out, but rather just some observations from us on the current state of Rapidweaver theme development, and that MAYBE an effort should be started to bring back simpler and easier to use Rapidweaver themes for the average and new Rapidweaver users. Read More...

Tags: Blueball

Everyone has their favorite Rapidweaver plugins they like to use for their Rapidweaver sites but I thought I'd mention the ones we like and use. We've found ourselves using just a few day in and day out on sites we develop for clients here, and have come to rely on them probably more than we should. Here they are in no particular order:

Stacks

If you are going to buy any plugin make it this one! Without a doubt the most versatile plugin we've ever used, Stacks in our opinion is the best plugin Isaiah at www.yourhead.com has ever developed. We use it on every Rapidweaver site we develop now. It's simple to use, very flexible, and just works. This is what all Rapidweaver plugins should be like.

RapidSearch

The easiest and preferred way to add search functionality to your Rapidweaver site and amazingly simple to use. www.joshlockhart.com's RapidSearch plugin has evolved into one of our most used plugins and one we can't do without! We use it on every Rapidweaver site we develop and it works perfectly every time.

PlusKit

More powerful than it first appears, this highly useful multi-faceted plugin from www.loghound.com allows you to place sites pages within site pages, add another page into a block or stack, and much, much more. Not as easy to setup and use the first time but the more you use Pluskit, the more you'll rely on it. We use it now on every site we develop.

RapidBlog

If you're like us, a lot of our clients we create Rapidweaver sites for are stuck using PCs at work but want to be able to edit or add to their blog page from their PC. With www.loghound.com's RapidBlog plugin, they can easily do this from any location using a PC or a Mac. We recommend this alternative blog page plugin over Rapidweaver's default blog page plugin, and use it on every site we create for clients.

SiteMap

This feature should have been built into Rapidweaver as a default page style, but thanks to John at www.loghound.com and his SiteMap plugin, you can knock out a complete site map of your Rapidweaver site with a couple of clicks. The fastest and easiest way available to create a site map in Rapidweaver. Read More...

Tags: Blueball