RapidWeaver Classroom

A Shelter-in-Place Update

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2020-04-22T01:03:48-05:00

I hope that this update finds you all doing well during this difficult time. I wanted to share an update on Foundation 6, and also show you what our family has been doing to stay connected and have fun with friends and family during this time.

If you don't see the video below then please click here.

I am also moving to MailChimp for sending updates by email. Please opt-in below if you would like to receive an email when the Foundation 6 tutorials and all future tutorials are released.

A Message from Ryan

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2020-01-06T19:26:36-06:00

Hi everyone, it's been a while since I shared an update here, so I thought I would do so by video!

RapidWeaver 8 Has Arrived - New Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2018-08-15T00:53:27-05:00

RapidWeaver 8 was released on Tuesday and it is a fantastic update that I highly recommend. There are many new additions and refinements, but the major features include new theme style options, Unsplash Photos (royalty-free stock photos) integration, a GDPR privacy feature, social network sharing, and better management of resources and 3rd-party addons. RapidWeaver Classroom currently has 13 new tutorials covering the features and changes with this version, and more will be released each day this week. Here is a listing of the first set of tutorials:

> Upgrading from RapidWeaver 6 to 8
> Upgrading from RapidWeaver 7 to 8
> Overview of New Interface
> New Themes and Style Options
> Simulate Mode
> Resources and Unsplash Photos
> Managing Addons
> Tabbed Projects View
> Preferences
> Settings: General and Web Icons
> Settings: Advanced and Privacy (GDPR)
> Settings: Code, Master Style and Notes
> Settings: Publishing

As mentioned, this is only the first set of new tutorials being released for RapidWeaver 8. There are many more to come, along with updates to other series of tutorials using RapidWeaver 8.

Subscribers to RapidWeaver Classroom have immediate access to these new tutorials. Additionally, for the first time in the 10-year history of RapidWeaver Classroom, I am offering a Lifetime Subscription option that will be available for a limited time. If you currently have an active subscription and would like to switch to this Lifetime option, please get in-touch with me and I will help you with the switch.

-Ryan

P.S. I realize it's been quite a while since my last update and tutorial announcement. There are many reasons for this, and I will share all of that soon. In the meantime, I am thrilled to offer these new tutorials with you and to continue with more upcoming releases.

RapidWeaver 7 is Here -- New Tutorials Available Now!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2016-05-24T04:37:23-05:00

RapidWeaver 7 is here and offers a variety of great improvements that will make our weaving lives more enjoyable! I have posted new tutorials in the RapidWeaver curriculum that cover all of the new features and updates. Since RapidWeaver 7 shares much in common with RapidWeaver 6, I didn't find it necessary to re-do the entire RapidWeaver series of tutorials, so the RapidWeaver 7 tutorials are mixed-in with the RapidWeaver 6 videos. Those videos include RW 7 in the title so that it is obvious they are for that version. I've also placed all the new tutorials together for anyone who would like to only view those.

RapidWeaver 7 offers a lot of improvements and refinements, and you can see a full list of features here, or you can view the overview video that I have put together.

I will have more to share soon. In the meantime, enjoy RapidWeaver 7!

Ryan

New RapidCart Pro Stacks Tutorial + RapidWeaver 7 News!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2016-05-18T22:50:35-05:00

RapidCart Pro received an update to v4.7 last week, and with the update came a new RapidCart Pro stack that had been anticipated for several weeks. Now that it is available, I have updated the RapidCart Pro tutorial series with a new tutorial on using the plugin and its stacks to create an online store in Stacks pages. There are a total of 4 RapidCart Pro stacks — 3 of these (Cart, Product and Grid) can be used to add products and other shopping cart features to Stacks pages, and then the Store Stack can be used to embed an entire RapidCart Pro store into a Stacks page. The Store Stack is the newest addition with v4.7, and it is intended for use with Stacks-based themes such as Foundation that require ALL pages to be built with Stacks. With that, RapidCart Pro is now compatible with any Stacks-based system, offering the best of both worlds when it comes to working with both Stacks and a dedicated plugin. This new tutorial — "RapidCart Pro and Stacks" — will guide you through all of the details.

Watch the new RapidCart Pro tutorial

Major RapidWeaver 7 News

If you have been keeping up with Realmac's announcements then you are likely aware that they have been working hard on RapidWeaver 7. Last week they publicly announced a tentative release date for the next major version of RapidWeaver — Tuesday, May 24th. Yes, that is next week! So that sheds some light on what I've been up to since I published the RapidCart Pro series of tutorials back in April. RapidWeaver 7 has some fantastic new features and updates, and I look forward to sharing all the information with you in new RapidWeaver 7 tutorials that will be made available as soon as RapidWeaver 7 launches.

Once those RapidWeaver 7 tutorials are released, there will be much more to come as I move forward with production of a ton of new material using RapidWeaver 7. As always, thanks for your support and keep an eye out for a big announcement soon!

Ryan

Major Updates and RapidCart Pro Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2016-04-13T00:10:37-05:00

It has been months since my last update and this one is long overdue. Since that last update, RapidWeaver Classroom has been given a completely new design, an upgraded membership system, a search feature, a reworked presentation of tutorials and a new home for hosting the tutorial content. I am very happy with the results of this work, but the problem is that it has taken much longer than I anticipated, and this progress has come at the expense of new content. I am about 75% complete with all the "upgrades" I have been working on, but I've taken some time over the past 6 weeks to focus on production of new tutorial content, which I am releasing today.

22-Part RapidCart Pro 4 Tutorial Series

I am pleased to announce a 22-part series of tutorials detailing the excellent RapidCart Pro 4 plugin for RapidWeaver. I have spent a lot of time with this plugin and I am very impressed with the e-commerce capabilities that it has to offer. It supports both physical and digital products, is highly customizable in almost every way imaginable, and it features a very elegant catalog and checkout experience. For years now I have championed CartLoom as my e-commerce solution of choice, but I must say that it has a very strong competitor in RapidCart Pro 4. If you are considering an e-commerce component for your website then I would highly recommend you take a look at RapidCart Pro 4.

Members, log-in here to access the RapidCart Pro 4 tutorials.

RapidWeaver Classroom Upgrades

I briefly outlined some of the changes I've been working on, but wanted to take this opportunity to go into a bit more detail for anyone who might be interested. If you have not spent any time at RapidWeaver Classroom since late last year, then I'd like to encourage you to take a few minutes with the new design of the website. I wanted to feature many of the capabilities that RapidWeaver has to offer, and I needed to adopt a more modern theme to do that. The result is what I hope is an aesthetically pleasing design that is functional and provides an enjoyable user experience. This new design was implemented site-wide on both the public-facing and membership areas of the website.

In conjunction with the redesign I performed a major upgrade to the aMember membership system used here at RapidWeaver Classroom. In fact this was the most significant aMember upgrade since I launched the website in 2008. The benefits of this upgrade are many and greatly improve the user experience. For example, linking directly to a specific page of protected content as I did above was not possible in the previous version — believe it or not — and I can now do this as new content is added. You can now upgrade between curriculums through your account settings, and I am developing a tighter integration between them so that you can easily browse and access content between both. Speaking of curriculums, I took this opportunity to simplify the offerings and there are now just two that fall under the names Undergrad and Graduate. Undergrad was previously known as Classroom, and Graduate merges Grad School and Combined as the option for accessing all content.

I am also excited to announce that after many attempts at implementing a search feature, I have had success adding one that works better than any I've tried before. It is technically a "filter" — but it filters content by topic, keyword and/or developer. So, for example, you could set the filters to find tutorials that cover video stacks by Joe Workman, and you would quickly arrive at the corresponding page. This search feature is available on the Home page of the members' area as well as on a dedicated Search page there, and you can also find it on the Tutorials page of the main RapidWeaver Classroom website. I have created many search terms to filter by, but I'd appreciate feedback on any way it might be improved.

Finally, I decided it was also time to transition all of the video tutorial content to a new video hosting platform. I have been using Amazon's AWS service for years now and while it has been very good, managing the content has been difficult and the video player used to present this content has not kept up with changing technology. I had been keeping an eye on the Vimeo Pro service for some time and decided it was finally time to make the jump. The Vimeo player is a great improvement and many of the tutorials are now hosted there. The transition is still not complete, though, so I will continue to work on that as I also develop brand new content.

Complete 13-Part Series of Stacks 3 Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2015-09-22T11:23:25-05:00

I’ve added three more tutorials to the Stacks 3 series today, completing the series with a total of 13 videos. The new tutorials cover the use of the Stacks Cloud content management system (CMS) to remotely edit content from a web browser, the use of Stacks with the ExtraContent feature found in many 3rd-party themes, and instruction on how to import a Stacks page into non-Stacks pages using the PlusKit plugin. While Stacks Cloud may not be useful for everyone, the latter two tutorials should be very helpful for most RapidWeaver and Stacks users. In the case of the final tutorial, “Importing Stacks Into Non-Stacks Pages,” you will see how powerful the PlusKit plugin can be in giving you the ability to design content layout in Stacks, and place that content into other pages such as the Blog or Contact Form pages.

I am very happy with how the Stacks 3 series of tutorials turned out. I think it is very detailed and thorough in taking you through all that this phenomenal plugin has to offer. Even if you have been a Stacks 1 and 2 user, you will likely find some information in these tutorials that is new and helpful to you as you develop your websites.

In my last update I mentioned that my next endeavor is to produce a thorough series of tutorials covering responsive design. I will begin making these tutorials available during the first week of October and I look forward to sharing this very important training with you all!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

10-Part Stacks 3 Tutorial Series Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2015-09-19T00:56:58-05:00

The Stacks 3 series of tutorials now consists of a 10-part, nearly 2-hour series that explores most every detail of the plugin and its stacks. This latest updates includes an introduction for those new to stacks, a tutorial that covers the details of each built-in stack, instruction on the use of the Global Content feature, and thorough look at the text and image formatting tools available in Stacks 3.

The only Stacks 3 feature I’ve yet to cover is Stacks Cloud, a basic CMS (content management system) that is included with the plugin. I will have a tutorial covering Stacks Cloud available at the beginning of next week. I also plan to add a couple of other topics that aren’t specific to the Stacks plugin, but should prove to be useful as you work with Stacks.

RapidWeaver 6 and the Stacks 3 plugin form what I consider to be the foundation of website design with RapidWeaver. There is one other topic I believe should be included in that foundation, and that is responsive design — developing a website to be, as Google would say, “mobile-friendly.” RapidWeaver Classroom currently includes various tutorials that provide instruction on responsive design, but there is a need for a thorough series of tutorials that presents all of the information in a clear and concise manner. I plan to begin development of that series next week, and those tutorials will be released around the end of September or beginning of October. I am excited to bring this new and very important training to you all.

I hope you are enjoying Stacks 3, and if you haven’t yet upgraded then I can’t recommend it highly enough. Aside from the great new features, editing and saving your project has never been so fast thanks to the emphasis on speed in this new update.

Check back soon for more updates about the responsive design series!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Stacks 3 is Here and It Is Amazing!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2015-09-04T15:23:26-05:00

The highly-anticipated Stacks 3 plugin was released last week and I am excited to deliver new tutorials to cover new features of this amazing plugin. I can’t adequately express how significant of an update this is, and I think you will see what I mean when you go through the tutorials and learn about all that Stacks 3 has to offer.

First, a quick run-down of some of the major new features:

Partials

A new way to build your pages from modular, editable, reusable components that you build yourself.

Super Fast, Super Customizable Library

A brand new library redesigned from the ground up to be blazing fast with configuration options to help you adjust your workflow just the way you like.

New Sidebar Interface

Both the Stacks Library and the Info Pane can be used as Windows, Popovers, or Sidebars. Plus hide/show them quickly with simple keyboard shortcuts. Now Stacks works great on all screen sizes!

New Responsive Content

The built in column stacks are now responsive and support stacked layout options, per-platform hiding. All images now support responsive resizing and automatically export retina resolutions when the source image is large enough.

I’ve put together a video that provides an overview of the new features and will include that in this blog post below. I’ve also released the first 4 of a series of in-depth tutorials covering these features of Stacks 3, and those are available now in the membership area of RapidWeaver Classroom.

I hope you are excited about the possibilities that Stacks 3 brings. I am continuing to build-out a complete series for Stacks 3 that covers every detail you need to know. The complete series will be 15-18 videos total, so there is plenty more on the way over the next 1-2 weeks. I will update the blog here again as those are released. I also have a lot of new material planned following the Stacks 3 tutorials: a Responsive Design series, PayLoom 3, RapidCart 4, Foundation updates… the list goes on! I look forward to bringing a lot of new training through the rest of 2015!

P.S. Thank you to all of you who reached out to me by email or through the blog comments in response to my last update at the end of June. The outpouring of support was overwhelming and greatly appreciated, and I am sorry for not replying back to each of you individually. I am very happy to be back to producing new training for you all!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Where I've Been, Words of Thanks, and What's to Come

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2015-06-30T23:02:35-05:00

Many of you have noticed that I have been away for quite some time and haven’t been active in posting here at RapidWeaver Classroom, or on Facebook or Twitter. Thank you to all who have sent an email to check on me. I have wanted to share what has been going on for some time now, and I am finally at a place where I feel that I can. It’s important to me that I explain my absence, so please bear with me as I attempt to share in a concise but detailed way.

Where I’ve Been

The last couple of weeks of October 2014 were busy and exciting. RapidWeaver 6 launched and I had just completed a 2-week marathon of tutorial production that resulted in 52 new tutorials for RapidWeaver Classroom. My plan was to take a break from producing tutorials through the end of 2014, and to primarily focus on supporting RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers and RapidWeaver users in general with any questions or issues with upgrading and updating their websites in RapidWeaver 6.

The following month, my family received some news that changed everything. My wife was pregnant with our 3rd child, a baby boy, and at a routine appointment he was diagnosed with a terminal condition. We were told that he wouldn’t survive for long after being born — minutes, hours or days were what we were told to expect. We spent the following months grieving the eventual loss and anticipating what was coming. We lost our son, Eli, earlier this year, and then began a different kind of grieving process that still continues to this day.

I know that people cope with suffering and loss in different ways, and for me it was to retreat from isolation — to be with my wife and children as much as possible. For me, work is when I am most isolated, despite having the busyness of the work I have to do. That is part of why I have been away for as long as I have. The other reason for my absence is a financial one related to medical expenses, which has made it necessary for me to take on a number of freelance projects in recent weeks. My attention and focus has been on those, and while I am certainly thankful for those opportunities, I badly miss doing what I enjoy the most — developing training and supporting all of you in the work you are doing with RapidWeaver.

Words of Thanks

My wife and I recently had a great discussion about what we are thankful for, and we had plenty of things to mention. We have a 4 year-old boy and 2 year-old girl, and they have brought us so much joy during these past months. We also have wonderful family, friends and church community who have loved and supported us so well, and our faith in God had given us hope. This conversation also led to what I am thankful for in my work, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share some words of thanks here.

This year marks 10 years that I have been working with RapidWeaver, and RapidWeaver Classroom passed the 7-year mark last month. I love website development and teaching is one of my passions, so I am extremely thankful that I’ve been able to combine both of these for over 7 years now, and do so at a level where I can provide for my family. I recognize though that I wouldn’t be doing what I love without those that make RapidWeaver what it is. Thank you to Dan, Ben, Nik and the rest of the team at Realmac Software. You had a vision of something great, you made it a reality, and you have remained devoted to improving it over all these years. Thank you for putting an end to my years of wandering from one website development solution to the next. I am so thankful that I landed on RapidWeaver.

Thank you to the 3rd-party developer community, for bringing your unique talents to RapidWeaver and enhancing it with your offerings. If you have developed add-ons for RapidWeaver and offered support to your customers, then this is for you. I have had the privilege of communicating with many of you over the years, and can even call some of you friends. For those of you who I haven’t had personal contact with, I do apologize for that — I am kind of an online introvert, if such a thing exists, and kind of struggle with where my place is somewhere in-between a customer and a developer. I have great admiration for what you all do. I’ve been asked many times if I will begin developing themes or stacks, but I simply want to stick with what I love to do, and I want to leave that work to all of you who clearly have the talent and vision to do it. Thank you for your commitment to the RapidWeaver community.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have supported my work here at RapidWeaver Classroom over the years. As I started thinking about what to write here, I thought about how many of you have entrusted me with details of your lives — even with similar suffering such as sickness and death — that has made it easier as I’ve considered sharing this with you. I am thankful to have been able to get to know many of you through email conversations or Skype calls, and to get to see how you’ve taken RapidWeaver and my training and created something great for your business or even your personal life. It’s been an absolute pleasure to receive your notes of encouragement and hear how my training has enabled you to bring your projects to life. I hope for many more years to do more of the same. Which leads to…

What’s to Come

I cannot wait to get back to developing new content, and I am now at a place where I can begin doing that. I don’t know what it looks like to make-up for months of inactivity, but I am going to do what I can to try. I will have more details concerning new material very soon, but I can say that my immediate focus is to build-out detailed, multi-part lessons on what I consider to be the most important topics when it comes to website development. I will continue to develop one-off “how-to-use” videos on various add-ons from time-to-time, but I want to move towards integrating these add-ons into more involved lessons that tackle specific topics.

I also have a much bigger vision for a better learning environment. Each iteration of the RapidWeaver Classroom membership area has taught me something new about creating the best user experience, and learning experience. The last major re-working of the membership area happened about 18 months ago, and it was a significant step forward, but the next evolution should prove to be a massive leap forward by comparison. I will be steadily working on this alongside the development of the new training to come.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, for your understanding and for your support. I look forward to sharing another update with you very soon.

Ryan

RapidWeaver 6 is Here: 52 New Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-10-21T12:10:13-05:00

RapidWeaver 6 launched today! It is a significant upgrade to RapidWeaver 5, and includes some exciting new features. I have been busy these past couple of months developing an entirely new series of training on RapidWeaver 6, and I am excited to release that training today alongside Realmac's public launch of the software.

There is a new RapidWeaver 6 section of training now available that includes 52 unique tutorials. Every detail of RapidWeaver 6 is covered. If you are still using RapidWeaver 5, then you can continue to access the RapidWeaver 5 training as well.

30% Off Any Subscription

RapidWeaver Classroom is celebrating the launch of RapidWeaver 6 with a coupon code for 30% OFF any RapidWeaver Classroom subscription. Use the code RW6CLASS when registering to receive 30% off!

Video Review of RapidWeaver 6 Features

I have put together a brief overview of the new RapidWeaver 6 features, which you can view below. If you are receiving this update by email and the video does not display, then please visit the RapidWeaver Classroom Blog.

RapidWeaver 6 Upgrade Details

If you plan to upgrade to RapidWeaver 6 from RapidWeaver 5, then you will need to upgrade your project files to open in RapidWeaver 6. Realmac Software has released an Upgrade Guide detailing steps that you should follow. To summarize, you will want to download RapidWeaver 5.4, which includes a new Export for RapidWeaver 6 feature. You will export your website projects from RapidWeaver 5.4, and then you can open them in RapidWeaver 6.

Upgrade pricing is also available for RapidWeaver 5 (or earlier) users, and you can get more details here.

RapidWeaver 6 is a very exciting update and I am happy to be able to offer an entire training library on the same day as its release! There will be more updates to follow, so check back soon!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

RapidWeaver 6 Announced: What to Expect Going Forward

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-10-08T15:21:45-05:00

Realmac Software announced this week that RapidWeaver 6 is set to be released soon. You can view the official announcement here, get details of some of the new features here, and view an FAQ here. No official release date has been publicized, as the Mac App Store team still has to approve this new version, but Realmac notes an estimate of late October / early November. RapidWeaver 6 will be a paid upgrade of $39.99 from any previous version, and those who purchased RapidWeaver 5 on or after August 28th will be receiving a free upgrade.

In case you don't have time to peruse the new feature list, here's a quick run-down of the features that are mentioned on Realmac's website.

Five new themes from 5 different 3rd-party developers

Addons Manager to organize and group addons

Faster FTP publishing

Markdown support

Support for OS X's Autosave and Versions

Site-wide code for adding custom code to all pages

Full-screen support

Responsive Preview with presets for iPhone and iPad widths

Master Styles

Example Sites

This is an exciting update and I have been very busy these past weeks creating brand new training for the upcoming version of RapidWeaver 6. My goal is to have the entire RapidWeaver section of tutorials (about 50 videos) replaced with new videos for RapidWeaver 6, and to launch that updated training when Realmac launches RapidWeaver 6. This is obviously a major undertaking, which is why you haven't seen regular tutorial updates in recent weeks, so I appreciate your patience as I develop this new training.

This will actually be the 4th time that I've produced the core RapidWeaver training since RapidWeaver Classroom began in 2008. I have produced training for RapidWeaver 3, 4, and 5, and now version 6 marks the 4th production of this core training. I have looked for ways to improve on the topics and sequence of training with each iteration, and I feel that this will be the most in-depth and complete core RapidWeaver training I've ever developed. My goal is for those with no previous web design experience to understand how to use RapidWeaver and to love working with it, but also for experienced RapidWeaver users to gain new knowledge that will take their skills to another level.

I am very excited about this upcoming release of the best website development software I've ever used, and I look forward to bringing you brand new training that covers every detail you'll need to know. I will of course let you know as soon as RapidWeaver 6 launches!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

20 Foundation Theme Tutorials Now Available - Series Complete*

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-08-05T23:16:49-05:00

New Feature: "Pro Tips" in the RapidWeaver Classroom Blog

As mentioned last week, Pro Tips are helpful articles that will be added with each new tutorial update. Pro Tip #2 has been added this week, and you can find it immediately below this post, or click here to view it.

Overview of New Updates

Tutorial #20 in the Foundation Theme series is now available.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

After weeks of producing training for the Foundation Theme, the series finally comes to completion with the 20th tutorial. This final tutorial discusses the creation of various website layouts, and includes a few stacks that have yet not been discussed in the series.

At just over 4 hours in length, this series covers a lot of ground in great detail. Nevertheless, I'm careful in saying that the series is complete, which is why you see the asterisk (*) in the title of this post. There is a unique challenge in creating training for blank themes such as Foundation and FreeStack, since they are essentially capable of creating an unlimited variety of website designs and layouts. All that to say, please let me know if you find some detail lacking in this series of tutorials. I also expect that Joe Workman will add more features and stacks in the future as Foundation continues to mature, and I will certainly keep you up-to-date with that information.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin. Finally, a new series on the aMember 4 membership system was produced and is available to Grad School subscribers.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

So after such a major undertaking in creating this training, what's next? Well, I'm not going to be taking it easy anytime soon, as RapidWeaver 6 is far along in the development stage and the RapidWeaver community should be expecting a release of this major update in the not-too-distant future. There is no official launch date from Realmac Software at this point, but there is a limited public beta going on now, which means that the time is drawing near. I will be replacing the entire RapidWeaver section of the curriculum with training that covers version 6, so that's 40-50 videos that will be keeping me busy for some time. I do hope to release a few tutorials covering various topics in the meantime, so check back here over the next few weeks for more information.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Pro Tip #2: Laptop Users - Improve Efficiency with Added Hardware

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-08-05T23:13:51-05:00

If you are using RapidWeaver to develop your website with a MacBook Air, MacBook or MacBook Pro, then Pro Tip #2 is for you. I personally do most of my development work in RapidWeaver on a 27" iMac, but on occasion I find myself in a situation where I am needing to do that work on a 13" MacBook Air. As I've done development work on the MacBook Air, I've noticed that it takes me longer to do things on the laptop, on account of the smaller screen size and use of a trackpad, opposed to a "traditional" mouse.

I was curious about how much efficiency I was losing, so I conducted a test, where I performed the same work on both the 27" iMac and the 13" MacBook Air. The result was that my efficiency dropped by 30-40% on the MacBook Air. If I were to do all of my development work on a laptop, then it would take me 30-40% more time to complete each project -- that adds up to a lot of additional time when you take development of entire websites into account.

Many of you who use RapidWeaver exclusively on a laptop may not realize how much faster that same development work could be done with a larger screen and traditional mouse. Now I certainly don't recommend that you go out and spend $2000 on a new iMac, but you can create a kind of desktop computing environment by adding an external display and a USB or Bluetooth wireless mouse to your laptop. By connecting an external display to your laptop, your laptop display will mirror to the larger screen, and whenever you need portability you can simply disconnect the monitor to continue using the laptop as usual.

As little as around $200 can significantly improve your productivity with RapidWeaver, and work in other applications as well for that matter. I have put together a few links to products on Amazon that may be worth considering.

Mouse
Logitech Wireless Performance Mouse MX - USB
Logitech Bluetooth Mouse M555b - Bluetooth (doesn't use a USB port)
Apple Wireless Magic Trackpad - Larger version of laptop trackpad. I find a traditional mouse like the options above to be more efficient.

External Display (Monitor) - Multiple options to choose from for every size. Each will be compatible with a Mac, using the Mini DisplayPort Adapter linked below.
21" Display
24" Display
27" Display
Mini DisplayPort Adapter - This will be needed to connect any non-Apple display to an Apple laptop.

The primary benefit of using an external display is that you gain additional vertical space on the screen. This reduces the amount of scrolling that is necessary, which translates to greater efficiency in working with RapidWeaver. The best example of this is in working with Stacks, where moving and copying stacks is much faster when you don't need to scroll up and down a great amount of the time.

A traditional mouse has an advantage over a trackpad because it offers much more precision in tracking and selecting items. Again, the use of Stacks provides a great example, where precision is important as you often must click in very specific spots. Selecting a particular stack on a page and adjusting its options in the Stack Inspector is most efficiently done with a traditional mouse.

If you decide to add an external display and/or mouse to your Apple laptop, I'd love to hear about your experience to see if your increase in productivity is similar to my own. Please leave a comment to let me know!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

3 New Foundation Tutorials Added -- 19 Videos Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-07-26T00:28:52-05:00

New Feature: "Pro Tips" in the RapidWeaver Classroom Blog

Before getting into the details of this week's update, I wanted to point out a new feature called "Pro Tips" that will be included in this blog with each tutorial update. Continue down past this blog entry to find Pro Tip #1, or click here to view it.

Overview of New Updates

Three more tutorials have been added to the Foundation Theme series here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

Now at a total of 19 videos, this series on the Foundation Theme is approaching completion, and there is currently enough information to get you well on your way to building websites with this excellent theme.

The first new tutorial in this update covers the various Foundation buttons stacks that are available to perform a variety of functions. In addition to typical buttons that are used as links, Foundation's buttons can also be used in a group to provide navigation, present a list of links in a drop-down menu, launch a lightbox window and provide functionality for a contact form. The various button stacks are very flexible in both style and function.

The second tutorial discusses the use of the Flex Video Stack to add video in Foundation. The Flex Video Stack is a great solution for embedding hosted videos from services such as YouTube or Vimeo. This tutorial also shows how easy it is to present a video inside of a lightbox that is launched from a button.

Finally, the third tutorial briefly discusses the blogging options that are currently available for use with Foundation. This is more of an informational video, opposed to a how-to video. RapidWeaver Classroom currently has a tutorial that covers Joe Workman's Tumblr Stack, which is one of the options mentioned in this tutorial. I do plan to cover the other options with separate tutorials in the future.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

The Foundation series of tutorials is nearly complete! Check back next week for the final Foundation tutorials.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Pro Tip #1: Send an Email Receipt after a Form Submission

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-07-26T00:27:18-05:00

This is the first of many "Pro Tip" articles to come here in the RapidWeaver Classroom Blog. In addition to news about RapidWeaver Classroom tutorial updates, I'd like this blog to be another kind of learning resource for you, and these Pro Tips are intended to give you quick ideas for how to improve your website. Many times these articles will reference RapidWeaver Classroom tutorials, so dive deeper into certain subjects through those videos.

For Pro Tip #1, I recommend the use of an email receipt that will automatically email your website visitor when they submit information through a contact form on your website. Before I explain this recommendation further, I want to point out that RapidWeaver's built-in Contact Form page does not include the option to send an email receipt -- it simply presents a "success" message upon submission of the form, and nothing more. In order to send an email receipt you will need to purchase a 3rd-party form plugin or stack. At this time, both the FormLoom plugin and FormSnap suite of stacks from Yabdab include the option to send an email receipt. Both are excellent solutions, but I am partial to the FormSnap stacks because working with stacks and the Stacks 2 plugin offers more flexibility. RapidWeaver Classroom does have tutorials on both FormLoom and FormSnap (Tutorials > Add-Ons > Forms in the members' area), so please reference those tutorials if you are not familiar with how to use them.

Let's get to the details now. Why do I recommend the use of an email receipt?

1) Help prevent your future response from being filtered as spam.

Some email hosts -- Google in particular -- can be very aggressive about filtering email as spam. If you are using an email address that is associated with your domain name, then it is very possible that your emails will be filtered as spam by the recipient's email provider. This can cause significant problems, especially if you are trying to follow-up with a potential customer, or attempting to provide some type of support.

If your website form(s) is configured to send an email receipt, then you can instruct your website visitors to check their email inbox as soon as they submit the form. As a success message on the form page, you can say something like this:

"Thank you for contacting us. Please check your inbox now for an email from us. If you do not see the email in your inbox then check your spam folder. If the message is in your spam folder, mark it as "Not Spam" and add our email address to your contacts list. This will ensure that you receive our next correspondence, which should arrive in the next 24 hours."

In this case, the email receipt gives the recipient an opportunity to check that email from you will successfully arrive in their inbox. If they check their inbox and don't find the message, then they can take the necessary steps to ensure that they receive future email from you. The actual email receipt doesn't need to say much, and it could even suggest that the recipient add the email address to their contacts list as well.

2) Immediately provide useful information.

Many websites include FAQs, but unfortunately many website visitors too quickly submit a contact form for assistance, instead of looking through the available FAQ for an answer. The email receipt function offers you another opportunity to provide someone with the information they need, so that they don't have to wait for a manual response from you.

You can populate an email receipt with a list of common questions and answers, in the hopes that this information will often address the need that resulted in the person contacting you. As a part of the information provided in the receipt, you might request that the person respond back if that information answered their question. This can save you time in the long-run as you will ideally have less email support to handle.

3) Set expectations for your communication.

In general, using an email receipt can be a method of providing excellent customer service. Even though it's not personal or necessarily specific to the topic of the email request, it can establish an expectation for how you communicate and address customer needs. It's an opportunity to make a very quick first impression.

That's it for Pro Tip #1. I hope that you've found it helpful and you can expect a new tip along with each new tutorial update here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Four New Foundation Tutorials Added -- 16 Videos Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-07-13T23:34:18-05:00

Overview of New Updates

Four more tutorials have been added to the Foundation Theme series here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

This update brings a couple of weeks' worth of tutorials to the Foundation series. Now at a total of 16 videos, this series on the Foundation Theme is approaching completion, and there is currently enough information to get you well on your way to building websites with this excellent theme.

The first new tutorial in this update covers the use of Foundation's Visibility Stack to show and/or hide content based on the device being used to view the website. The Visibility Stack can be very useful and something every Foundation user should understand, so this tutorial is highly recommended.

The following two tutorials in this update focus on the variety of Dynamic Layout stacks that are available for Foundation. These stacks include: Orbit Slider, Reveal Lightbox, Tabs, Accordion, Dropdown, Alerts and Clearing Gallery. These stacks offer tremendous functionality and I highly recommend taking the time to learn how they can be used.

Finally, the fourth tutorial covers the creation of forms in Foundation. Foundation's Starter Pack and Add-On Pack 1 include a number of stacks that can be used to create powerful, flexible forms on your website. Most every website needs at least a contact form, so be sure to check out this tutorial as well.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past few months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin. Finally, a new series on the aMember 4 membership system was produced and is available to Grad School subscribers.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

We are nearing completion of the Foundation tutorial series, so check back next week for some of the final Foundation tutorials.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Two New Foundation Tutorials Added -- 12 Videos Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-06-22T23:33:30-05:00

Overview of New Updates

Two more tutorials have been added to the Foundation Theme series here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

If you've been following the recent updates here at RapidWeaver Classroom then you know I've been producing a series of tutorials on the excellent Foundation Theme from Joe Workman. This week brings two more tutorials to the series, for a total of 12 videos at about 2.5 hours of training.

The first of these two videos covers the basics of content layout in Foundation. A number of Foundation stacks are discussed in this video, and it is a must-see tutorial for anyone working with Foundation.

The second tutorial covers some more advanced layout options -- Offset and Source Order -- for the Foundation columns stacks. Foundation offers so much control over the layout of content from one device to the next, and this tutorial provides another demonstration of the flexibility of this theme and its stacks.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past few months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin. Finally, a new series on the aMember 4 membership system was produced and is available to Grad School subscribers.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

We have covered a lot of ground in these 12 videos so far, but there are still some more topics to come, so check back within the week for more new updates!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

4 Foundation Navigation Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-06-15T19:02:21-05:00

Overview of New Updates

Four more tutorials have been added to the Foundation Theme series here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

These new tutorials provide a ton of information on adding navigation to your website in the Foundation Theme. Foundation's navigation options are highly customizable and produce very impressive results. This is a significant part of building websites with Foundation, so I have put a lot of time into these tutorials and they should be very helpful to you as you work with the theme.

The Founation tutorial series is currently at 10 videos totaling over 2 hours of run-time. At this point, the Foundation series covers most all of the major topics that you need to understand in order to build websites with the theme. That being the case, there are still a number of Foundation stacks that I want to cover, and those tutorials will be coming over the next several weeks. I hope that you find these latest tutorials helpful, and I look forward to providing you with more next week.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past few months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin. Finally, a new series on the aMember 4 membership system was produced and is available to Grad School subscribers.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Check back next week for more Foundation Theme tutorials!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

2 More Foundation Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-06-05T13:11:39-05:00

Overview of New Updates

This week brings two more tutorials to the new Foundation Theme series here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

Last week I released the first 4 tutorials in a new series on the outstanding Foundation Theme from Joe Workman. This week, tutorials 5 and 6 in the Foundation series are available and cover the use of Site Styles in Foundation. This is a very important topic as Site Styles is used on every page of your Foundation website, and plays a major role in the look and feel of your website.

Once you have a good grasp of the training provided in these first 6 Foundation tutorials, you are well on your way to building complete websites with Foundation. The one major area of training that is still missing is the addition of navigation in Foundation, and that topic will be covered in great detail in next week's tutorial update. Even then this tutorial series will not be complete, as I plan to cover many of the individual stacks in detail, and discuss some other helpful topics along the way, so check back regularly as more training is added to this series.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past couple of months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin. Finally, a new series on the aMember 4 membership system was produced and is available to Grad School subscribers.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Check back next week for more Foundation Theme tutorials!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

New Foundation Theme Series -- First 4 Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-05-31T01:09:43-05:00

Overview of New Updates

I am very excited to announce the start of a new tutorial series on the Foundation Theme from Joe Workman.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

The Foundation Theme is an exciting "blank" theme for RapidWeaver that allows you create the entire layout of a website, using the Stacks 2 plugin and its Stack Elements. Joe Workman's Foundation Theme is free to download, but he has developed over 60 Foundation Stacks that take working with Foundation to a whole new level. The Foundation Theme and its stacks can be used to develop amazing, responsive websites, but there is a new learning curve involved because of Foundation's "mobile first" design philosophy. Of course this new series of Foundation tutorials here at RapidWeaver Classroom will ease the learning curve by covering all of the important details.

Today I have released the first 4 tutorials in this new series, and I will be spending the next several weeks producing many more, so you can be assured that the completed series will provide very thorough training on the Foundation Theme and the Foundation Stacks. The Foundation series of tutorials can be found under Tutorials > Add-Ons > Themes in the Classroom members' area.

Foundation is a truly impressive achievement and brings an exciting new concept of website design to RapidWeaver. I look forward to sharing all of the details with you over these next several weeks!

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past couple of months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin. Finally, a new series on the aMember 4 membership system was produced and is available to Grad School subscribers.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Check back next week for more Foundation Theme tutorials!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

aMember 4 Tutorials Now Available to Grad School Subscribers

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-05-13T23:59:35-05:00

Overview of New Updates

A new series of tutorials covering the aMember membership system is now available to Grad School subscribers.

Instructions for Grad School Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Grad School curriculum and select Section 201 > aMember from the main menu.

Details of New Updates

This update is a few days late on account of some significant editing time that was required, but I am pleased to release a completely new series of tutorials covering Version 4 of the aMember membership system.

The aMember system is used here at RapidWeaver Classroom, and is an excellent solution for membership websites. aMember handles pretty much everything -- automated customer registration and account management, payment, content protection and access, email communication, etc. About 99% of what you see here at RapidWeaver Classroom is done with RapidWeaver, but a lot of very important behind-the-scenes work is handled by aMember.

These new aMember tutorials will walk you through the process of integrating aMember with a RapidWeaver website. The first 5 tutorials run just over an hour total, and those are available now. The remainder of the series will be made available by the end of this week. There is some HTML and CSS work required to fully integrate aMember with your website, so knowledge of the material covered in the rest of the Grad School curriculum is important.

Finally, if you are interested in working with aMember, but can't fully handle the installation and setup yourself, then I'd be happy to help. I have completed many aMember installations for RapidWeaver users over the past 6 years. Please get in touch with me if you need assistance.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Recent changes have been made to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past couple of months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap, DateSnap and BackSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have been added, along with a couple of tutorials covering the excellent RapidSearch Pro plugin.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Some exciting new training is coming to the Classroom curriculum very soon. Many of you have probably already heard about Joe Workman's new Foundation Theme. It is very impressive, and I will be bringing you a massive series of tutorials covering the details of working with Foundation. Check back next week for more details.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

The BackSnap Stack and Another RapidSearch Pro Tutorial

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-05-02T23:37:51-05:00

Overview of New Updates

A new tutorial covering the BackSnap Stack and another RapidSearch Pro tutorial are now available to Classroom subscribers.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials.

Details of New Updates

The BackSnap Stack from Yabdab creates a rating and commenting system for your website. It can be especially useful when you are selling products and want your visitors to be able to rate the products and leave reviews, similar to how Apple does with its App Store, or Amazon with the products it sells. The stack is flexible in that you can accept ratings or comments only, or both, and it also creates an online admin area that you can use to moderate the comments. It is an impressive stack and I highly recommend it if you are looking for that kind of feature for your website.

I've also added another RapidSearch Pro tutorial covering the topic of adding search fields to other pages of your website. In last week's RapidSearch Pro tutorial we looked at how to add a search page to your website, and so this tutorial takes things a step further by placing a search field into other pages as well.

The RapidSearch Pro tutorial can be found in the Add-Ons > Miscellaneous section of the tutorials, while the BackSnap Stack tutorial is located in the Add-Ons > Social section.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Last week I made a few other updates to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past couple of months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap and DateSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. A couple of "How to..." tutorials on replacing an existing website and creating a mySQL database have also been added.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

I have a long list of new tutorials planned, but no definite decision yet about what will be released next week, so this time it's going to be a surprise!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

New Tutorials: RapidSearch Pro Plugin and Creating a mySQL Database

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-04-26T00:16:04-05:00

Overview of New Updates

A new tutorial covering the RapidSearch Pro Plugin and a "How to..." tutorial on creating a mySQL database are now available to Classroom subscribers.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials. I have made some changes to membership area this week that should improve the experience of browsing the sections of tutorials, and more improvements are planned in the coming weeks.

Details of New Updates

The RapidSearch Pro Plugin from Nimblehost makes it possible to provide a search feature on your website that embeds the results directly into your website without the use of a 3rd-party search service such as Google. It is an excellent solution for large websites, or for websites that sell products. The plugin includes a web-based administration area that allows you to handle which pages of your website are indexed, and it also provides statistics about how your visitors are searching your website. This can be very helpful information for determining what your visitors are interested in. RapidSearch Pro does require the installation of a mySQL database on your server, which leads us to the other new tutorial for this week.

The new "How to... Create a mySQL Database" tutorial will walk you through the steps of creating a mySQL database on your web hosting server. This is becoming a more important topic to understand as more RapidWeaver add-ons integrate with databases. RapidSearch Pro requires a database, as does the WP-Blog Plugin that integrates a WordPress blog, and the BackSnap Stack that I will have a tutorial for next week.

The RapidSearch Pro tutorial can be found in the Add-Ons > Miscellaneous section of the tutorials, while the Create a mySQL Database tutorial is located in the Continuing Education > How to... section.

Also, I have made a few other updates to the Classroom membership area. You will now find a "Featured Tutorials" section on the Home page, and I've adjusted the styling of some elements throughout the tutorial sections, which I hope will improve the user experience as you navigate through the different tutorials. I have also been working to implement RapidSearch Pro in the membership area as another method of finding tutorials, but some hurdles related to the protection of the content has prevented that from being successful so far. I do hope to have this working relatively soon, but for the time being you can use your browser's Find function (CMD+F) on the Browse All page to search for tutorials.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The past couple of months have brought a number of other new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been many new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap and DateSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac, and the Jack Stack from Joe Workman. Another "How to..." tutorial on replacing an existing website was also added to the curriculum last week.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Check back next week for a tutorial covering the BackSnap Stack from Yabdab, and a tutorial covering more advanced usage of the RapidSearch Pro plugin.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Jack Stack and Replacing a Website Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-04-19T00:40:22-05:00

Overview of New Updates

A new tutorial covering the Jack Stack and a "How to..." tutorial on replacing an existing website are now available to Classroom subscribers.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Login here to access your account, then navigate to the Classroom curriculum and click on the Latest Updates button for direct links to these new tutorials. I am working to improve the experience of finding and viewing new content as updates are posted, so for the time being please go through the Latest Updates button in the members' area of the Classroom curriculum.

Details of New Updates

The Jack Stack is a very impressive stack from Joe Workman that provides a lot of options for styling your content with borders, backgrounds and shadows. Jack really does too much to put into words, so you'll just have to watch this new tutorial to see what Jack can do.

I've also posted a new tutorial on the topic of replacing an existing website with a new one. If you are developing a website in RapidWeaver to replace an existing one, then there are some steps that you should take when you are ready to publish the website. This tutorial discusses a number of potential scenarios that you may encounter in this situation.

The Jack Stack tutorial can be found in the Add-Ons > Content Layout section of the tutorials, while the Replace an Existing Website tutorial is located in the Continuing Education > How to... section.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The last several weeks have brought a number of new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been several new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap, MapSnap and DateSnap Stacks from Yabdab, the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks, and the PlayListr Stack from StackManiac.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Check back next week for a tutorial covering the BackSnap Stack from Yabdab, along with a series of tutorials covering the RapidSearch Pro plugin.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

PlayListr and MapSnap Stacks Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-04-11T23:34:12-05:00

Overview of New Updates

New tutorials covering the PlayListr Stack and the MapSnap Stack are now available to Classroom subscribers.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

The PlayListr Stack from StackManiac creates an audio player that supports multiple audio tracks in a single player. It is a great solution for situations where you need to provide more than one audio track, without the need for multiple audio players.

The MapSnap Stack from Yabdab embeds an interactive Google map on your website. It is very flexible in its features and includes the option to display multiple locations on a single map. It can also display driving directions between the locations you define.

The PlayListr tutorial can be found in the Add-Ons > Audio/Video section of the tutorials, while the MapSnap tutorial is located under Add-Ons > Miscellaneous.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

The last several weeks have brought a number of new tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, another discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos, and there have been several new Stack Elements tutorials covering the PaySnap and DateSnap Stacks from Yabdab, and the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

I actually had one more tutorial recorded to include in this week's update, but something went wrong and I ended up with video and no audio. That tutorial discussed the topic of replacing an existing website with a new one -- using FTP to manage files on the hosting server. I will re-record that tutorial and include it in next week's update, along with a tutorial on the BackSnap Stack and another surprise topic!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

New DateSnap Stack Tutorial Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-04-05T00:39:33-05:00

Overview of New Updates

A new tutorial on the DateSnap Stacks has been added to the Classroom curriculum this week.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

DateSnap is a calendar solution developed by Yabdab, who also offer the DateLoom plugin. DateSnap improves on DateLoom through its integration with the Stacks 2 plugin. The DateSnap stacks allow you to manually create events for your website's calendar, or you can easily import a Google or iCloud calendar. DateSnap offers a lot of great features and customization options, and it looks and functions great. If you have the need for a calendar on your website then I would highly recommend you consider DateSnap.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin were released in the first half of March. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

Two weeks ago I released two tutorials: one covering the customization of banners or slideshows in the header of 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, and the other discussing a method of embedding responsive YouTube videos. Click here to learn more about these two recent tutorials.

Last week I released tutorials covering the PaySnap Stacks from Yabdab and the Content Fader Stack from DK Stacks. Click here to learn more about these two recent tutorials.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

We had some violent Spring storms this week that limited my ability to record, on account of noise, but next week is looking more favorable and I have a lot of new topics ready to share! There are some more exciting Stack Elements tutorials, new topics for the SEO section, a multi-part series on the RapidSearch Pro plugin, and there is some new content coming soon to the Grad School curriculum as well.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

PaySnap Stacks and Content Fader Stack Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-03-28T21:58:43-05:00

Overview of New Updates

I have added two new tutorials to the Classroom curriculum this week. The PaySnap Stacks tutorial discusses a great e-commerce solution, and the Content Fader tutorial demonstrates a very cool effect for your page's content.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

The PaySnap 2 Stacks is a collection of stacks from Yabdab -- the developers of the popular CartLoom e-commerce service. These stacks create an excellent shopping cart experience for your customers -- much like CartLoom -- but everything is configured directly through your RapidWeaver project in the Stacks 2 plugin, and checkout is handled through a basic PayPal account. These stacks provide a lot of flexibility, including: flexible price, shipping and tax handling, product options (drop-down, radio button, check boxes), quantity input, lightboxed product details, and highly customizable buttons. If you are going to be selling products through your website then I highly recommend you consider the PaySnap 2 stacks. This new tutorial is located under the Add-Ons > E-Commerce section of tutorials.

The other new tutorial covers the Content Fader Stack, and it's our first tutorial on a product from DK Stacks -- a fairly new developer in the RapidWeaver community. Dominic (DK Stacks) is already producing some outstanding stacks, so I am excited to be introducing them to you in the coming weeks. Content Fader does exactly what it sounds like it should -- it fades content on your pages as you scroll past it. This is a trendy effect that you may have seen on other websites. Content Fader makes it very easy to accomplish, and it can leave a great impression on your website's visitors, especially if you are in some kind of design industry where visual presentation is important. This new tutorial is located under the Add-Ons > Miscellaneous section of tutorials.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Next week will see more new stacks tutorials from Yabdab and DK Stacks. I have a number of other Stack Elements tutorials planned, as well as new content for the SEO section and some exciting new training for the Grad School curriculum in the works for release soon. Check back next week for more details.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Theme Banner/Slideshow and Responsive YouTube Embed Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-03-21T23:48:57-05:00

Overview of New Updates

I have added two new tutorials to the Classroom curriculum this week. One tutorial discusses customization of banners and slideshows in 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, and the other demonstrates how to embed a responsive YouTube video.

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

The Theme Banners and Slideshows tutorial demonstrates several different methods by which a static banner image or slideshow of banner images can be utilized in different 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes. Several different themes are used in this tutorial to show the variety of methods that are available to customize the banner images and/or slideshows in a theme's header. This tutorial can be found in the Add-Ons > Themes section, under the Miscellaneous category on that page.

The Embedding a Responsive YouTube Video tutorial is located under the Continuing Education > How to... section of tutorials. If you want to embed a YouTube video in a responsive theme, you either need to use a Stacks page and a responsive YouTube stack, or you need to use a small amount of HTML and CSS code to make an embedded YouTube video responsive. A responsive YouTube stack is certainly an option on pages where you are using the Stacks 2 plugin, but the stack is not an option when you are working with a non-Stacks page. One great example is the Blog page, and so this video tutorial demonstrates how to embed a responsive YouTube video in a RapidWeaver Blog page. Of course this information applies to any page, including a Stacks 2 page, so you can use this method without the need for a YouTube stack altogether. All of the HTML and CSS code that you need is included in a couple of RapidWeaver snippets that I have made available for download, and that can be found immediately below the tutorial itself.

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

A series of 14 new tutorials covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin have been released over the past two weeks. I highly recommend these new tutorials for every RapidWeaver user! Click here to learn more about these Stacks 2.5 tutorials.

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Beginning next week, a number of new tutorials will be released, covering some excellent Stack Elements from Yabdab. I have a number of other Stack Elements tutorials planned, as well as new content for the SEO section and some exciting new training for the Grad School curriculum. Check back next week for more details.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

5 New Stacks 2.5 Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-03-14T17:06:18-05:00

5 more videos in the new Stacks 2.5 Plugin series are now available.

Last week I introduced the first 9 tutorials in a new series covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin, and this week I have added 5 more videos for a grand total of 14 videos at just over 2 hours of runtime. The complete Stacks 2.5 series includes the following tutorials, with the latest 5 included at the end of the list in bold.

Introduction to Stacks 2.5
Stacks Interface
Stack Elements
3rd-Party Stacks
Text and Image Editing
Using the Stack Inspector
Layout > Margin and Padding
Layout > Fill Mode
Global Content
Building Complex Layouts
Stacks and ExtraContent
Stacks and PlusKit @import
Stacks and Responsive Design
Updating Stack Elements

Once again, this new Stacks 2.5 series replaces the original Stacks 2 training that was previously available. This series goes into more detail than ever before, so even experienced Stacks users might find new information in this training. These 14 tutorials complete the Stacks 2.5 series for the time being, but I will be considering more material in the future, and am certainly open to your suggestions.

Next week's update will include a variety of topics that include new Stack Elements tutorials and a tutorial that covers different ways to customize banners and header slideshows in 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes. Check back next week for this update!

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

9 Tutorials in New Stacks 2.5 Series Released

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-03-06T01:16:28-06:00

The first 9 videos in a new series covering the Stacks 2.5 plugin are now available!

I am replacing the original Stacks 2 series of tutorials with brand new videos that cover every detail of Stacks 2.5. This first phase of new tutorials includes 9 videos that total just over 90 minutes of training. This is the most detailed Stacks plugin training you can get, and in these tutorials I share from my knowledge and experience of working with Stacks for years. Even if you are an experienced Stacks user yourself, there still may be some new things you can learn from these tutorials.

Here are the topics for this first phase of Stacks 2.5 tutorials:

Introduction to Stacks 2.5
Stacks Interface
Stack Elements
3rd-Party Stacks
Text and Image Editing
Using the Stack Inspector
Layout > Margin and Padding
Layout > Fill Mode
Global Content

There is still plenty more to come next week as I complete this new series of Stacks training. Just a few of the additional topics I will be covering include building complex layouts, using ExtraContent, importing into Stacks pages with PlusKit's @import feature, and a variety of tips and shortcuts that can prove very useful.

Check back later next week as I release the second phase of Stacks 2.5 training.

Thanks for your support!

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Brand New Design Launched, New Content Available This Week

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-03-02T22:14:00-06:00

Months of work have finally led to the completion of RapidWeaver Classroom's redesign. Late last year I introduced a new responsive design and new organization of content in the membership areas, and on Friday I launched the redesign of the "public" side of RapidWeaver Classroom. I am very satisfied with the result, and relieved that the work is finally done!

I hope that this new design appeals to you and maybe even inspires you with your own projects. If you have a couple of minutes to spare, you might want to check out the "2-minute Introduction" video on the Home page. I've created a lot of videos over the past 6 years, but never anything quite like this, and it was a lot of fun! If you like it and are interested in something similar for your website, get in-touch and we can discuss that possibility.

Now that RapidWeaver Classroom is 100% responsive, an improved user experience will be consistent across all devices -- computers, tables and smart phones. I already had a fair amount of experience with responsive design before starting this project, but I learned quite a bit more from some unique challenges I faced, and I look forward to taking that experience and adding to/improving the responsive design training offered here at RapidWeaver Classroom. It's such an important topic and it's very important I provide thorough training for it.

Speaking of new training, just over a week ago I revealed that I would be recreating the entire series of Stacks 2 (now 2.5) tutorials. A significant number of those tutorials will be posted this week. I originally planned for them to be released last week, but my 3rd sickness this winter came in the form of laryngitis, and I was without a voice for 5 days. It returned to full strength yesterday, so I will complete the remaining portion of this first phase of tutorials, and have them posted mid-week. The second (final) phase of the new Stacks 2.5 tutorials will be released the following week, and then I will continue with training on a variety of great new 3rd-party stacks, responsive design training, and some content related to popular 3rd-party theme features that I think will be very useful.

If there is any specific training that you'd like to see, please let me know. There is a contact form specifically for feedback and tutorial suggestions in the members' area. I am always interested in hearing your suggestions in regards to any aspect of RapidWeaver Classroom.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

Stacks 2.5, RapidWeaver 6, Huge Updates Coming

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2014-02-20T14:52:58-06:00

It has been far too long since I've posted an update, and there is a lot to share. I've spent these first weeks of 2014 buried under a load of development work with RapidWeaver. Last Fall, the member areas of RapidWeaver Classroom were completely overhauled with a responsive design and new organization of content. This same design has been in progress for the public side of RapidWeaver Classroom, and it will finally be unveiled late next week.

This hasn't stopped the production of new training, though. I have been producing a completely new series of tutorials covering the Stacks 2 plugin. Today I am releasing a tutorial that covers the latest changes with the new Stacks 2.5 update that was released last week. This release presents a great opportunity to refresh all of the Stacks 2 training, which is currently over 2 years old. It goes without saying that I have learned a ton about Stacks 2 over the past 2 years, and I am excited to share so much more detail than the current tutorials offer.

On top of all this, RapidWeaver 6 is in active development and Realmac Software has been very public with details about the newest version. Continue reading below for more details on Stacks 2 and RapidWeaver 6, but I want to conclude this part of the blog update with a commitment to all of you.

Over the next several weeks you will be receiving updates from me about a lot of new tutorials. I will be releasing a large amount of content over a short period of time, and then you will continue to see new updates posted every week. Barring any sickness that might prevent it, you will not see another week of 2014 pass without new content being added to RapidWeaver Classroom. If a holiday or family trip interferes with the schedule, then I will post two weeks of content the week before. I am committed to all of you who entrust me with providing this resource, and I am very excited about the changes and additions that are on the way.

Stacks 2.5 Brings Major New Features

Stacks 2.5 was released last week and includes a number of excellent new features. There are some behind-the-scenes changes that will mean great things for the kinds of stacks that the 3rd-party developers can produce, so it will be fun to see the new kinds of stacks that get released. Of course there are also new features that we can take advantage of right away.

These new features include the ability to show and hide stacks content in the Edit view, lock stacks from being edited, create global content throughout your entire website, and create your own personal User Stacks that contain any kind of stacks layout. There is also a clean, updated interface and more fluid interaction when dragging stacks around on a page.

I have created a new video tutorial that takes you through all of the new Stacks 2.5 features. This video is free and can be viewed without an active RapidWeaver Classroom subscription.

View the Stacks 2.5 Features Overview Tutorial

RapidWeaver 6 News

The next major version of RapidWeaver is currently under development, and Realmac Software has stated that it will be released sometime in the 2nd Quarter of 2014. A lot of details about this new version have already been disclosed, and there are some great new features that will vastly improve the experience of website design with RapidWeaver. If you are interested in learning more about these new features right now, then you can read through this discussion on the Realmac Forums and even add your own thoughts to the conversation. If you'd prefer not to read through 11+ pages of discussion, then I will be posting an article soon that gathers all of the available information in one place, and you'll be able to find that here.

2014 is already shaping-up to be an exciting year for the RapidWeaver community. RapidWeaver Classroom is approaching its 6-year anniversary this May, and it is a privilege that I can continue to use my passion for teaching in this way. I greatly appreciate your support and I hope that I can continue to provide a valuable resource for you all.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

Two New Joe Workman Stacks Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-11-26T21:04:44-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving week to all of you who are in the U.S. This latest updates comes just in time for the holiday break. I’ve added two new stacks tutorials -- Expose and Share It -- both from Joe Workman.

The Expose Stack tutorial is found in the Lightboxes category of the Add-Ons section, and it is a highly recommended solution if you are looking for a lightbox to display content on your website. It is very flexible in that it can display most any kind of content, and its style is highly customizable. It also comes with the Expose Image Pro stack, which is designed specifically for displaying photos. This detailed tutorial runs about 15 minutes in length in order to cover every setting for these stacks.

The Share It Stack tutorial is found in the Blogging & Social category of the Add-Ons section. The stack provides sharing buttons for a variety of social networks, and it is also highly customizable. If you would like your website’s visitors to share your website with their social networks, then the Share It Stack may be worth considering.

I’d also like to make a brief mention of the launch of the new website for my business, Websmith. This website advertises my web design, RapidWeaver consulting and membership site development services. It uses a responsive design to optimize the layout for all devices, and of course it is built with RapidWeaver. If you are interested in learning more about responsive design, there is a category of tutorials dedicated to that topic here at RapidWeaver Classroom.

Check back soon for details on more new content!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Two More Responsive Layout Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-11-08T22:58:33-06:00

This week’s update adds more content to the growing Responsive Layout category of the Add-Ons section. Tutorials for the Fit Text and Responsive Embed stacks are now available there.

Joe Workman’s Fit Text Stack makes headings (or any text with large fonts) responsive, resizing the text at different break points for better presentation on smaller devices. If you are developing a responsive website, then this stack is a must-have for use with your content headings.

The Responsive Embed Stack is a free stack from Pressure Designs, a newer RapidWeaver developer who is featured here at RapidWeaver Classroom for the first time. This stack takes embed code from a third-party, such as YouTube or Google Maps, and makes the embed responsive. It’s easy to use and does a great job of making embedded content responsive.

If you haven’t already noticed, responsive design is a big deal now, and so I will continue to focus on creating training that will make responsive design as easy (and fun) as possible. Check back next week for more new content!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Three New Stacks Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-11-01T15:20:08-05:00

This week’s update includes three new Stack Element tutorials: the Post Office and Locker stacks from Joe Workman, and the Playr Stack from Stack Maniac.

The Post Office Stack is a very impressive stack that creates a sign-up form on your website. The sign-up form is used to collect information from your website visitors -- mainly name and email address, though it also includes a couple of customizable fields. This information can be stored in a database on your server, or Post Office can connect with 3rd-party email newsletters services, such as MadMimi and MailChimp. Post Office is highly customizable and also includes a stack called PO Box, which can be used to present content after a visitor submits their information through the Post Office form. So for example, if you are wanting to provide a free download after someone submits their email address, then the combination of Post Office and PO Box can do it. This tutorial can be found in the Forms category of the Add-Ons section.

The Locker Stack is a great utility stack that lets you keep stacks content on a Stacks page without it being displayed in Preview mode or published. This can be helpful when you are actively developing some portion of the page, but need to publish other changes to that page without publishing everything. It basically hides content from Preview and publishing, and also lets you make notes about the work you are doing. This tutorials can be found in the Utility Stacks category of the Add-Ons section.

Finally, the Playr Stack creates a simple, clean video player for your videos. It is easy to use and very customizable. This tutorial can be found in the Media category of the Add-Ons section.

I hope you that these new tutorials are helpful as you develop your websites with RapidWeaver. Check back next week for an update on more new tutorials!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

New Responsive Layout Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-10-28T23:08:59-05:00

Today’s update includes 3 new tutorials covering responsive layout stacks: Responsive Layout Stacks, Fluid Image Stack and Floaty Stack. All of these tutorials can be found in the newly added Responsive Layout category of the Add-Ons section. The Responsive Layout Stacks and Floaty Stack can also be found in the Content Layout category, and the Fluid Image Stack can also be found under the Photos category.

Each of these stacks is very helpful when you are developing a website using a responsive theme. In fact, I highly recommend all 3 of these stacks for anyone developing a responsive website.

The Responsive Layout Stacks allow you to create responsive columns, and includes a 2, 3, 4, and 5-column stack, as well as a Show/Hide Stack that is very cool.

The Floaty Stack is a responsive version of the built-in Float stack, and allows you to make floating content responsive.

Finally, the Fluid Image Stack is a must-have for creating responsive images and photos on your website.

In other news, the Grad School curriculum was updated last week, receiving the same responsive redesign as the Classroom members’ area. Production of new tutorials is now back in full-swing, so you can expect to see weekly updates posted in most cases. Check back next week for another update on new tutorials!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

RapidWeaver is Compatible with OS X Mavericks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-10-22T15:04:06-05:00

As many of you have undoubtedly heard, Apple today announced the immediate availability of Mavericks, the newest version of OS X for the Mac. This is great news, especially because the current version of RapidWeaver is already compatible with Mavericks. If you decide to upgrade to Mavericks, be sure that you are running RapidWeaver 5.3.1 and that all of your 3rd-party plugins are up-to-date. It’s especially important that you have updated the PlusKit plugin to version 2.40, if you have it installed on your system.

If you are uncertain about the availability of plugin updates, then it is easy to quickly discover which plugins have updates available. Simply launch RapidWeaver and select RapidWeaver > Check for Update… from the main menu. RapidWeaver will notify you if any updates are available, and direct you the Realmac Software Addons page, where you can download the latest versions. Some plugins will also notify you automatically if you have them added to a project, but RapidWeaver’s Check for Update function is a much quicker solution.

In RapidWeaver Classroom news, I hope that you’ve had an opportunity to look through the redesign of the Classroom members’ area. I have been overwhelmed by the positive feedback so far -- thanks so much to those of you who have taken the time to send me an email! The Grad School curriculum is receiving the same treatment later today, so if you also subscribe to Grad School then you can expect to see this new redesign there as well.

New tutorials are also in the works, and I will post an update with more details as soon as they are available!

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

New Members' Area Redesign Launched!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-10-17T11:44:20-05:00

After 2+ months of work, I am very excited to finally reveal the redesigned members’ area! I hope that it provides an enhanced user experience for you all. This new update brings…

• A responsive design for optimized viewing on all devices
• A reorganized Add-Ons section -- add-ons are now organized by function, so finding what you need is easier than ever
• “Highly recommended” tutorials that are noted with a star -- so you won’t overlook the really important stuff
• An updated Resources section -- Services, Project Checklist, Glossary of Terms, and Downloads have been added

My primary goals with this update were to create a great user experience and make it easier than ever to navigate the available training. As you browse different areas of the Add-Ons section, you will notice that some content is repeated throughout different sections. This is especially true with the Stacks 2 plugin, because it can be utilized for so many functions. Since add-ons are organized by function, you can be sure that each category includes tutorials for every relevant add-on. No longer will you have to browse through a multitude of pages in order to discover every option for displaying your photos -- they are all in one place!

I am always looking for ways to improve this service, and I have more plans still, but please share your suggestions with me. In the meantime, I have a lot of new tutorials that I am ready to produce! You may even see a few add-on tutorials tagged with *Coming Soon* -- so you can expect to see those shortly.

If you are a Grad School subscriber, you can expect to see this same design implemented in the Grad School curriculum soon, along with a complete update to the aMember tutorials for aMember v4. Of course this design will eventually be applied to the “public” RapidWeaver Classroom website as well, but there’s quite a bit of work left to be done before that happens.

Thanks for your support,

Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Update on the Members' Area Redesign

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-10-10T14:58:57-05:00

I have spent the last 6 weeks working on a complete redesign of the RapidWeaver Classroom members’ area. I briefly mentioned this in my last blog update, but I wanted to post again about it now because the work is almost complete! If all goes smoothly from here on out, the update will be published next Tuesday, October 15th -- likely in the late afternoon or evening.

This update will bring a responsive design to the members’ area, for maximum compatibility with all mobile devices. Another significant change is that all of the add-ons tutorials (themes, plugins, stacks) will be organized by function, so it will be much easier to find training for the kinds of add-ons you need for your project. Some new resources will be included as well, such as a project checklist and glossary of web design terms. Overall, the user experience should be dramatically improved, and some of the changes will also make it quicker and easier for me to publish tutorial updates.

Speaking of tutorial updates, I will be producing a lot of new content as soon as this update is published. I hate that a few weeks have passed since new tutorials were added, but this redesign has been a massive undertaking and has required all of my attention recently. I will be playing catch-up throughout the rest of October with a lot of great new content for Classroom subscribers.

Finally, I will be posting more regular updates to the RapidWeaver Classroom Facebook page and Twitter account, so please follow me there if you don’t already!

Thanks for your support,

- Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Font Awesome Tutorial & Redesign News

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-09-13T15:49:45-05:00

I have released a new “How to…” tutorial on adding Font Awesome icons to your website. This new tutorial can be found in the Continuing Education section of the Classroom curriculum, and runs about 15 minutes.

Font Awesome is a collection of over 300 icons that are technically fonts, so they can be styled like fonts in any size or color. Some 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes have started including Font Awesome, but many themes still do not, so this tutorial will walk you through two different methods of integrating Font Awesome. One method is very simple, while the other is quite advanced, but either way the tutorial provides all the details you’ll need to have success with integrating Font Awesome.

I’m also excited to announce that RapidWeaver Classroom is undergoing a complete redesign! It’s hard to believe that it has been 2.5 years since the last major design update, but I’m certainly not taking on this redesign project just because some amount of time has passed. I believe that Responsive Design is not just the newest trend in web design, but a design solution that is here to stay, and I want RapidWeaver Classroom to be an example of what Responsive Design can achieve. While the tutorials have been compatible with mobile devices for quite some time, the website itself is still static across all devices, and that is going to change with this new redesign. With a new responsive layout, you will find the website easier to navigate on your iPhone (or other smart phone) and iPad (or other tablet).

A responsive layout isn’t the only new feature that is coming with the redesign of RapidWeaver Classroom. I am also taking this opportunity to restructure the entire Classroom curriculum. Since the start of RapidWeaver Classroom in 2008, add-ons (plugins and stacks) have been grouped by developer. This was useful when the collection of add-ons was small, but it’s now clear that add-ons need to be organized by function -- so a redesign of the members’ area will include this new structure. You will find categories of add-ons such as layout, photo, media, light boxes, e-commerce, etc. Each category will include both plugins and stacks, and I will also be including the developer name alongside the add-on.

In addition to everything mentioned, I will be adding more useful resources such as a glossary and project checklist, a feedback and tutorial request area, and I am testing the integration of a search function that could provide another useful way of filtering through all of the available tutorials. I am very excited about all the benefits that this redesign will bring, and my goal is to launch it first for members sometime in the first half of October.

If you have any good ideas for a useful addition to this next version of RapidWeaver Classroom, please let me know! Thanks for taking the time to read this more lengthy update, and I look forward to sharing all of this progress with you soon!

Thanks for your support,

- Ryan

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

PrivateEyes Parts 2 & 3 Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-08-23T16:06:05-05:00

Note: If you are a subscriber to our email updates then you may not have received a notification of the last RapidWeaver Classroom update featuring the PrivateEyes Stack. If you did not receive information on that update then you can read about it here.

Parts 2 and 3 of the PrivateEyes Stack tutorial series have been added to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum. While Part 1 covered how PrivateEyes can be used to password-protect content, Parts 2 and 3 focus on how the stack can be used to hide and reveal content on a page using links. This functionality can be very useful in situations where you want to present a lot of content without cluttering the page. You can sort content by topic or category and have that content appear and disappear as different topics are selected on the page.

Next week I will be posting a new tutorial with information on how to add Font Awesome icons to your website. I am also working on a major redesign of RapidWeaver Classroom that will bring a lot of new functionality and organization to improve your experience with the service. I am still weeks away from completing it, but I look forward to sharing it with you soon!

Thanks for your support!

- Ryan

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Start of New Series Covering the PrivateEyes Stack

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-08-02T21:40:39-05:00

I have been spending a lot of time with the PrivateEyes Stack from seyDesign, and am glad to finally present the first tutorial for this amazing stack. PrivateEyes is very unique in its ability to hide and password-protect content on your website. Prior to the release of PrivateEyes, you needed to use the Lockdown Plugin if you wanted to protect content or web pages with a password. Of course having this functionality in a stack is tremendous when most of us build our websites using the Stacks 2 plugin, so PrivateEyes is a great alternative for a Stacks user who needs this kind of functionality.

Now I am typically able to cover the functionality of a stack in a single tutorial, but PrivateEyes is a bit more complex and does a number of different things, so I thought it would be best to cover this particular stack with multiple tutorials. I have released Part 1 this week, which discusses a couple of different methods of password-protecting content on a page, and a run-time of nearly 20 minutes guarantees a lot of detailed instruction on how to use this stack for that purpose. The next tutorials will build on the information presented in Part 1, to show some other ways that the stack can be used -- those tutorials will be released late next week.

Thanks for your support!

- Ryan

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New Stack and E-Commerce Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-07-30T14:28:11-05:00

There’s a first time for everything, and this July I got a cold -- yes, in the summer -- and lost my voice in the process. After about 2 weeks of recovering my voice, I’ve finally been able to record and post a couple of new tutorials. The first covers a great new stack from Elixir called Flat Button, which produces stylish buttons and offers a lot of flexibility. The Flat Button Stack can be great for creating a call to action on your website.

I’ve also added another “How to…” tutorial about adding a PayPal button to your website. If you have very simple needs for accepting payment on your website, then you can bypass the available RapidWeaver add-ons and manually create payment and add to cart buttons through PayPal, and then add those anywhere on your website. One specific use for this is if you invoice clients for services and want to provide a method for them to pay through your website.

I am excited to be able to record new tutorials once again, and I have a lot of new content planned in the coming weeks. There are always plenty of new stacks to cover, but I’ll also be taking an in-depth look at the new RapidSearch Pro plugin, and discussing how to manually integrate custom fonts into your website, using resources such as Font Awesome and Google Fonts.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

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WeaverPix and Joe Workman Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-07-07T14:21:28-05:00

I hope everyone here in the U.S. had a great 4th of July holiday and weekend! Today I have posted two weeks worth of updates -- two more tutorials on the WeaverPix plugin, and two new Joe Workman Stacks tutorials. I had the WeaverPix tutorials recorded to post a week ago, but some sickness in my family delayed the editing and posting of those videos, so my apologies for missing the updates that week. Below is a brief summary of these latest updates.

The first new WeaverPix tutorial walk through the use of 3rd-party photo services -- Flickr, Dribble, Picasa and 500px. You can host, update and delete photos from any one of these services and have WeaverPix display them on your website. Between adding photos directly to WeaverPix, warehousing them on your server, or hosting them with one of these 3rd-party services, WeaverPix offers so much flexibility in how you manage your photo galleries.

The second new WeaverPix tutorial demonstrates how you can use a WeaverPix page to provide navigation to other pages of your website. For example, if you have a number of galleries on your website, then you can use WeaverPix to create navigation to those galleries, using thumbnail of photos as links. It’s easy to set up and this new tutorial will walk you through the process.

Finally, I have added two new Joe Workman Stacks tutorials -- Houdini and Infobar. Houdini is a great utility stack that lets you move stacks content into other content areas of your website, such as the sidebar or footer. Infobar makes it easy to add a notification feature to your website, so if you need to alert your visitors of some important information then this stack might be a great solution for you.

That wraps up the updates for this week. I will be away for family vacation this coming week, but still plan to get some more updates posted no later than Monday, July 15th, so check back in about a week for information on these new topics.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

Two More WeaverPix Plugin Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-06-21T15:37:08-05:00

This week’s update bring two more tutorials to the new WeaverPix series. If you haven’t had the opportunity to view last week’s WeaverPix tutorials, then I highly recommend spending some time viewing these four videos. WeaverPix is a very powerful image gallery/slideshow solution, and these two new videos go into more detail on what makes this plugin so great.

The third video in the series, Using WeaverPix Themes, details the process of selecting the best theme for your photo gallery. Many of the WeaverPix themes are responsive and work in responsive RapidWeaver themes, and this topic is discussed as well.

The fourth video, Adding Warehoused Images, discusses a different way of adding photos to your website, using a web-based admin area for managing your images. This option provides a lot of flexibility for managing and updating the photos on your website without the use of RapidWeaver. The video walks through all of the setup and details for using the warehousing option.

WeaverPix offers even more ways of adding and managing photos, and so next week’s update will discuss the use of 3rd-party services -- Flickr, Picasa, 500px and Dribble. Check back late next week for more information on the next update.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

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New WeaverPix 3 Series of Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-06-14T15:03:31-05:00

New tutorials covering the WeaverPix 3 plugin have been added to RapidWeaver Classroom. This is an outstanding solution for image slideshows or photo galleries on your website. It is extremely powerful and flexible, and you’ll simply have to see these tutorials to get an understanding of all that it can accomplish.

The first two of a whole series of tutorials on WeaverPix 3 have been posted to the Classroom curriculum. WeaverPix can do so much that I will be producing more tutorials over the next couple of weeks in order to cover all of its features.

If you are looking for a solution for displaying images or photos on your website, then I would highly recommend giving WeaverPix 3 a serious look. While so much focus has been on building pages with the Stacks 2 plugin, this is a case where a dedicated plugin can be very beneficial. WeaverPix 3 is very impressive, and I look forward to completing this entire series of tutorials so that you can see how powerful it is. So with that being said, check back late next week for more tutorials in this series.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

Three More Stacks Tutorials Posted

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-06-09T23:24:05-05:00

Last Friday I posted an update that brings three more Stack Elements tutorials to RapidWeaver Classroom. I have released tutorials for the FormSnap Suite from Yabdab, and the Masonry and SuperBox stacks from seyDesign.

The new FormSnap Suite tutorial covers what might be the most flexible contact form solution for RapidWeaver. The FormSnap Suite is a collection of stack elements that allows you to build a very flexible contact form on a Stacks page. Since the form is built with the Stacks plugin, you have all the layout flexibility that Stacks offers. If you are familiar with Yabdab’s FormLoom plugin, then you might consider this a Stacks-based version of that form.

The other two stack element tutorials cover Masonry and SuperBox, both from seyDesign. Both of these stacks produce fantastic image galleries, with thumbnails and full-size images displayed in a lightbox. Masonry produces a layout of thumbnails similar to Pinterest, and presents the full-size image in a lightbox window overlay. SuperBox takes a different approach and generates square thumbnails in a tight grid, and then produces the full-size image in a very unique manner. You’ll have to watch the video to see how unique of a stack it is.

Production of weaverPix plugin tutorials is already underway and those will be published later this week, so check back here for more information.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

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New Stack and How to… Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-05-31T15:08:11-05:00

I’ve updated the Classroom curriculum today with two more tutorials. One tutorial is for the Rotatr Stack, the latest stack from StackManiac. The Rotatr Stack rotates through any type of Stacks content, so it is very flexible in allowing you to present a lot of different kinds of content in a single content space on your web page.

The second tutorial has been added to the How to… lesson of the Continuing Ed section, and it is about creating a placeholder menu item in your website menu. With thanks to Joe Workman for creating an easy-to-use snippet, you can prevent a menu item from linking to its own page. This is great when you want website visitors to skip a top-level page to go directly to a sub-page. The most common use for this is when you are working with a theme that has drop-down menus. The required snippet is provided as a download on the How to… lesson page.

Check back next week for more tutorials on Yabdab stacks, and I will also begin to release a series of tutorials on the excellent weaverPix plugin.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

Lots of Updates to Share

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-05-28T00:13:12-05:00

It’s been a while since I posted here to the public RapidWeaver Classroom Blog, but there has been a lot going on and almost too much to share in a single blog post, so I will briefly summarize the updates here and if you want more details you can view the Members Blog that is available to subscribers.

Website Upgrade

RapidWeaver Classroom moved to a new hosting server earlier this month. I am very happy to be with Javabean Hosting and RapidWeaver Classroom has never been faster!

Along with the server move, I have updated the members area to improve navigation throughout all of the tutorials, and there is now the option to view and search the full listing of tutorials on a single page.

New Tutorials

A number of new tutorials have been posted to the Classroom curriculum in the past 6 weeks…

SEO Tutorials: I highly recommend that everyone view these latest tutorials -- Google Places for Business and Geographic Targeting
Elixir Stacks Tutorials: Four new tutorials on great Stack Elements from Elixir.
StackManiac Stacks Tutorial: A new tutorial on the Viewr Stack.
Yabdab Stacks Tutorials: Two new tutorials on stacks from Yabdab.

Upcoming Tutorials

I am producing more stacks tutorials for release on Friday of this week. I am also developing more new content for the Strategies section, as well as full coverage of the weaverPix plugin, a very impressive photo gallery option for RapidWeaver. Tutorial releases will be coming very regularly now that the server move is complete, and I will continue to post about updates here, so check back often!

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

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Two More FreeStack R Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-03-27T15:15:07-05:00

I have added two more tutorials to the FreeStack Responsive Theme series: “Creating a Website Layout” and “Blogging”. The Creating a Website Layout tutorial walks through the use of some of the FreeStack R Stacks to build the layout of a website. The unique characteristics of responsive websites require that layouts be developed in certain ways, and so the tutorial discusses some of those special requirements.

The Blogging tutorial discusses how a blog can be added to a website built with the FreeStack Responsive Theme. Since all pages in a FreeStack R website need to be based on the Stacks 2 plugin, that reduces the blogging options that are available, and this is important to understand when considering a website built with this theme.

With 7 tutorials totaling just over 1.5 hours, most of the information you need to know about the FreeStack Responsive Theme is now available in this series. I will consider future additions based on your feedback, so please let me know if you find any information that is lacking.

View the FreeStack Responsive Theme Tutorials -- You will need to be currently logged-in to be taken directly to the tutorials page.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

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New FreeStack Responsive Theme Series

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-03-01T16:23:47-06:00

I am very excited to announce the release of a new series of tutorials covering the FreeStack Responsive Theme from Blueball Design. This is a brand new responsive version of the immensely popular FreeStack Theme, which makes it possible to build the entire layout of a website from the ground up using the drag-and-drop flexibility of the Stacks 2 plugin.

This FreeStack R Theme is responsive, meaning that it will optimize your website for all devices -- computers, tablets and smartphones. Responsive themes became a major trend last year, and it looks like it will be a lasting trend that radically changes how websites are developed. If you haven’t already viewed the series of tutorials on Responsive Themes, then I highly recommend viewing those for a better understanding of what “responsive” is, and how it impacts the way websites are developed.

This new series of FreeStack R Theme tutorials is being released in two halves, with the first half consisting of 5 tutorials spanning just over an hour of time, so you can be assured that the training is very detailed. These first five tutorials include an introduction, details on theme styles, two tutorials covering every stack that comes with the theme, and finally a tutorial on building menus.

I am planning to release the second half of the series towards the end of next week. The primary focus of this second half is the creation of a website layout using the theme and its stacks. If you have viewed the original FreeStack Theme tutorials then you can expect a similar format with these new tutorials.

In addition to all of this, I also have Elixir Graphics stacks tutorials that are almost ready for release. Check back for more information on these during the second week of March.

Thanks for your support!

-Ryan

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Two More seyDesign Stack Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-02-15T23:08:10-06:00

Two more seyDesign stacks tutorials have been added to the curriculum. Last week brought ZipBar and Slinkee to RapidWeaver Classroom, and this week I have added ZipList and MegaMenu tutorials.

The ZipList Stack creates an expandable list of content, and is a great solution for an FAQ, glossary, or simply to provide more details on items in a bulleted (or numbered) list.

The MegaMenu Stack is a very unique stack that can be especially beneficial when used in conjunction with the FreeStack Theme. It creates a menu with drop-downs that can contain descriptive content. While it is a great option for a main menu, it can also be used as a split-navigation menu in the main content of a page, or simply as a method of anchoring links to other areas of the same page. The MegaMenu tutorial will demonstrate a number of uses for the stack.

Check back next week for tutorials on stacks from Elixir Graphics -- another long-time RapidWeaver theme developer who has jumped into Stack Elements development in the past months. Also, as mentioned last week, tutorials on the new FreeStack Responsive theme are under development, so expect to hear more news on that very soon.

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New seyDesign Stack Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-02-09T01:04:46-06:00

I am glad to have added tutorials on seyDesign’s stacks to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum. Many of you may know seyDesign for their excellent RapidWeaver themes, but they have been producing Stack Elements for some time now and I am creating tutorials for each of them. I’ve started with tutorials for ZipBar and Slinkee, which both offer methods of presenting a lot of content in a small amount of space. ZipBar creates a carousel-like effect, and Slinkee offers an accordion-style menu. Both are great stacks with a lot of flexibility.

I will be producing tutorials on the rest of seyDesign’s stacks over the next couple of weeks. In addition, a new series of tutorials on the FreeStack Responsive Theme is currently under development. This is a very exciting release, and you can learn more about it by viewing this overview video.

Check back next week for more details on new tutorials. Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Join now!

Two New SEO Video Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-02-02T00:13:00-06:00

There are two new tutorials that have been added to the SEO series -- Cruftless Links and Google +1.

The tutorial on crustless links discusses a different way of structuring the files and folders on your website. The “File and Folder Structure” tutorial in RapidWeaver Lesson 5 discusses how to customize your file and folder names in the Page Inspector, and this new Cruftless Links tutorial expands on that topic. I’ve placed it under the SEO section because descriptive URLs can be helpful for SEO.

The Google +1 tutorial discusses how the +1 button can indirectly influence your website’s placement in Google search results, and how it can lend credibility to your website as well, in a similar way that Google Authorship does. The button is easy to implement and this tutorial discusses those details.

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SEO Tutorials Updated with Google Authorship

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-01-18T16:44:35-06:00

Google Authorship has the potential to significantly impact the effectiveness of your website's listings in Google search results. This new Google Authorship tutorial will show you what Google Authorship can do for your website, and walks you through how to set up Authorship on your website. The tutorial is found in the Strategies > SEO section of the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum.

I highly recommend that everyone implement this as shown in this new video tutorial. The click-through rate (CTR) -- the number of clicks your website receives in Google search results -- is likely to increase if you correctly set up Authorship, by creating a Google+ profile and linking it to the content of your website. When this is done correctly, Google will (in most cases) place your Google+ profile picture alongside your website's listing in search results. This provides instant credibility to your website and makes people more willing to click on your link, opposed to others that do not have a photo listed.

Note that Google Authorship doesn't automatically improve your website's placement in search results. It's still important that you follow the other SEO guidelines in order to improve your website's rankings, and your success with SEO will always depend on a number of factors, many of which are out of your control. Even so, implementing Authorship is certainly worth the effort and I highly recommend doing so.

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Very Important Information for Stacks Users

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2013-01-16T15:24:21-06:00

Stacks version 2.1.8 was released this morning. It is highly recommended that all Stacks users update as soon as possible. RapidWeaver should prompt you to update the Stacks plugin when you open your project, but if it does not, you can manually download the update and install it: http://yourhead.com/stacks/

Why is this an important update?

Yesterday Google updated its hosted version of jQuery, which is a javascript file that the Stacks plugin uses. This updated version of jQuery included some changes that caused problems for some Stacks add-ons. The change affects the functionality of those stacks in RapidWeaver and on the published website. One of the stacks on the RapidWeaver Classroom homepage was actually affected by the jQuery update, and it stopped functioning correctly as soon as Google made the change.

What you need to do.

Stacks 2.1.8 resolves the issue by reverting back to the previous version of jQuery. You should update Stacks through RapidWeaver, or download and install the latest version from here. Once you have the latest version of Stacks installed, republish all files from RapidWeaver (File > Republish All Files). This will update all of your Stacks pages to ensure that there are no issues with the functionality of any of your stacks.

If you prefer not to republish all of your website’s pages at this time, then I would recommend you go through every page of your website that was built with Stacks, and carefully examine everything to ensure that it is all functioning as intended.

Learn more about this update.

If you are interested in knowing the behind-the-scenes details of this update, then Isaiah (YourHead) has posted a topic to the Realmac Software Forums -- you can visit that topic to get more detailed information.

I hope that this is a relatively painless update for all of you. It is a very rare situation and I don’t recall ever seeing something of this magnitude occur in the past. Rest assured that this isn’t an issue specific to RapidWeaver -- major updates to something like a jQuery library can have ramifications for website developers across many different website development platforms.

A brief note about RapidWeaver Classroom.

Things are back in full gear for me following the holidays and the addition of a new baby girl to our family. I am excited about some new tutorials that I’ll be releasing this month, starting with a new SEO topic coming this week. I will post another update with more information very soon!

-Ryan

CartLoom 3 Tutorials and a New "How to…"

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-12-15T00:13:16-06:00

The CartLoom tutorials have been completely re-done to reflect all the changes with CartLoom 3. One of the major changes is the official CartLoom 3 Stack, which is detailed in this new series of tutorials.

When the CartLoom 3 upgrade was announced, it was also announced that the CartLoom plugin was being dropped. This is no longer the case, and a new CartLoom plugin is currently in beta. Once the final version of the plugin is released, I will be sure to cover it and that tutorial to the CartLoom series. While I much prefer the CartLoom Stack, a new plugin is great news for existing CartLoom users who built their product pages with the previous CartLoom plugin.

I am personally very impressed with CartLoom as an e-commerce solution, and I think anyone looking to sell products online should strongly consider it. If you want to know more about the new features in CartLoom 3, you can read the article here.

A new tutorial on creating multilingual websites.

I have also added a new tutorial on how to build a multilingual website with RapidWeaver. The tutorial covers the use of multiple RapidWeaver project files to manage each language version, and how to work with RapidWeaver’s Site Setup and Publishing Settings to ensure that the individual files plays nice with one another once published. This new tutorials is found in the “How to…” section, under Continuing Ed in the main menu of the members’ area.

A different kind of addition, just in time for Christmas.

I’d like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas! It will be a bit different for me this year, as my family will be expanding with the birth of a baby girl just before Christmas. I love being a father to my 2 year-old son, but I expect things will be forever changed with a little girl around! We are very excited to meet her and have her around during this holiday season.

As always, I (and my family) greatly appreciate the tremendous support and I hope you all have a blessed Christmas and great new year!

-Ryan

FTP Tutorials Updated

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-11-16T23:07:06-06:00

I have updated the FTP tutorials found in the Continuing Education section of the curriculum. The previous FTP tutorials were several years old and used an outdated version of Transmit, the FTP application that I use and recommend. These new tutorials cover the content in the previous tutorials, as well as some new information, such as a quick and easy way to get the full URL of any file on your server.

Understanding how to use FTP is very important for anyone doing website design. It’s not an overly complicated topic, but it’s one that has the tendency to intimidate people. The FTP tutorials explain how to connect to your server with FTP, and how to upload, move, delete and archive files on the server.

These new FTP tutorials have also been added to Lesson 9: Web Hosting in the RapidWeaver section of tutorials. Since web hosting and the use of FTP go hand-in-hand, it made sense to make these tutorials available in that section as well.

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New Google Webmaster Tools Series

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-11-09T14:33:26-06:00

A new series of tutorials covering Google’s Webmaster Tools is now available as part of the Strategies section. Webmaster Tools is a very important resource for anyone operating a website. It allows you to submit a sitemap to help Google index your website, it displays errors such as broken links and missing pages, it provides suggestions on how to optimize your pages for searches, and it even notifies you of malware in the unfortunate event that your website is hacked.

In addition to the topics above, these new tutorials will also show you how to submit updated webpages to Google, so that new content will be indexed much faster. This can be very useful after you have published updates to your website.

Check back next week for an update on more new tutorials.

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5 More StackManiac Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-10-26T14:01:39-05:00

Following-up on last week’s introduction of StackManiac to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum, I have posted 5 more tutorials: InstaViewr, OldBrowsr, RefinedSlidr, RefinedSlidr Warehouse and Socializr.

InstaViewr: Share your Instagram photos on your website
OldBrowsr: Redirect visitors using older versions of Internet Explorer
Refined Slidr: Stylish image slider
Refined Slidr Warehouse: Stylish image slider that uses warehoused images
Socializr: Let your visitors share your site to social networks

Tagging Stack Element Tutorials

I have begun “tagging” tutorials in the Stack Elements section. This means that you will find a brief description of a stack’s function alongside the name of the stack. Many stacks are named in such a way that their function isn’t obvious, so these tags should be helpful as you browse the tutorials and decide which ones to view. These tags will be found on the individual tutorial pages for each developer. At the moment, all of the StackManiac tutorials are tagged, and I will be adding tags to the others developer pages soon.

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New StackManiac Stacks Tutorials Are Here

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-10-19T23:18:32-05:00

In a return to Stack Elements tutorials, I am pleased to add a new developer to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum. StackManiac has been producing some outstanding Stack Elements for the Stacks plugin, and I have begun adding tutorials on these stacks to the curriculum. StackManiac has also joined a growing list of developers who offer discounts to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers, and a discount code for 20% off is now available in the members’ area.

The new StackManiac section of tutorials launches with three stacks: AudioDeckr, FancyViewr and GrayScale. AudioDeckr provides a sleek, stylish audio player that supports HTML5 and responsive layout. FancyViewr is one of my favorite image lightbox stacks, and GrayScale creates a nice hover effect for static images.

I have already recorded tutorials for five more StackManiac stacks, and I will have those edited and published to the website next week, so check back soon for more!

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Freestack Theme Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-09-28T16:42:14-05:00

I am very excited to announce the release of a 2-hour, 11-part series of tutorials on the Freestack Theme from Blueball Design.

The Freestack Theme is a theme that is specially designed to allow you to create the entire layout of a website with the Stacks 2 plugin. It is essentially a blank theme, providing you with complete control of every element of your website. You control the placement, style and content of every element of your website, and it is all accomplished using the highly flexible Stacks 2 plugin.

This series of tutorials takes an in-depth look at all of the Freestack theme styles and included stacks, and walks through the creation of a website layout using the theme. Specific functionality such as menus, headers, blogging, contact forms and e-commerce solutions are covered as well.

There are still more Freestack tutorials to come, including tutorials on the available Freestack add-on packs. Look for more information on these updates in October.

Finally, Blueball Design is also offering a 35% discount on the Freestack bundle. This discount is good for 3 days, expiring at midnight on Sunday, September 30th. Discount code: freestackrwclasstutssale

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New Tutorial Added and Big News

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-09-14T16:10:54-05:00

I wanted to take a moment to post an announcement about a big update to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum that is coming this month. A detailed series of tutorials on the Freestack Theme will be made available to subscribers soon. If you aren’t already familiar with Freestack, it is a theme that is specially designed to allow you to create the entire layout of a website with the Stacks plugin. Since it effectively offers unlimited potential, developing a series of comprehensive tutorials has been quite a challenge, but I believe the result will be a very beneficial resource for anyone developing a website with the Freestack theme.

This series of tutorials will be released by the end of September, but in the meantime I’d like to share a new tutorial on the Bigfoot Legend Stacks from RapidWeaver Central. Bigfoot Legend is a bundle of Stack Elements and Template Stacks, making it a very unique addition to the world of Stacks add-ons. The goal of this bundle is to quickly and easily build tall, stylish footers in a website. It is especially effective with ExtraContent-supported themes, but can be used with any theme. The Stack Elements themselves can also be used independently to accomplish other purposes. For example, the list of features on the Home page of RapidWeaver Classroom was created with a stack that is included in this bundle.

Check back soon for the release of the Freestack Theme series!

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Lesson on Web Hosting Added to Curriculum

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-08-16T17:04:02-05:00

I have added a new lesson to the RapidWeaver section of the curriculum. Lesson 9 covers topics related to web hosting, and includes 3 tutorials to start, with more to come.

We all know that web hosting is required to put our website online, but web hosts provide a lot of features and functionality, and much of it can be confusing. Lesson 9 will cover a variety of topics that are common to web hosting providers. The basics of setting up a hosting account are covered, and an overview of the cPanel software -- the most popular control panel solution -- is covered as well. There’s even a RapidWeaver plugin from JavaBean Hosting that is discussed in one tutorial.

The next addition to Lesson 9 will be a tutorial on domains. There are a lot of questions about domains -- how to move them, redirect them, change name servers, add multiple domains to an account, etc. This tutorial will aim to clear-up a lot of questions about this subject. Check back soon for more information on that tutorial, and others!

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New Series of Tutorials on Responsive Themes

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-08-07T15:53:40-05:00

I am very excited to release a new 3-part series covering responsive RapidWeaver themes. Responsive themes are a new trend in website design, brought about by the increased use of mobile/handheld devices for browsing the web. Responsive themes will help you build a website that functions well on any device or screen size, so it’s essentially like having a desktop and mobile website in one!

There are some limitations to how you build a website with a responsive theme, so that information is addressed in these tutorials. It’s very important to understand the limitations in advance, so that you can make an informed decision about the use of a responsive theme for your project.

A number of 3rd-party theme developers have begun producing responsive themes for RapidWeaver, so I have listed those developers on the tutorials page as well. A majority of those developers also offer discounts to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers!

These new tutorials can be found under the RapidWeaver section, under “Bonus Material: A Focus on Themes” -- you can also view the full curriculum listing here.

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"Experiments" added to Google Analytics series

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-07-27T00:40:04-05:00

The Google Analytics series of tutorials has been updated with a new tutorial on Experiments. Experiments is used to test different versions of a web page’s content, to see which version is the most successful in converting visitors to customers. This feature was a part of Google’s Website Optimizer, but is now integrated into Analytics. This new tutorial replaces a previous one called “Testing Content”, which was located in the Effective Design Principles section.

Using Experiments to test content can tell you a lot about what content works best on your website. I do highly recommend that everyone view the Effective Design Principles section before conducting an experiment in Analytics, because the content of that series can help you better understand the types of content to test.

A quick note on responsive theme tutorials
A tutorial on responsive themes was slated for release this week, but I am pushing that back until next week. As I’ve researched the topic and done some hands-on work with responsive themes, I’ve come to realize that the topic needs a series of videos, instead of just one. There is quite a bit involved with using these themes, and so I want to be as thorough as possible in the training I create. This is a really cool and exciting topic, so I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts and findings with you all! Check back next week for an announcement.

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New Tutorials on the Mobilize Plugin

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-07-20T16:19:00-05:00

Two new tutorials on the Mobilize plugin have been added to the Add-Ons section of the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum.

The Mobilize plugin will redirect your website visitors to a mobile version of your website when they are viewing your website with a mobile device. Mobilize uses "mobile detection" to determine what device a visitor is using, and will send them to the appropriate version of your website based on that detection.

Mobilize does NOT create a mobile version of your website, but in these tutorials we will look at how to create a mobile version with RapidWeaver, and the relationship between a mobile and “desktop” version of your website.

Mobilize is a great solution for those with an existing website, who want to add a mobile version and have visitors using mobile devices directed there. If you are building a completely new website and want to include mobile compatibility, then using a responsive theme is another possible option, which prevents the need to develop two separate websites. The topic of responsive themes will be addressed next week with a new addition to RapidWeaver Classroom, so check back here soon for more information.

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WP-Blog Plugin Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-07-06T17:12:16-05:00

New tutorials on the WP-Blog plugin have been added to the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum, and are available to subscribers now. The WP-Blog plugin allows you to integrate a WordPress blog with your RapidWeaver website. This offers you the flexibility of blogging with the WordPress platform through your browser, while integrating the blog with your RapidWeaver website, achieving a consistent look and user experience.

Use of the WP-Blog plugin requires that you install the WordPress software on your server. The software is available for free through WordPress.org, though many web hosting providers have WordPress available as a quick install through the control panel. In this series of tutorials, I show both methods of installing WordPress on a hosting server, and walk you through all the details of setting up and configuring the WP-Blog plugin.

The WP-Blog plugin is a great alternative to RapidWeaver’s built-in blog page, so if you are interested in the flexibility of blogging outside of RapidWeaver, then WP-Blog is worth a look. RapidWeaver Classroom also provides tutorials on a couple of other blogging alternatives, such as the RapidBlog plugin and the Tumblr Stack from Joe Workman.

This is just the start of new content coming to RapidWeaver Classroom in July. Check back soon for more information on new tutorials!

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New Tutorial on using 301 Redirects

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-06-22T16:45:28-05:00

I’ve added the tutorial “Using 301 Redirects” to the SEO lesson under Strategies. 301 Redirects are useful in several situations:

You are changing the filename of an existing web page.
You are updating your website and consolidating multiple pages into a single one.
You are eliminating a page but still want inbound links to direct to an existing page.

301 Redirects ensure that your website’s visitors arrive at active, existing pages on your website. They also ensure that inbound links remain valid, even if you remove the original pages those links pointed to. This is especially useful and important in regards to SEO, because you don’t want search engine links to reference missing pages. On account of the SEO implications, I decided to place this tutorial under the SEO lesson.

This information is not crucial for brand new websites that are being built, but it can be helpful to understand the concept when it comes to future changes that might take place with your website.

There is much more to come in July! Subscribers can find out more about upcoming content in the Members Blog.

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"Strategies" comes to RapidWeaver Classroom

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-06-05T15:33:54-05:00

I am very excited to announce the addition of Section 401: Strategies to the RapidWeaver Classroom Curriculum! Two brand new series of tutorials -- Google Analytics and Effective Design Principles -- accompany this new section, and the SEO series has been moved to this section as well.

This new section has been named “Strategies” because its content discusses how we can be strategic in the development of our websites, in order to make them successful in accomplishing our goals. A variety of different topics will be covered in this section, many of which will extend beyond the “RapidWeaver world”.

As of May 2012, RapidWeaver Classroom has been providing training to RapidWeaver for 4 years! The primary focus has been instruction on how to use the software and its add-ons, but with Strategies, the focus will shift to how we can effectively use the tools that we have. For example, the Google Analytics tutorial “Creating Goals” demonstrates how to use FormLoom 2 and/or PayLoom 2 to track the success of a goal created in Google Analytics.

I think this is an important shift in focus for RapidWeaver Classroom, and while I will certainly continue to create new content covering RapidWeaver add-ons, there will be a lot of future additions to the Strategies section.

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4-Year Celebration!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-05-28T15:31:50-05:00

RapidWeaver Classroom “opened its doors” in May 2008, and so I’m excited to have arrived at the 4-year mark this month! It has been a pleasure to offer training to RapidWeaver users these past 4 years, and to have the opportunity to communicate with so many of you and see the websites you’ve created with RapidWeaver. RapidWeaver Classroom began with tutorials covering RapidWeaver 3.6 and a small handful of plugins, and it’s amazing to see how much the app and its add-ons have matured these past years. I still firmly believe that RapidWeaver is an outstanding website development app, and I am very excited to see its continued development in the future.

As a part of our 4-year celebration, RapidWeaver Classroom has received a bit of a face-lift! Of course RapidWeaver Classroom has been, and will always be, built entirely with RapidWeaver. The same theme is still in use, but the graphics have been updated and I’ve taken the opportunity to try some new things with Stacks 2 to redesign the content of the site. One major change is the organization of the curriculum, which is also reflected inside of the members’ area. This change offers a great improvement in how the listing of tutorials is navigated. A special thanks to Marten Claridge for his fresh perspective and inspiration for many of the changes!

Finally, I am very excited to also announce the addition of a completely new section to the Classroom Curriculum. This new section is entitled “Strategies” -- it really deserves its own blog post, so look for more information here soon.

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FormLoom 2 and DateLoom Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-04-20T16:33:06-05:00

New tutorials on the FormLoom 2 and DateLoom plugins from Yabdab are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers.

The DateLoom plugin creates a highly-customizable calendar on your website. You can post entries to the calendar directly through RapidWeaver, or you can import a Google calendar(s) and add/edit entries from anywhere using a browser. Imported Google Calendars can be styled with FormLoom 2, which provides themes to improve the default Google Calendar look.

FormLoom 2 improves on the original FormLoom plugin, providing much more flexibility than the Contact Form page that comes with RapidWeaver. One of the most impressive features of FormLoom 2 is the ability to customize the layout of a form on your website. You can build a form with multiple columns and even break-up a form into different sections. FormLoom 2 is very impressive and I recommend all RapidWeaver users to take a look at what it has to offer.

Overall, there are 6 new tutorials that come in at just under an hour, so you can expect a lot of detailed training on these plugins!

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New "FAQ Guide" Feature Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-03-13T16:49:56-05:00

A new feature called the “FAQ Guide” has been added to the members’ area as part of the RapidWeaver Classroom subscription. This guide is presented in an FAQ format, and is intended to serve as a resource for both novice and experienced RapidWeaver users. The guide addresses questions that I commonly receive from RapidWeaver users, and consists of both subjective and objective topics. I will continue to update it with new topics over time, and my hope is that it will serve as a helpful resource to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers.

You will find a link to the FAQ Guide in the blue bar underneath the main site header, as well as in the main content of the members’ area Home page.

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RapidLink Plugin Series Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-03-13T16:32:50-05:00

The RapidWeaver Classroom Curriculum has been updated with a new series on the RapidLink plugin from Omnidea. RapidLink is a companion plugin to RapidCart 3, which makes it possible to sell digital products and distribute links to buyers. Once a purchase is completed from RapidCart 3, RapidLink will generate an email to the buyer, providing them with a link to download the digital product.

This new series consists of 5 tutorials, detailing everything you need to know about using RapidLink to sell digital products.

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RapidCart 3 Series of Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-02-24T02:02:20-06:00

I have released a new series of video tutorials on the RapidCart 3 plugin from Omnidea. RapidCart 3 is a great e-commerce solution for RapidWeaver, and this latest version of the plugin brings about a number of improvements and enhanced functionality. This 45-minute series of video tutorials details every part of the plugin so that you will know exactly what it has to offer. These tutorials are available to subscribers now, under the Plugins section of the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum.

There is a companion plugin to RapidCart 3 called RapidLink, which lets you offer digital downloads for purchase through RapidCart 3. I will be producing tutorials for the RapidLink plugin next week, so check back for details on that release.

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37 Doobox Stacks Overviews Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-02-14T17:34:04-06:00

The RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum has been updated to include overviews of all stacks currently available from Doobox. These 37 videos will provide a quick overview of each stack’s functionality and features. The range of functionality across all of these stacks is tremendous, and most anyone is likely to discover at least a few that they would consider “must-have” add-ons for their Stacks library.

If you haven’t noticed already, the immense popularity of the Stacks and Stacks 2 plugins has led to a massive increase in the frequency that new stacks are released. In order to stay as up-to-date as possible, I will continue to release these short overview tutorials for Stacks add-ons. Many of the stacks are so simple that a quick overview will provide enough information. Others will benefit from full-length tutorials, and I will produce those following the release of an overview.

While Stacks and its add-ons have made a very important impact on website development with RapidWeaver, I don’t want that to be the only focus of the training provided by RapidWeaver Classroom. I will be releasing some other plugin tutorials in the coming weeks, along with some other topics to be announced in the near future. Check back soon for more details!

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Doobox Overview Videos

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2012-01-23T14:07:59-06:00

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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Stacks 2 Goes Final -- Tutorial Updated

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-12-15T15:55:47-06:00

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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2 More Stacks 2 Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-12-06T23:56:04-06:00

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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Stacks 2 Public Beta and Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-11-28T11:29:40-06:00

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!

Lockdown Plugin Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-11-10T16:20:31-06:00

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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Hunter and Hippo Stacks from Doobox

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-10-19T23:41:51-05:00

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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Page Lime CMS Series Completed

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-09-23T23:26:20-05:00

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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New Series on Page Lime CMS Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-09-02T01:21:43-05:00

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!

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PunBB Forum Series and X-Ray Stack Tutorial

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-08-15T15:17:34-05:00

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!

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New RSS Stacks Tutorial Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-08-02T02:29:45-05:00

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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Lion is here! What this means for RapidWeaver.

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-07-22T01:27:40-05:00

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.

CartLoom Update and More from Joe Workman

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-07-22T01:07:29-05:00

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!

3 New Tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-07-15T15:21:46-05:00

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.

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CartLoom E-Commerce Series Underway

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-06-29T00:27:50-05:00

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.

4 More Joe Workman Stacks Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-06-22T02:50:02-05:00

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.

3 New Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-06-10T02:57:02-05:00

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!

3 More Joe Workman Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-06-03T01:29:09-05:00

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.

4 New Tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-05-27T02:46:40-05:00

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!

Welcome to the New RapidWeaver Classroom!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-05-13T00:50:37-05:00

As you’ve probably noticed, RapidWeaver Classroom looks quite a bit different! I am very excited about this new design and how it will benefit visitors to the site as well as subscribers. Everything has been re-built from the ground-up, and was a 3-4 month process from start to finish. A very special thanks goes out to Adam at Elixir Graphics for his help with the theme design, and if you like the design then you should check-out his latest Prism theme!

RapidWeaver Classroom members will notice that the membership areas not only look different, but are completely re-organized as well. The entire listing of tutorials on a single page has been removed, in favor of separate pages dedicated to specific lessons or topics. This format allows for the addition of a written overview for each lesson, as well as links to 3rd-party sites and other resources later down the road. All-in-all, this format offers a lot of flexibility for the addition of features and improvements in the future, whereas the previous layout was busy and limiting. I hope you will find that the new layout is functional, accessible and an improvement over the prior version.

Another improvement to the membership area is the use of a new “lightbox” for displaying the video tutorials. This new javascript box allows you to navigate between tutorials without having to close the window and click on a new link, and it includes a full-screen button as well. This is another great improvement in usability that I am excited about.

Finally, another major improvement that is a bit more behind-the-scenes is the move to Amazon S3 for hosting of the video content. This change brings these great benefits:

720p HD Video: Higher-resolution videos means everything is clearer, especially with full-screen viewing.

iPad Compatibility: Every video tutorial in both curriculums is completely compatible with the iPad.

Faster download speeds: Amazon’s servers are super-fast, and its CloudFront technology replicates the video content to servers across the world, so subscribers in other countries will experience faster downloads.

Awesome reliability: Extremely high uptime percentages means that the chances of unavailable content is extremely low.

Apart from all these exciting changes, this month marks the 3-year birthday of RapidWeaver Classroom! A lot has happened in the past 3 years -- to think that the site began with one curriculum of just 50 videos, and now offers over 300 videos spread across two curriculums! One thing that hasn’t changed though is my commitment to RapidWeaver and to you, and doing all I can to educate and empower you to build great websites. Thanks for all of your support these past 3 years! I am excited about these new changes, and many more great additions that are already in the works!

New ExtraContent Series Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-03-10T16:32:06-06:00

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.

2 New Screencasts Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-02-11T01:25:07-06:00

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.

New Lesson Added to Core Curriculum

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2011-01-21T22:26:40-06:00

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!

Lesson 7 Updated for RapidWeaver 5

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-12-16T22:27:44-06:00

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! :)

Nearly 50 New Tutorials on RapidWeaver 5.0!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-12-01T06:23:52-06:00

That’s right! RapidWeaver 5.0 is here at last, and RapidWeaver Classroom is ready! I am very excited about the release of RapidWeaver 5.0, and also very excited to announce that nearly 50 new video tutorials have been created to cover the latest version. Section 101 has been almost entirely refreshed with brand new screencasts on RapidWeaver 5.0 The very, very few original tutorials that remain will soon be replaced as well.

So what’s new with RapidWeaver 5.0? As part of the Section 101 curriculum, I have created a special section with the specific videos that cover the major new features to version 5.0 -- Resources, Stats, the Sitemap page, CSS consolidation and some new themes! If you want a quick overview of what’s new, then check out those tutorials first.

If you are still using RapidWeaver 3.6 or 4.0, I have kept those original tutorials available as part of an archived curriculum, so if you add everything together, there are over 200 unique video tutorials available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers!

As mentioned above, there are some very select tutorials in Section 101 that have yet to be updated. Those will all be replaced with version 5.0 tutorials very soon. Additionally, I will be creating completely new lessons that discuss other important aspects of developing websites in RapidWeaver, so stay tuned for those in the coming weeks!

New Tutorial on the Styled Stack

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-11-24T22:03:08-06:00

I’ve released a new screencast on the Styled Stack from Joe Workman. This is an awesome stack that very well may replace the plain Text Stack that is bundled with the Stacks plugin. The Styled Stack creates a content container for your text that can be styled in a number of ways -- rounded corners, drop shadows and background images are all available to this stack. Joe has done an awesome job of addressing some common requests all in one stack! Check out the tutorial under Section 202 of the curriculum, in the Joe Workman section.

On another note, Happy Thanksgiving to all of our U.S. students! I hope you all enjoy the holiday and are able to spend good time with family. Don’t stay away too long though, as some very exciting things are right around the corner, so stay tuned! :)

New Tutorial on the El Sexy-o Stack

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-11-23T22:06:49-06:00

Last week I released a new video tutorial on the El Sexy-o Stack from El Stacko, but I mistakenly forgot to update the blog here with that information. Nevertheless, the El Sexy-o Stack screencast can be found in Section 202, under the section for El Stacko stacks. El Sexy-o is used to create a unique lightbox-effect for image galleries and other types of content on your website. It has some cool features and flexibility that makes it unique, so check out the screencast for more information!

Tutorials on Dispatch Stacks and Link Inspector

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-10-29T14:52:30-05:00

Two new video tutorials have been released to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. One tutorial covers Joe Workman's Dispatch Stacks -- these stacks provide an upload feature on your website, so that visitors/customers can upload files to you via Dropbox, Amazon S3, MobileMe or your web hosting server. The other screencast covers Link Inspector from CosCulture -- this plugin checks for broken links on your website and is especially useful for larger sites and those with many external links.

The Dispatch Stacks tutorial can be found in Section 202 under the Joe Workman section, and the Link Inspector tutorial is located in Section 201 under "Miscellaneous Plugins."

Check back next week for new stacks add-ons tutorials!

New Tutorials on the Gyro and Tabulous Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-10-22T23:50:34-05:00

Two more Joe Workman Stacks, Gyro and Tabulous, have been added to the section of Stacks Add-ons in the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum. Both stacks offer outstanding features and eye-candy for your RapidWeaver website.

Look for many more Stacks screencasts to appear in Section 202 of the curriculum over the next several weeks.

New Tutorial on the Valet Plugin Manager

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-09-29T16:44:56-05:00

A new video tutorial has been released to subscribers, covering the Valet Plugin Manager. This is a unique add-on that lets you enable and disable the 3rd-party plugins you have installed for RapidWeaver. This is great for troubleshooting purposes and for improving the performance and stability of RapidWeaver, and I consider it an important tool for all RapidWeaver users -- especially those who work on multiple projects.

7 New Tutorials on Stacks Add-Ons

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-09-02T01:17:58-05:00

7 new screencasts have been released that cover stacks from ElStacko and CosCulture. These screencasts have been added to a new section of the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum: Section 202: Stacks Add-Ons. This new section will be exclusive to 3rd-party stacks that are released for the Stacks plugin.

The following 7 screencasts are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers:

ElStacko: El Book-o Stack
ElStacko: El CallBox-o Stack
ElStacko: Exposer Pro Stack
ElStacko: Sidewinder Stack
CosCulture: DragZone Stack
CosCulture: Image Roundabout Stack
CosCulture: Notifications Stack

RapidWeaver Classroom has also partnered with ElStacko and CosCulture, who have both begun offering exclusive discounts to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers! Current subscribers will receive more information on these discounts soon.

Grad School is in Session!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-08-11T01:57:12-05:00

I am very excited to announce the launch of RapidWeaver Classroom Grad School, an advanced curriculum that explores modification of RapidWeaver themes using HTML and CSS. Grad School steps you through the basics of HTML and CSS, so that you have a firm foundation as we begin working inside the contents of RapidWeaver themes, customizing them the way we want. This curriculum eliminates the intimidation associated with HTML and CSS, giving you the confidence to tweak your website to look exactly the way you want.

The Grad School curriculum begins with 54 tutorials, covering the subjects mentioned above, as well as a series on setting up and using the aMember membership system. RapidWeaver Classroom uses aMember, and it is a great solution for subscription websites. The aMember series takes you through a real-life membership website under development, using both aMember and RapidWeaver.

This curriculum will be dynamic, with new tutorials released regularly. What does this mean for the RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum? Nothing changes! The RapidWeaver Classroom curriculum will continue to cover the latest RapidWeaver updates, plugin releases and other related topics.

Learn More or Register Now!

2 New Video Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-07-16T16:19:40-05:00

Two new screencasts have been released to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers today. The first covers the symTune Image Slider plugin from SymfoniP, which replicates the look and feel of the image slider in the iTunes Music Store. It’s provides a great way of featuring content on your website, and offers a really slick presentation of images.

The second tutorial release is located under the “How to...” lesson in Section 301, and it walks-through the process of splitting a RapidWeaver website into multiple project files. This is great to understand when building large, or media-intensive websites.

These tutorials are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. Not a subscriber? Register now or learn more about RapidWeaver Classroom!

New Tutorial on the Speech Bubbles Stack

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-06-18T13:30:54-05:00

A new tutorial covering the Speech Bubbles Stack from Joe Workman is now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. This is a pretty awesome stack that creates speech bubbles with rounded corners for your content. It’s very easy to use and accomplishes something that was once more complex to achieve -- I know from personal experience, having added speech bubbles to RapidWeaver Classroom, and trust me when I say that it wasn’t nearly this easy! Thanks to Joe for another great stack, and I’m sure most of us can find good use for it in our projects.

New Tutorials on DooBox Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-06-04T19:57:41-05:00

Two new tutorials are now available that cover the Doo-Daily and Doo-Spin stacks from DooBox. Both of these stacks allow you to add dynamic content to your pages, either by having different content load randomly with each visit, or by having content set to appear depending on the day of the week. These new tutorials are available now to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers.

New Tutorial on the symMedia5 Plugin

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-05-28T01:06:03-05:00

A new tutorial is now available covering the symMedia5 plugin from SymfoniP. This is an outstanding plugin that allows you to add both video and audio files to a single page, and have them play in a single player, with a nice scroll bar to navigate through and play the added media. In addition, this plugin supports HTML5 video playback, and if you aren’t familiar with the significance of HTML5 video then you will learn a bit about that as well in this tutorial.

This is the first tutorial on a plugin from SymfoniP here at RapidWeaver Classroom, though there is a FlowBox Stack tutorial available. SymfoniP has been producing some great RapidWeaver plugins for mixed media (photo, audio, and video) -- so they all will be covered in the coming weeks.

Two New ExtraContent Theme Walk-Throughs

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-05-21T15:20:12-05:00

In the past week I have produced a couple of walk-throughs for new RapidWeaver themes. Flame, from Elixir Graphics, and Havnit, from seyDesign are both ExtraContent-enabled themes with some phenomenal design and flexibility. These walk-through videos are available in both the members’ area and on the Curriculum page, under the ExtraContent section. I have also re-worked that ExtraContent section to include all the tutorials I’ve produced for ExtraContent themes -- currently there are 3 each for both seyDesign and Elixir Graphics.

In other news, production of tutorials for the symMedia5 plugin from SymfoniP are almost complete, so look for those additions to the members’ area early next week.

4th Tutorial Added to CMS Series

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-05-14T13:02:42-05:00

The 4th tutorial in our CMS series is now available online to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. This CMS solution involves Pulse CMS, which is the first full-blown Content Management System to be covered. I have chosen to start with Pulse CMS because you host it on your own server alongside your website, which is a great advantage because all of your content exists on one server, opposed to some of it existing on another server that you have no control over.

In advance of viewing this Pulse CMS tutorial, I recommend viewing the “Working With an FTP Application” lesson, which can be found under Section 301 of the tutorials. This lesson will get you comfortable with publishing files to your server via FTP, which is required to install Pulse.

More CMS solutions will be covered in the weeks to come, alongside a variety of custom stacks and even a few new RapidWeaver plugins.

Server Issues Preventing Login

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-05-13T03:53:49-05:00

Our Bluehost server started having an issue late Wednesday night into Thursday morning. The server was rebooted and services are still being restored. At the moment none of the PHP pages are functioning, which prevents registration, login, and use of contact forms. Bluehost is aware of the problem and working to remedy it. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before services are restored, and that there will be minimal inconvenience to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. Thanks for your support and understanding.

RapidWeaver 5.0 Details Emerge

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-05-05T17:09:28-05:00

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!!! :D 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. :)

Support Interruption

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-04-26T22:21:05-05:00

I will be away beginning Tuesday, April 27th and will return on Wednesday, May 5th. I will have very limited access to email during that time, so I will reply to any support issues once I return. Note that our FAQ provides a lot of information, so please have a look through those topics if you have a question. If you have a general RapidWeaver-related issue, remember that the RealMac Software Support Forum is an excellent resource and wealth of knowledge from the RapidWeaver community of users.

Our series on CMS will continue with new tutorials shortly after my return.

New Tutorials on DooBox Stacks Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-04-26T22:14:01-05:00

I have released 3 new tutorials on stacks available from DooBox. Each of the following stacks is covered:

Doo-Corners - Easily add rounded corners to your content in Stacks
Doo-Columns - Create up to 4 columns with increased design flexibility
Doo-Code - Add a feature that allows code (or other text) to be copied with the simple click of a button

These screencasts are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. Not a member yet? Join now!

Be on the lookout for future tutorials on more great stacks from DooBox!

New Series on Choosing a RapidWeaver Theme

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-04-22T17:18:46-05:00

I am happy to announce the release of a new tutorial series called “Choosing a RapidWeaver Theme.” This series is comprised of 5 screencasts that total about 45 minutes -- discussing how to find themes, along with tips and strategies to use when looking for the best theme for your project. With the release of this series I have re-organized the curriculum listing a bit, placing these tutorials just below the lessons for RapidWeaver, along with the ExtraContent and BlocksBox tutorials, since these are all theme-related screencasts.

Subscribers to RapidWeaver Classroom can now view this new series. Additionally, several more screencasts have already been produced on another topic, so another new release is coming very, very soon!

A Note on Backups

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-04-09T16:41:28-05:00

I have been without Internet access at home/work for the past 7 days. After calls to my ISP over the course of the week, technicians have been called out and they have been working on the issue today. As I write this I am hopeful that service will be restored before the weekend begins, and that I’ll be able to publish this post I am writing now. It’s really been a perfect storm of issues that has caused this long outage, and when I lost service last week I never would have imagined that I would be disconnected this long. Needless to say I can’t wait to be back online!

So what’s the point of blogging about this? As I put the loss of Internet service in perspective, I considered what it has cost me, and what it hasn’t. I’ve certainly lost quite a bit of productivity over the course of the week, but at the same time I haven’t actually lost any work. My computer didn’t crash, my hard drive didn’t fail, and my web server didn’t go down or lose my website files. But what if one of those things did happen?

Let’s consider the chance of a major issue with your hosting server -- where all of your website files are published. Your hosting provider has an issue with the server, which takes your website offline, and the end result is actual data loss. Your website files have been permanently lost due to a hardware failure. This is bad news, but the goods news is that you built your website with RapidWeaver, and since RapidWeaver is a desktop application, your project file serves as a backup of your entire website. As soon as your hosting provider gets the server back up and running, you simply re-publish your website and things are back to normal.

This is a rarely considered strength of using RapidWeaver over an online CMS such as Wordpress. Your work is done and saved locally on your computer, so you don’t have to depend on the reliability of a machine somewhere else to keep your files safe. So you are secure with a backup of your website on your own computer, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be making back-ups yourself. If your project file(s) only exist on one hard drive, you should have an additional drive to backup to, or at the very least a USB flash drive. Ideally you have a second drive with Time Machine configured to make regular backups automatically. The outstanding PlusKit plugin also has a backup feature that you can use to make backups of your project file as you work. You can never be too careful, and so a combination of automatic and manual methods might be a good idea.

Finally, if you manage assets of your website directly via FTP (a.k.a. warehousing), then you will want to make manual backups of those files and folders by downloading them to your computer. Since you are managing these outside of RapidWeaver, you don’t have the safety of them being included in your project file. You likely have the files locally on your computer anyway, but in case of emergency it would be helpful to have all of those files together in a folder that is an exact duplicate of the folder of assets you had published on your server.

New Series on Content Management Systems

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-04-01T17:03:17-05:00

I am happy to announce the launch of a new series of tutorials on Content Management Systems! As mentioned in my previous blog entry, I have been researching different CMS solutions and I have now begun to produce screencasts on the subject. The launch of this series begins with 3 video tutorials, which are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. More tutorials will be released in the coming weeks, with the goal of providing the most comprehensive coverage of options available to RapidWeaver users.

Once again, if you have any experience using a CMS with RapidWeaver, please comment here and let me know your thoughts. I have developed a list of solutions (see previous blog entry), but am open to other options and I am interested in personal experience with any of them.

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Register now for access to these, and 170+ other RapidWeaver video tutorials!

In Progress: CMS Solutions

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-03-25T16:58:17-05:00

I am currently researching and learning various Content Management Systems and why they may or may not be good solutions for use with RapidWeaver. Allowing for user-editable content outside of RapidWeaver has always been difficult to solve, as RapidWeaver wasn’t created with that feature. Various plugin-ins and stacks have been released over time that address this issue, but how you know which one to choose and how to use it? This is a deep topic and one that I have wanted to address for a long time, and I think we’re at the point now where enough solid options are available to where I can make recommendations and explore all of the available options to some degree.

My research and testing will result in a new series that covers different types of content management -- not exclusively limited to online CMS systems. Video tutorials will be produced over the next weeks, culminating in a comprehensive resource. Here is a list of what I have been working with so far:

Google Docs and PlusKit
RapidBlog
CushyCMS
SurrealCMS
WebYep
Pulse
PageLime
Unify
Dynamic Content Stacks from Blueball Design
CMS/CSS Stacks from Joe Workman

If you have experience with any of these, or with something else altogether, please comment on this post and I might contact you personally for more information. As I mentioned, this is a deep subject and everyone can benefit more from feedback based on your own experiences.

Joe Workman Discount for Subscribers

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-03-15T17:45:11-05:00

I am excited to announce that Joe Workman has joined seyDesign, Elixir Graphics and NCD Themes in offering a discount to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers! All subscribers receive a coupon code good for 10% off any Joe Workman product. You can find the coupon code in the Members’ Area after you login. Thanks to Joe for his outstanding products and for this offer!

Say "Hello" to Lime and Gyro

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-03-15T17:38:51-05:00

Last week saw the introduction of the new Lime Theme from Elixir Graphics and the Gyro Stack from Joe Workman. Adam and Joe asked me to create a walk-through screencast to demonstrate the new theme and stack, and you can find that video below. Both are outstanding products, as Lime has amazing design and offers 3 ExtraContent areas, and the Gyro Stack executes a fantastic feature for your website -- you’ll have to check-out the video below to see it in action.

I will give Gyro the full RapidWeaver Classroom treatment with a dedicated tutorial in the near future, so be on the lookout for that. My thanks to Adam and Joe for including me in the release of these great RapidWeaver add-ons!

6th Tutorial Added to the CDD Series

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-03-08T23:35:40-06:00

I have published the 6th screencast to the Complete Design Demonstration series -- this tutorial demonstrates how the Learn More page was created. The most unique part to this page is the use of a free Table Stack created by Phil Warrender.

There are still a couple of screencasts left to go in this series, and I am working on quite a few new tutorials for custom stacks as well, so check back soon for more!

Students Receive 10% Off from NCD Themes

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-03-01T15:03:29-06:00

Nick at NCD Themes has extended a new discount to all RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers: 10% off ALL themes. Nick is an extremely talented RapidWeaver theme developer, and his latest release, Omega, is off-the-charts awesome! Thanks to Nick for this generous offer -- yet another reason to join us here at RapidWeaver Classroom!

5th Tutorial Added to the CDD Series

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-02-26T17:12:05-06:00

A 5th tutorial has been added to the Complete Design Demonstration series. This video demonstrates the creation of some features of the members' page. Specifically:

Adding 5 columns of images and text to an ExtraContent area
creating anchors
linking text to video that displays in a Lightbox

This tutorial demonstrates the use of snippets for ExtraContent and the Lightbox stacks from Joe Workman. It is a lengthy 18-minute video with a lot of information packed-in! Look for more tutorials in this series to appear next week.

Discussion Forum Now Available for Students

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-02-25T16:57:45-06:00

I am excited to announce a new discussion forum as an additional resource for RapidWeaver Classroom students! The forum is a place to provide website announcements and receive feedback and requests, as well as a place for students to connect with each other to talk about tutorials and RapidWeaver stuff in general. The forum is not intended to be a replacement for the Realmac Software Support Forum, as that forum is a wealth of knowledge and support that cannot be replaced.

All existing RapidWeaver Classroom students have immediate access to the forum, which can be accessed through the members’ area. You will not need to register a separate account through the forum itself, as your current account details are linked and so you should already be logged-in when you access the forum. New RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers will automatically be added to the forum membership as well.

On a side note, watch for new additions to the Complete Design Demonstration series tomorrow! :D

A New Series on Designing a Complete Website

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-02-19T15:35:08-06:00

I am very excited to begin offering a new series that incorporates much of what is taught here at RapidWeaver Classroom. The Complete Design Demonstration series takes you through the process of designing a website from start to finish, using many of the different 3rd-party plugins and theme features such as ExtraContent. In this first C.D.D. series, you will see how many of the pages here at RapidWeaver Classroom were developed, using 3rd-party plugins such as Stacks, PlusKit, Carousel, Accordion, and EasyTube Gallery.

This series is best viewed after you have made your way through all of the RapidWeaver and 3rd-party plugin tutorials, so that you are familiar with the interface of the different plugins. The purpose of this series is to demonstrate the usage of plugins and other features in a real-world scenario, and to break-down designs that are seemingly complex into something much more simple.

I have published the first 4 videos (45 minutes) of this series to start, and more screencasts will be added in the coming weeks as I demonstrate how to build a majority of the pages found here at RapidWeaver Classroom. You may also notice that I titled the series with a number 1, as my intention is to create multiple series over time that demonstrate the usage of different plugins and strategies.

I hope you enjoy this new series and find it helpful as you explore how different plugins can be used in your own projects. There will be more to come soon!

2 New Joe Workman Stacks Screencasts

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-02-05T14:45:26-06:00

2 new tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks have been released today. Tutorials on the MovingBox Stack and Link & Anchor Stacks are now available. Joe has been generous enough to offer the Link & Anchor Stacks for free, so visit his website to download the stacks and view his other incredible offerings.

Blog Commenting with Haloscan is Ending

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-02-05T13:49:39-06:00

An announcement was made this week that the Haloscan service is shutting down for good on February 19th. Haloscan is the commenting system that RapidWeaver’s blog page has used for the past several years. The newest version of RapidWeaver integrates commenting with JS-KIT, but long-time users of RW who have comment-enabled blogs will likely be using Haloscan accounts, and so this announcement affects those users, myself included. Below is the email that all Haloscan account owners should have received this week:

Haloscan is being shut down on: Feb 19, 2010
The Haloscan hardware and software is physically failing and we have no choice but to discontinue the service.

Two Options: Switch to Echo or Export your comments FREE.
Although we can't rescue Haloscan, we are trying our best to limit the negative impact on users. To do this, we have worked hard to provide 2 options for Haloscan sites.

View the Haloscan Upgrade FAQ

Realmac Software has made a statement that it is looking into integrating a different commenting system in a future release of RapidWeaver. No definitive timeline has been set for this update. You can view the official response here.

For those with Haloscan commenting who wish to keep their comments, an upgrade to JS-KIT is likely your best option. For others who are fine with losing their comments and do not wish to pay a fee for JS-KIT commenting, and do not want to wait for an update to RapidWeaver, an alternative worth considering would be the RapidBlog plugin from Loghound, which provides others options for blog comments. RapidWeaver Classroom does provide video tutorials covering the RapidBlog plugin.

5 New Tutorials on Troubleshooting

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2010-01-22T17:06:35-06:00

I have published 5 new screencasts on troubleshooting RapidWeaver issues. This is an important series because RapidWeaver, like most software, can have issues that result in lost work and/or great frustration. I may add additional troubleshooting tutorials in the future, so if you have any tips that I’ve left out then please let me know.

Next week will see new custom stacks tutorials from Joe Workman, so stay tuned!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-12-24T01:12:58-06:00

So many amazing things have happened in the RapidWeaver community in 2009, and in 2010 I promise to continue sharing the latest information that you need to continue with your projects. There are some great things in the works that will make RapidWeaver Classroom even better, and in addition to those there will of course be new video tutorials published regularly. As a preview, you can be sure that many more Joe Workman Stacks will be covered, and CartLoom from yabdab will be coming out of beta soon, so there will be a lot to share on that incredible e-commerce solution. RapidWeaver Classroom will celebrate its 2nd birthday in 2010, and with a lot of changes and updates coming it promises to be the biggest year so far.

I hope all of you are able to take some time off during the holidays to be with family and celebrate Christmas and the new year. I appreciate all of you so much and wish you all the best as this year comes to a close. I will be away myself until January 4th, 2010 -- and then you can expect a whole slew of updates to appear soon thereafter. Thanks again, and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

New Tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-12-18T01:30:08-06:00

I am happy to announce the release of 3 new tutorials on Joe Workman Stacks. Joe Workman has been developing for the Stacks plugin for some time now, and a couple of months ago I produced a tutorial on 13 Video Stacks that were developed by Joe. Today’s release adds 3 more stacks to the curriculum, and I have separated Joe’s stacks into their own section, whereas before all custom stacks tutorials were located under the Stacks plugin listing.

The following tutorials are now available:

Lightbox Stack - Easily add a Lightbox effect that displays any type of content.

Translate Stack - Allows visitors to read your website in any language.

Curtain Call Stack - Provide your visitors with a unique presentation of content -- especially great for video or special promotions.

Of course you can expect to see coverage of many more Joe Workman Stacks in the future!

New Tutorial on the FlowBox Stack

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-12-11T16:17:39-06:00

A new video tutorial covering the FlowBox Stack has been released to subscribers of RapidWeaver Classroom. This is an outstanding stack that provides a lightbox-type overlay for displaying video, images, and even other webpages. It is quite flexible and so the 18-minute video goes into detail of all the different ways content can be presented inside the FlowBox.

This is the first screencast on a SymfoniP stack, and you can bet that there will be more to come!

FaqMaker Tutorial Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-11-24T00:35:04-06:00

I recently published a new video tutorial on the FaqMaker plugin from Loghound. This plugin has actually been around for quite a while, but I have recently rediscovered it myself and made it a part of my toolset. FaqMaker provides some great flexibility in creating a highly functional -- and even creative -- FAQ for your website. FaqMaker can utilize anchors or even a Lightbox to provide information to your visitors. Most websites need an FAQ of some kind, so FaqMaker is a great solution for this purpose.

This screencast is available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers and can be found underneath the section of Loghound plugins. Enjoy!

PayLoom 2 Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-11-12T02:11:40-06:00

yabdab software has releaed an upgrade to its popular PayLoom plugin, now available as version 2.0, and RapidWeaver Classroom covers this latest release with 2 new video tutorials. This upgrade brings some major enhancements to the plugin, including an on-page shopping cart and unlimited product options that include price overrides.

With this release, the previous version of PayLoom is no longer available, but those tutorials will remain available for anyone who owns that version of the plugin.

New weaverPix Tutorial Released

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-11-12T02:07:46-06:00

I have added another tutorial to the weaverPix plugin section. This tutorial demonstrates how to customize weaverPix to produce a really nice-looking slideshow. You will see how it pays-off to take some time tweaking settings to get things just right. In this example, a slideshow is created that mimics the feature found on the Home page of the iTunes Store. weaverPix has a lot of flexibility and you will see another example of that in this latest screencast.

Why RapidWeaver is Like the iPhone

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-11-03T01:08:27-06:00

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

New RapidWeaver Classroom DVD Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-10-27T01:36:13-05:00

You can now own all the available RapidWeaver Classroom tutorials as part of the "RapidWeaver Classroom: The Complete Library" DVD. This DVD is created on-demand, so all of the tutorials available at the time of purchase will be included on the DVD. These are the same high-resolution videos available with a RapidWeaver Classroom membership. The previous DVD offering still remains and is now called "The Essentials" -- and includes just over 100 of the RapidWeaver Classroom tutorials.

The RapidWeaver Classroom DVD is a great option for those who have limited internet access or travel often, or those with ISP bandwidth restrictions. Of course, for those who want access to the latest RapidWeaver Classroom screencasts, then a subscription is the best choice.

New Tutorials on the weaverPix Plugin

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-10-22T01:20:31-05:00

I am happy to announce that RapidWeaver Classroom is now covering plugin releases from another fantastic RapidWeaver plugin developer, Greg Barchard. Our first tutorial release covers the weaverPix plugin, which provides a very flexible Flash slideshow feature to your RapidWeaver projects. There are two tutorials on the plugin and you will surely be impressed with the options it provides over the Photo Album plugin's Flash slideshow feature.

Be on the lookout for more screencasts on Greg's projects in the future!

Stay Updated: Join Us on Twitter and Facebook

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-10-22T01:10:53-05:00

RapidWeaver Classroom has been on Facebook and Twitter for a while now, but I haven't really promoted it and so I thought it would be worth blogging about. If you are an avid Facebook and/or Twitter user, then become a fan or follow RapidWeaver Classroom to stay updated with the latest tutorial releases and other news. I've also added some widgets to the blog sidebar, for quick access to the Twitter and Facebook pages. You never know, there might even be the occassional promotion especially for our Twitter followers and Facebook fans!

New Tutorial on Table Stacks

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-10-16T15:05:08-05:00

I have released a new tutorial today that covers the excellent Table Stacks from Phil Warrender. There are two table stacks, available for free, and these really provide great flexibility in presenting content on your website. This screencast is available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers, and can be found under both the Stacks and "Working with Tables" sections.

RapidCart 2 Video Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-10-02T18:50:14-05:00

I am happy to announce the release of 3 new video tutorials covering the excellent RapidCart 2 plugin. This is an update to the RapidCart plugin that has already received the RapidWeaver Classroom treatment. RapidCart 2 adds a ton of enhancements that really makes it stand-out as an exceptional e-commerce plugin for RapidWeaver. You can enable multiple payment processors, such as PayPal and Google Checkout, and there is a lot of flexibility and customization options for your e-commerce page in RapidCart 2.

These new screencasts are available to subscribing RapidWeaver Classroom students. Enjoy!

New Screencasts on Integrating Video

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-09-15T00:26:39-05:00

Two new screencasts have been produced and both involve ways to add video to your RapidWeaver website. The first screencast covers the new EasyTube Gallery plugin, which provides a great way of displaying videos from YouTube. The second screencast covers a bundle of Video Stacks, to be used in conjunction with the Stacks plugin. There are 13 stacks in all that can be used to embed video from YouTube, Viddler, Flickr, Vimeo, QuickTime and Twitter-related video services. These two screencasts are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers.

While on the subject of add-ons for the Stacks plugin, these add-ons or “custom stacks” have really taken off over the last couple of months. I’m really excited about this as these stacks are providing all kinds of functionality that is very easy to implement. As a result I will be producing more screencasts on what I consider to be the best of these custom stacks, so expect to see more tutorials in this area very soon!

How to... Create Anchors Tutorial

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-08-21T17:05:58-05:00

I have released a new tutorial in the “How to...” lesson. The tutorials covers the creation of anchors. An anchor is used to link text or an image to another location on the same webpage. It’s great for an FAQ, or for a long page divided into sections. This tutorial is specific to RapidWeaver 4.0, which allows you to add custom attributes in the Add Link panel. It’s very simple to do and can be very handy!

DVD Now Available Worldwide!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-08-18T15:51:20-05:00

I am happy to announce that the RapidWeaver Classroom DVD is now available for shipping worldwide! The DVD is a great option for those who are traveling often, or for those with inconsistent or slow internet access. For everyone else, I would still recommend the subscription, as it gets you unlimited access to all of the tutorials, for as long as you hold an active subscription.

How to Accept Registration and Payment

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-08-07T16:22:10-05:00

Today I’ve added a new free RapidWeaver tutorial on how to accept registration and payment through your website. Using the right combination of plugins, you can provide a process by which a visitor completes a registration form and then is presented with a method for paying. This is a great solution for events that require registration and payment, such as conferences, classes, etc. The tutorial presents several different methods of accomplishing this, from using the basic Contact Form page with a PayPal button, to a FormLoom page that redirects to a PayLoom page. See the video embedded below, or visit the Curriculum page for this and other free tutorials. Enjoy!

New "How to..." Lesson of Tutorials Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-07-17T17:24:59-05:00

Today marks the release of a new lesson of “How to...” tutorials at RapidWeaver Classroom. These tutorials are found under Section 301 in the RapidWeaver Curriculum, and it’s an area that will be added to very consistently in the future. I love teaching new 3rd-party plugins as they are released, but it’s important to cover different methods of accomplishing needs, and so that’s what I hope to address with the “How to...” lesson. Three new tutorials have been produced to kick-start the lesson, and these cover:

customizing a header
creating a sign-up form
accepting payment or donations through your website

For quite a while I have been accepting feedback from RapidWeaver Classroom students, and as part of the feedback I ask what types of tutorials they would like to see in the future. This is one area where these types of requests may be fulfilled, so I’m excited to hear what all of you are wanting to learn and I will do my best to satisfy as many request as possible!

New TabLoom Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-06-12T20:04:22-05:00

It’s been a busy week that has culminated in the release of video tutorials on 3 separate RapidWeaver plugins. Yesterday saw the release of tutorials covering GoogaLoom and RapidCart, and now there are new tutorials available for the TabLoom plugin -- YabDab Software’s latest offering. TabLoom provides a great method for organizing a lot of content on a single page, by breaking the content into separate sections inside of a nice, tabbed interface. A total of 3 videos are available on TabLoom -- combine those with the 3 others released yesterday and that’s a total of 6 new screencasts this week totaling close to an hour of new training!

With the TabLoom and GoogaLoom tutorials now available, RapidWeaver Classroom is up-to-date on all the current offerings from YabDab Software. The goal of covering all major RapidWeaver plugins at RapidWeaver Classroom is getting very close to completion, so check back often for announcements on more new tutorials coming soon!

New Screencasts on E-Commerce Plugins

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-06-12T00:26:48-05:00

Several new screencasts have been published on the GoogaLoom and RapidCart plugins. Both plugins provide e-commerce solutions for RapidWeaver. GoogaLoom comes from Yabdab Software, maker of the “Loom” plugins, including PayLoom and FormLoom which are already covered here at RapidWeaver Classroom. GoogaLoom differs from PayLoom in a few ways, the most obvious being that it utilizes the Google Checkout system instead of PayPal. Another unique benefit to GoogaLoom is that it supports digital products for download.

RapidCart is another e-commerce plugin for RapidWeaver, and it is from omnidea. RapidCart utilizes PayPal as well, but it also boasts some really nice eye-candy, in the way of animations and a built-in shopping cart feature that keeps visitors on your page until they go to checkout. It’s a very nice implementation with a unique style, and I’m happy to have it included here as a part of RapidWeaver Classroom.

More screencasts are on their way very soon, as in less than 24 hours, so stay tuned for another announcement!

Get Discounts on RapidWeaver Themes

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-06-05T16:58:15-05:00

Did you know that RapidWeaver Classroom students receive discounts on some of the greatest 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes available?! RapidWeaver Classroom has partnered with the talented guys from Elixir Graphics, seyDesign and Rapid Refills to bring theme discounts to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. You can receive up to 50% off on themes available from these three talented developers. Students will find these coupon codes in the members' area and in the sign-up email that is generated following registration.

If you are on the fence about whether or not to subscribe, and our testimonials haven't done enough to convince you, then hopefully these theme discounts will make your mind up for you! What are you waiting for? Register Now

RapidWeaver Classroom DVDs: Now Shipping

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-05-28T01:25:33-05:00

It's been several weeks now since the RapidWeaver Classroom DVD has been made available, but I haven't actually given it much mention here. The DVD contains about 90 of the video tutorials, including all of the mandatory lessons on RapidWeaver itself. I consider it to be an especially attractive option for those with inconsistent or unreliable Internet access, or for those who have bandwidth capping imposed by their ISP. Of course it's available to everyone, regardless of whether you have an active subscription to the website.

Thanks to those of you who have already purchased the DVD! I've just added an option for USPS Priority shipping which expedites the delivery to 2-3 days. Please note that the DVD is only available to residents of North America, on account of the expensive cost to ship overseas. Then again, if the additional expense doesn't matter to you then you're welcome to contact me about shipping rates to your part of the world.

New Stacks Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-05-28T01:19:08-05:00

Last week I updated the RapidWeaver video training library with all-new Stacks screencasts. Now you may be confused because there were already Stacks screencasts there before, but those were ones created by YourHead, and now that they have received the RapidWeaver Classroom treatment, I have replaced the YourHead versions with my own. So you will now receive the detail and explanation for Stacks that you are used to getting with the other plugin tutorials! Thanks to Isaiah at YourHead for letting me post his video tutorials until I had completed them myself.

Speaking of Stacks, did I mention that it is the greatest plugin I've ever used?! Now that's completely my opinion, but I absolutely LOVE this plugin! As an aside, this new RapidWeaver Classroom design is done almost entirely with Stacks. So what are you waiting for? Go watch the new tutorials on this awesome plugin!

SEO Tutorials are Free for Everyone!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-05-15T14:57:02-05:00

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a topic of such frequent discussion that I felt the new SEO tutorials here at RapidWeaver Classroom should be available for free for everyone to view. The SEO tutorials are now available for viewing in both the subscribers' area and for free on the Curriculum page (scroll to the bottom of the page). Note that the free videos are hosted by Vimeo in HD, but enrolled students should watch them in the subscribers' area to view them in a bit better quality.

Feel free to leave comments here on these videos, and let me know what kinds of questions I did not address. SEO is such a huge topic that it could certainly warrant more video instruction in the future.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-05-14T16:07:48-05:00

I have added a new set of tutorials covering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with RapidWeaver. There are a total of 7 tutorials covering many different aspects of SEO, and this is an important topic for anyone building a website. It's also a controversial topic, with many conflicting thoughts and opinions on how to best optimize your website for search engines. Part of this is because SEO is a constantly changing science, with search engines becoming smarter and modifying their algorithms in order to produce more accurate and valid results.

I have attempted to cover all of the major, valid SEO strategies and make a point to explain the strategies that are most valuable, in addition to including ones that may or may not have great impact. It's certainly an interesting aspect of website design, but it's also very important and so I encourage everyone to go through these new tutorials and execute some of the strategies yourself!

SiteMap Screencasts Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-05-07T14:06:23-05:00

New video tutorials covering the SiteMap plugin are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. There are 5 tutorials on the subject, and I have gone into great detail to cover all aspects of the plugin. In addition, viewers will learn how to submit the generated sitemap to Google and Yahoo! in order to improve SEO. Sitemaps are important and I recommend all websites have them regardless of the overall size of the site. The SiteMap plugin makes creating a sitemap a breeze, so check out the tutorials to learn more!

Welcome to the New RapidWeaver Classroom

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-04-21T02:02:57-05:00

As you've probably noticed, RapidWeaver Classroom has been completely redesigned, resulting in a dramatic improvement over the original design and layout. I have utilized some of the latest RapidWeaver has to offer with this update: an ExtraContent theme, Stacks, Collage 2 and PayLoom. My hope is that everyone will find it to be better-organized and more functional than before.

Purchase RapidWeaver Classroom on DVD

That's right, RapidWeaver Classroom's video tutorials can now be purchased on DVD for viewing on your computer or portable device without an internet connection. 87 of the tutorials found on the website are included on the DVD. This is perfect for those with inconsistent internet connections, or for those who are on the road a lot and don't always have internet access.

What's next?

There is certainly much more to come by way of screencasts. So many of the available plugins are covered, but there are a few more that need to be addressed, and the Continuing Education section will be seeing a lot of activity in the coming months. Expect to see weekly releases of new video tutorials!

Thanks

What a great time to say "thank you" to all our supporters. RapidWeaver Classroom is nearly a year old, and it's been an awesome first year. I've heard great things from so many of you these past months, and I've posted some samples on the Testimonials page. I love the feedback, so keep it up!

A special thanks goes out to Adam Merrifield at seyDesign for being very generous with his time to help customize this new theme for RapidWeaver Classroom. It's no secret that I love his themes and the ExtraContent feature that he has helped bring to the community, so show him some love and stop by his site to look at (and possibly purchase) his amazing themes! :)

RapidBlog Screencasts Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-03-27T16:25:15-05:00

New screencasts have been added on the excellent RapidBlog plugin from Loghound.com. RapidBlog syncs with Google's Blogger to allow remote blog posting from anywhere. It's a great solution for those who need to blog outside of RapidWeaver. These tutorials are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers.

New RWmultitool Screencast Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-03-20T16:17:20-05:00

The RWmultitool section has been updated with a new screencast covering the full version of RWmultitool. This full version provides a lot of features not available in the free, Lite version of the application. This screencast is available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers only.

Stay tuned for new tutorials coming next week!

RWmultitool Screencast Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-03-10T15:06:15-05:00

I have added a new video tutorial covering RWmultitool Lite, the free version of this great tool. RWmultitool allows you to easily modify images in a theme without needing to modify the theme directly, and without needing a graphic design application like Photoshop.

The full version of RWmultitool will be covered in future screencasts, so stay tuned for more!

FormLoom Video Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-03-04T16:25:13-06:00

I have added a new series of screencasts on the excellent FormLoom plugin from yabdab software. FormLoom is a more powerful contact form plugin for RapidWeaver, and it includes a lot of great features to offer flexibility that the built-in Contact Form plugin doesn't include. There are currently 3 FormLoom screencasts available and one more will likely be produced in the near future. Current RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers can immediately access these tutorials for viewing!

New Carousel Screencast Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-02-20T16:08:16-06:00

I have added a new screencast today to the Carousel lesson, covering the creation of a custom Carousel Style. Carousel allows you to create your own style using images for the background and buttons, so if you are comfortable with creating these graphics then you can have a very custom carousel to display on your website.

Stay tuned for more soon on the GoogaLoom and FormLoom plugins.

Carousel Screencasts Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-02-12T16:15:58-06:00

New screencasts have been added covering the great Carousel plugin from YourHead Software. There are currently 3 tutorials available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers, and one or two more are likely to be produced in the near future. Check back often as new video tutorials are added weekly!

100 Screencast Celebration!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-02-06T15:36:12-06:00

Back in January I made an informal announcement here on the blog that RapidWeaver Classroom had surpassed the milestone of 100 video tutorials. Well, an official announcement and special offer has been posted over at the RealMac Software Support Forum, and to spoil the surprise a bit I will tell you that there is a discount involved! So jump over to the announcement thread, leave a comment and take advantage of this limited-time special!

Stacks Screencasts Added

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-02-06T15:28:09-06:00

I am pleased to announce that 5 new tutorials have been added for the new Stacks plugin from YourHead Software. This is a first for RapidWeaver Classroom as these tutorials are produced by Isaiah himself! He did such a great job that we wanted to make them available to all RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers and visitors -- so these tutorials can be viewed publicly from the Curriculum page or from the members' area.

I am likely to produce our own RapidWeaver Classroom tutorials on Stacks in the future, but for now these tutorials provide a great overview of the plugin, along with some specific uses. Thanks to Isaiah for the screencasts on this great new plugin, and for all of his contributions to the RapidWeaver community!

Accordion Screencasts Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-01-15T22:33:18-06:00

New video releases continue today with the introduction of the Accordion plugin from YourHead Software. Two Accordion screencasts are now available and one or two more will likely be added to conclude that series. Accordion is a very useful plugin, and we use it right here at RapidWeaver Classroom to present our FAQ. Enjoy!

PlayMore Theme: Another ExtraContent Screencast

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-01-15T21:38:13-06:00

Another ExtraContent tutorial has been released, detailing the new PlayMore theme from seyDesign. PlayMore offers three ExtraContent areas that provide all kinds of flexibility for presenting content. Thanks to Adam Merrifield at seyDesign for his outstanding RapidWeaver themes!

ExtraContent Screencasts and a Promotion!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-01-14T00:47:19-06:00

A new feature called ExtraContent is appearing in newer 3rd-party RapidWeaver themes, and RapidWeaver Classroom has you covered. A new category of screencasts has been created to show you the benefits of this feature and how you can utilize it for more flexibility in your website designs. The first screencast in this series covers the excellent Gotem theme from seyDesign, and there will be more tutorials made available soon.

Speaking of seyDesign, a new promotion is currently underway for RapidWeaver Classroom members and new subscribers. New subscribers will receive a coupon code for 50% off all seyDesign themes until February 15th, and current subscribers will receive 20% off all seyDesign themes. Current subscribers can find the coupon code in the members’ area of RapidWeaver Classroom. Thanks to Adam Merrifield at seyDesign for partnering with us for this promotion!

More than 100 screencasts!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2009-01-14T00:43:12-06:00

At some point in recent weeks RapidWeaver Classroom passed a major milestone of over 100 RapidWeaver screencasts! There is now over 14 hours of RapidWeaver video tutorials available! Still, there is much left to be done and 2009 promises to be HUGE as there are plans to produce another 100 screencasts by the end of the year, and hopefully much more.

So as always, drop by the blog here once a week or so to stay updated with the latest, or check out the Curriculum page to see what’s new!

iWeb to RapidWeaver Screencast Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-12-12T01:49:45-06:00

I am happy to announce the addition of free tutorials in the iWeb to RapidWeaver section of the website, which has been created recently to help iWeb users transition from iWeb to RapidWeaver. These iWeb to RapidWeaver tutorials will cover some of the basic steps that are recommended in order to rebuild an iWeb website in RapidWeaver. There are currently 3 video tutorials available, with a couple of additional ones to come soon. These free tutorials are hosted using the Viddler service, and the high-quality versions will soon be made available to subscribers in the members’ area of RapidWeaver Classroom.

Tutorial on Shadowbox Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-12-04T23:45:33-06:00

I have released a new tutorial for RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers covering Shadowbox with video. Shadowbox is a javascript box that is similar to the Greybox that has already been covered here, but it provides a bit of a different visual effect and it is increasing in popularity as a method of displaying video. In addition to the video tutorial I have provided the necessary Shadowbox files for download, along with a set of snippets to simplify the setup.

More screencasts are coming soon, including coverage of the new GoogaLoom plugin. Stay tuned!

Classroom Updates

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-11-26T17:36:23-06:00

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving to all our U.S. RapidWeaver Classroom students! I have been busy updating things behind-the-scenes to improve the experience for our subscribers. All of the video tutorials are now hosted on a faster server, so download times should be even faster now. In addition, the flash video player has been replaced with the QuickTime player, which provides even better performance and video clarity.

A note for users viewing the screencasts on a laptop (or low resolution monitor) -- the high-resolution of the videos might cause scrollbars to appear around the edges of the video. This mainly removes the QuickTime control bar from view, but I have a trick to remove the scrollbars. If you are viewing the screencasts in Safari, simply go to the View menu in Safari and choose Hide Toolbar. This should free-up enough vertical space to remove the scrollbars from around the video. You can go back to View and Show Toolbar when you are done viewing the tutorials.

Firefox users have it even easier -- simply click the pill-shaped button in the top right corner of your browser to temporarily remove the toolbar and create more vertical space.

IE users, why are you using IE?!?! Obviously you are a Mac user or you wouldn’t be subscribing to this website, but if you need to view the screencasts from a PC then get the PC version of Firefox!

Now that all the upgrades are done we can get back to producing screencasts, and we have a whole lot in-store, so watch for new releases starting next week!

Collage 2 Screencasts Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-10-21T23:40:28-05:00

Three new screencasts covering the Collage 2 plugin have been added to the members’ area of RapidWeaver Classroom. Collage 2 is a fantastic plugin from YourHead Software that is exclusive to RapidWeaver 4.0, while the original Collage plugin is still available for RapidWeaver 3.6 and earlier. Collage 2 has a multitude of uses, so check-out the Collage 2 screencasts to learn more!

New PayLoom Screencast Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-10-16T23:12:09-05:00

I have published one more screencast for the PayLoom plugin that shows an example of how multiple PayLoom pages can be used in a project to sell multiple categories of items. It also shows a working, online example of PayLoom pages and their interaction with PayPal for shopping cart and checkout functionality.

Look for Collage 2 screencasts to begin appearing next week!

PayLoom Screencasts Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-10-15T01:03:51-05:00

Hot on the heels of our Greybox tutorial comes two new screencasts covering the PayLoom plugin. PayLoom lets you easily create an e-commerce store on your website that integrates with PayPal. You really can’t ask for a simpler way to add products for sale to your website. One more PayLoom screencast will be added soon.

You will also notice the Collage 2 logo has been added under the 3rd-party plugins section. This plugin will be covered next, so keep an eye out for more information!

New Tutorials on Javascript Boxes

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-10-14T14:47:34-05:00

A new set of RapidWeaver screencasts are being added to the Continuing Education section, covering the popular javascript boxes: Greybox, Lightbox and Shadowbox. These javascript boxes are very trendy at the moment and add an impressive feature to your website. Whether you want to display images, video or other webpages, these video tutorials will take you through the process. It’s a bit more advanced than prior lessons, so along with the screencasts I will be providing snippets for download along with each tutorial.

The first screencast for this topic is now available, covering how to show a video in a Greybox, and more will be released in the coming days. Also watch for a screencast or two covering the PayLoom plugin.

New Tutorial on FTP

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-09-18T16:52:05-05:00

A second screencast has been added on using an FTP application to manage your website assets as an alternative to RapidWeaver’s built-in Assets panel. It is a brief tutorial that will be beneficial to those building websites with many assets, such as audio and video files.

I’ve also updated the Curriculum page and the Members’ area with estimated viewing times for each lesson. You can find those estimates below the title for each separate lesson, and eventually I plan to include the running times for each individual screencast.

Keep an eye out for new plugin tutorials and screencasts covering more 3rd-party themes!

New Tutorials on Using an FTP Application

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-09-09T17:08:30-05:00

A while has passed since the last video tutorial update, but today brings a new release with many more to follow soon. The latest release is a part of the “Continuing Education” series, and it covers the topic of using an FTP application to publish your RapidWeaver-created website. I consider using an FTP application to be an important part of the website publishing process, and it helps with managing and troubleshooting a website. At least one more screencast will be added to this topic in the coming days, so check back soon.

In addition to these new tutorials, more 3rd-party plugin tutorials will be appearing in the near future, so keep an eye out for more details!

New Tutorials Available on Working with Tables

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-08-06T23:21:44-05:00

New video tutorials on working with tables in RapidWeaver have been produced and are now available to subscribers. There are currently three videos on the topic that cover different methods of building or placing tables into a website designed with RapidWeaver. This is the first of many lessons to come that fall under the category of “Continuing Education” -- these will be tutorials on various topics that RapidWeaver users should find useful.

Production of 3rd-party plugin tutorials will continue, but I will be going back and forth between these various topics and the lessons covering plugins. Stay tuned for more to come!

PlusKit Tutorials Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-28T21:28:30-05:00

I worked extra hard today and completed the remainder of the PlusKit screencasts. There are a total of 8 video tutorials and they are all available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers.

So what’s next? Well, I have some ideas that I’ll be tossing around and I expect that some new tutorials will start appearing late this week or early next week. There’s much more to cover!

Two More PlusKit Tutorials Online

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-25T17:00:43-05:00

I’ve added two more PlusKit tutorials to the subscribers’ area today. One covers the Backups feature of PlusKit, allowing you to create incremental backups of your project as you save and make changes. The other is a big one, and probably the most popular feature of PlusKit -- importing pages. If you’re not sure that PlusKit is for you, make sure and check out the Importing Pages screencast!

The remainder of the PlusKit screencasts will be made available early next week. Everyone have a great weekend!

First PlusKit Tutorials Available Now

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-24T23:24:45-05:00

PlusKit screencasts are now in production and the first two have been made available online to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. These first video tutorials cover the Lightbox and Fancy Zoom features of PlusKit, which provide a very cool way of displaying full-size images -- perfect for a website photo gallery. These can be added with some advanced coding with javascript, but PlusKit makes it simple to add this effect to any or all of website’s images.

The full curriculum for PlusKit has been added to the website, and the rest of these screencasts will be appearing tomorrow and early next week. Of course I will post another update here as soon as more tutorials are online!

PlusKit Tutorials Coming Soon

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-23T00:05:07-05:00

RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers can expect the next round of plugin tutorials to be made available soon. The next plugin to be covered is PlusKit from Loghound. PlusKit is a very useful and powerful plugin, and I’ll make sure that you learn how to use it! Watch for these tutorials in the coming days...

Free RapidWeaver Video Tutorials Now Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-15T22:37:34-05:00

I have released some free RapidWeaver video tutorials for visitors to view without a subscription to RapidWeaver Classroom. Now that the video training library has been built-up with over 10 hours of video tutorials, I felt it was time to share some of the resources with the entire RapidWeaver community. These free tutorials can be found linked throughout the Curriculum page, and as more tutorials are produced I will make more of these screencasts available for free.

These free RapidWeaver video tutorials are streamed using the Viddler service and are at a lower resolution than the video tutorials available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers, so subscribers will want to login to the site and view the high-resolution versions in the subscribers’ area.

Blocks Plugin Tutorials Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-15T22:33:51-05:00

All of the Blocks plugin tutorials are now complete and available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. There are a total of nine tutorials detailing all the features of Blocks. It is an outstanding plugin and I encourage all subscribers to go through these to see the potential of what can be achieved with Blocks.

More 3rd-party plugins will be produced soon and an announcement will be made in the coming days on what the next plugin will be. As always, check back often for updated information.

Student Projects

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-03T15:56:38-05:00

There’s a new section of the website online dedicated to showcasing the RapidWeaver websites that Classroom students have created. The Student Projects section will display images of these websites along with links to them. Submission of these websites has just become available and RapidWeaver Classroom students can submit them through the Submit Your Site link in the Student Control Panel.

All RapidWeaver Classroom students are encouraged to submit their website. The only requirements for inclusion on the Student Projects page is that the submission is from a RapidWeaver Classroom student and that the content of the website is not explicit in any way.

I look forward to seeing and displaying the work that students have created, so submit your sites!

First Blocks Plugin Tutorials Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-07-01T22:31:59-05:00

RapidWeaver Classroom’s coverage of 3rd-party plugins begins with the Blocks plugin from YourHead Software, and the first video tutorials for Blocks are now available to subscribers. There are three tutorials to get you started, and the remainder will be released by the end of this week. For those of you who have not used the Blocks plugin, you’ll quickly see why it is a favorite amongst the RapidWeaver community!

Back to Normal

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-30T22:24:25-05:00

The server issues causing the slow-down RapidWeaver Classroom was experiencing earlier today have been resolved and everything is back to normal. For any of you who were affected by this, thank you for your patience while the matter was resolved!

Tomorrow will bring at least the first two Blocks video tutorials, and the curriculum has been updated to reflect the videos that I am planning to make available. As always, you will find the latest information on updates here.

Site in Slow-Motion

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-30T15:17:05-05:00

Some of you might currently experience slow performance on the website. I’ve spoken with the hosting provider -- they are aware of the issue and working to fix it as quickly as possible. I apologize to any subscribers who are experiencing slow performance when viewing the video tutorials, and I will post another update as soon as things are back to normal.

Better news is that Blocks tutorials are currently under production and those will be made available over the course of this week!

3rd-Party Plugin Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-25T17:04:23-05:00

Production of video tutorials for 3rd-party RapidWeaver plugins has begun and subscribers now have access to two new tutorials that provide an introduction to 3rd-party plugins in RapidWeaver. The Blocks plugin from YourHead Software will be the first plugin covered, and those tutorials will appear over the course of the next week. A listing of those coming tutorials will be made available soon -- I have currently decided on ten inidividual video tutorials, but that number could potentally increase, so you can be guaranteed there will be a lot of information on this outstanding plugin!

Your Feedback, Please

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-23T22:16:52-05:00

Now that the RapidWeaver 3.6 and 4.0 video tutorials are complete, I am looking for feedback from subscribers and potential future RapidWeaver Classroom students. For subscribers, you will notice a new link entitled “Provide Feedback” in the Control Panel of the members’ section -- I would greatly appreciate getting your responses to a short list of questions there.

If you are thinking about subscribing but waiting for tutorials on specific 3rd-party plugins, then visit this thread in the RealMac Support Forums and cast your vote for one of the six plugins listed there. Of course it’s not an all-inclusive list of options, but it’s a start.

Thanks to everyone who provides feedback, and check back soon for info on the coming 3rd-party plugin tutorials!

RapidWeaver 4 Video Tutorials Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-20T23:03:11-05:00

Lesson 2 for RapidWeaver 4.0 is now complete, consisting of four video tutorials covering the updated features in the new version. This completes the tutorials that are needed to cover Rapidweaver 4.0, the remainder of the tutorials for version 3.6 will also apply to version 4.0.

You may have also noticed that the BlocksBox tutorials I put together for Jonas Themes are now included in the subscribers’ area. Those of you interested in designing your own theme might want to consider the BlocksBox theme in combination with the excellent Blocks plugin from YourHead Software.

Speaking of the Blocks plugin, I will begin producing video tutorials for the available 3rd-party plugins, and Blocks is first on the list. Stay tuned for more info on this soon!

Lesson 1 for RapidWeaver 4 Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-16T20:18:34-05:00

Lesson 1 for RapidWeaver 4 is now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. This lesson covers all the basics of the software and covers the updated interface. There will be a few more videos in the coming days covering the new features with this version, and then it’s on to 3rd-party plugins!

Some RapidWeaver 4 Videos Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-13T15:51:10-05:00

Production of the RapidWeaver 4.0 video tutorials is underway and I’ve posted several of the Lesson 1 videos to the subscribers’ area already. The remaining tutorials for version 4.0 will be made available early next week.

Following the release of the RapidWeaver 4.0 tutorials, I will begin the extensive task of covering the 3rd-party plugins. So there is much, much, much more to come!

RapidWeaver 4.0 Curriculum

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-10T12:55:19-05:00

I have updated the Curriculum page with the RapidWeaver 4.0 video tutorials that I will be making available in the coming days. A majority of the updates to RapidWeaver 4.0 are user interface improvements and changes to the underlying architecture of the software -- meaning that there isn’t much change in terms of functionality. The current RapidWeaver 3.6 tutorials are not outdated with the release of 4.0, so RapidWeaver 4.0 users will be able to view Lessons 2-7 of the 3.6 tutorials to learn the software.

On account of the user interface changes, I will be redoing all of Lesson 1 for version 4.0, in addition to several more tutorials that detail other changes in the update. Expect these tutorials to appear in the coming days.

Lesson 7 Complete - on to RapidWeaver 4

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-03T23:31:09-05:00

Lesson 7 is now complete and available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. These five tutorials will provide you with the knowledge that is necessary to understand how theme modifications can be made to further customize your website. The completion of Lesson 7 should bring you to a point where you understand the functions and structure of RapidWeaver, its plugins and themes, in order to successfully create a complete website with RapidWeaver. The learning doesn’t end there, though! I plan to cover all 3rd-party plugins, which further extend the capabilities of RapidWeaver and offer some very useful, unique and impressive functions for your website.

So what’s next? Well, you may have heard about a little something called RapidWeaver 4.0. RapidWeaver Classroom will bring version 4.0 users up-to-speed with what’s new in the latest version of our favorite application. Not every part of the application has been changed, though, so many of the current 3.6 tutorials will be still be completely relevant for version 4.0 users. Instead of re-doing all seven lessons with RapidWeaver 4.0, I will be covering all the changes that have been made to the application, and then move on to tutorials for the 3rd-party plugins.

Some Lesson 7 Videos Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-06-02T23:24:24-05:00

The first three tutorials in Lesson 7 have been published and are available to subscribers. Lesson 7 covers the modification of themes in RapidWeaver, and delves into much more advanced areas such as CSS and HTML modification.

There are entire books and websites dedicated to CSS and HTML, so while I can’t cover it all my hope is to get you familiar with the file structure of the RapidWeaver themes and give you a peek inside the stylesheets and HTML documents to start understanding how things work.

I encourage any of you who are making custom modifications to give it a good shot -- trial and error is a great way to learn. If you aren’t having success then the RapidWeaver Support Forums is a great resource with many helpful people. Of course, my one-on-one RapidWeaver Consulting and Training is also available to anyone who would like personal assistance.

The remainder of Lesson 7 will be available soon!

RapidWeaver 4 is here!

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-29T14:26:54-05:00

It's an exciting day in the RapidWeaver Community as RapidWeaver 4.0 has been released! I'll be working hard to produce brand-new RapidWeaver 4.0 video tutorials for all of our subscribers who are upgrading. RapidWeaver 4.0 introduces an entirely redesigned user interface, and the majority of the new videos will focus on getting you acquainted with this redesign. There are also some new features that will be covered as well.

All that being said, a majority of the existing RapidWeaver video tutorials are full of information that is relevant to the new version as well. Since version 4.0 is Leopard-only, it's important to me to support both 3.6 and 4.0 users with the tutorials, so be on the look-out for new 4.0 tutorials coming soon!

Lesson 6 Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-28T17:58:53-05:00

Lesson 6 is now complete and available to subscribers, covering some advanced features offered in RapidWeaver. This concludes what are considered the "core lessons" -- but many more tutorials will be coming soon, including RapidWeaver 4 video tutorials. Lesson 7 will also be coming in the near future, and then the focus will begin on 3rd-party plugins, so there is much, much, much, much more to come!

RapidWeaver 4 is Coming

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-28T12:46:10-05:00

If you haven't already noticed, the RapidWeaver 4 countdown has begun. RapidWeaver 4 will be available to Leopard users in less than 24 hours from now, and RapidWeaver Classroom will be producing all-new RapidWeaver 4 video tutorials for those who will be upgrading to version 4.0. All of the changes that have taken place with this version will be covered and these tutorials will start to appear within the first week of the release. Lesson 6 is still the priority at this point and will be available to subscribers by Friday.

It's an exciting time for the RapidWeaver community and I look forward to providing these tutorials for both RapidWeaver 3.6.x and RapidWeaver 4 users! Stay tuned for more soon!

Lesson 5 Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-26T23:55:25-05:00

Hope all of our U.S. subscribers had a great Memorial Day! I spent most of mine playing catch-up after being away last week. I've produced all the video tutorials for Lesson 5 and they are now available online to subscribers. This lesson takes you through the process of building a website from start to finish and basically summarizes all the previous lessons to this point, as well as incorporating a lot of new information as well. Lesson 6 will be coming along in the next couple of days as well, so things are back in full swing around here!

Spring Break

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-19T19:10:24-05:00

I will be away on a short vacation starting Tuesday, May 20th, and I will return at the end of the week. I should be able to check emails but I may not respond immediately as I normally would. Next week you should expect to see Lessons 5 and 6 available to finish-off the "core lessons," and that will bring the 60-day promotion to an end.

As always, check-out the RapidWeaver Support Forum for questions that may come up as you work with RapidWeaver!

BlocksBox Tutorials

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-19T19:05:57-05:00

I've put together a couple of video tutorials for the amazing BlocksBox theme from Jonas Themes, and a few more will be available soon. These videos can currently be viewed here, and in the future I will add them in the high-resolution version to subscribers of RapidWeaver Classroom.

Lesson 4 Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-14T15:47:54-05:00

Lesson 4 is now complete and available to subscribers. This lesson consists of 6 videos which cover the more advanced functions of editing content through RapidWeaver's Format menu.

Lesson 5 is next and things will start to get really fun! I'll be going from start to finish with a website, from preparation to publishing and covering most all the necessary areas of RapidWeaver with a real project.

Say Hello to Hi-Res

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-12T19:52:04-05:00

The MacBook has spent most of its day re-encoding all of the videos presently available to subscribers. The web server is now receiving all 750MB of that data, and late tonight the video tutorials will be made available at a new 960x600 resolution.

There will be a small amount of time when the video tutorials are unavailable, and that time will be between 11pm-12am CST. The down-time shouldn't last more than 10 or 15 minutes, but it's important that I communicate that in advance. Enjoy the new high-resolution tutorials!

Some Changes in the Classroom

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-12T12:53:06-05:00

It's coming up on two weeks since RapidWeaver Classroom launched, and I've been listening to the feedback I've received from subscribers and others who have visited the site. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and for that I'm greatly appreciative because it lets me know I'm doing some things right. Of course I'm not going to do everything right initially, so I must be prepared to make changes if I'm convinced they are in the best interest of the site and its subscribers.

So, with that being said, I am currently making one change and considering two others. The change I'm currently working on is the resolution of the video tutorials. Right now they are at a resolution of 512x320 and I will be increasing that to 960x600. I will be re-encoding the existing videos this week and posting the new ones in this higher-resolution format. At nearly double the resolution the file sizes will also double, but it looks like a majority of my traffic is on high-bandwidth connections, and with Fast Start enabled for internet streaming the videos can be started before the entire clip has downloaded. I hope this is a welcome improvement and I'd appreciate your comments on this change.

Another area I'm researching is the handling of payments. PayPal is currently set to handle payments and subscriptions, and my experience with PayPal has always been great. That doesn't necessarily mean that better options don't exist, so I've been looking at other options to see how they compare with the system currently in place. Once I have made a decision to stay with PayPal or switch to a different payment processor I will be adding two more subscription types: 6-month and 1-year options.

Again, I really do appreciate the feedback I receive, so please take a moment to comment on this post with your views. Thanks to everyone for your support!

Lesson 3 Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-09T00:43:44-05:00

Recommended Supplies

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-07T23:09:26-05:00

I've updated the Supplies page to include links to resources that complement RapidWeaver. Recommended web hosting, theme and plugin developers can be found there. I've also included a link to digitaLife productions, my business website, where I have a page with information about RapidWeaver consulting and training that I offer. So if you are wanting some one-one-one training or consulting to go along with the RapidWeaver screencasts here, then contact me through that website and we'll get something setup!

New video tutorials should arrive tomorrow, so check back to stay updated.

Lesson 2 Complete

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-06T17:45:03-05:00

Lesson 2 is now complete in its entirety and available for viewing in the members' section. The Blog and Photo Album pages are very feature-rich, so the length of those videos is a bit longer than normal as I wanted to cover all the important aspects of these pages.

Lesson 3 will be coming soon and that will cover some really important information on styling the theme itself to give your website a more customized look and feel. Keep track with the progress here and more info on Lesson 3 will be made available in the coming days!

Answering Questions

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-06T00:13:14-05:00

I've added a Frequently Asked Questions section to RapidWeaver Classroom. This will hopefully address most of the common questions that may arise, and it's available through the Questions? page and in the members' area as well.

It's always funny doing FAQ's because the general idea is to have the answers to the questions ready before they are asked. So it requires thinking from an outside perspective, which is something that's needed when it comes to website design. Since you are generally creating a website for strangers to see, it's important to develop the navigation and content in a way that is best for them. It can be easy to leave out important information because of your own familiarity with the subject, while a new visitor might be completely lost because of the lack of details.

If you can't quite get the outside perspective personally, then it's a great idea to have friends or family unfamiliar with the site and its content to look things over just before making the website public. They'll generally be able to point out what is missing or inadequate.

So yeah, there's a new FAQ, and there's a little nugget of information to go along with it. :)

Some Lesson 2 Videos Available

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-05T18:41:35-05:00

Videos for Lesson 2, RapidWeaver Page Types, are becoming available in the members section of the site. Roughly half of this lesson will be available by the end of the day, with the rest going online tomorrow -- then on to Lesson 3!

Welcome to all of you who have already registered for the video tutorials. The special 60-day offer will last a little while longer, but don't hold-out too long if you haven't yet registered!

Welcome to RapidWeaver Classroom

support@rapidweaverclassroom.com — 2008-05-01T17:30:45-05:00

A big hello to the RapidWeaver Community! After over 2 years of building websites with this great application, growing my knowledge in the Forums and contributing there over the past year, I've finally found a new way to contribute with this comprehensive resource of video tutorials. I'm really excited to provide this as a resource for new RapidWeaver users, and even for the ones with some experience who are wanting to go a bit more in-depth.

I'll be launching this site at the same time I'm producing the first set of videos, and with that will be a special offer for those who register early. If you didn't notice on the homepage already, those who "pre-register" will have access to the video tutorials for 60 days opposed to the 30 days that will eventually be standard. I'll be publishing videos very frequently for these next 3-4 weeks, and then consistently after that and I doubt I'll ever really stop. The plan is to have around 50 videos available by the end of May. Here's to hoping my web host is ready with the bandwidth!

If you'd like to keep-up with the release of new content here then be sure to subscribe to the site's RSS Feed. There are many, many plans for video tutorials beyond the ones currently listed on the Curriculum page, so stay-tuned to this blog for more information!

RapidWeaver Classroom

A Shelter-in-Place Update

A Message from Ryan

RapidWeaver 8 Has Arrived - New Tutorials Available

RapidWeaver 7 is Here -- New Tutorials Available Now!

New RapidCart Pro Stacks Tutorial + RapidWeaver 7 News!

Major RapidWeaver 7 News

Major Updates and RapidCart Pro Tutorials

22-Part RapidCart Pro 4 Tutorial Series

RapidWeaver Classroom Upgrades

More New Content Soon

Complete 13-Part Series of Stacks 3 Tutorials Available

10-Part Stacks 3 Tutorial Series Now Available

More Stacks 3 Tutorials Added

Stacks 3 is Here and It Is Amazing!

Partials

Super Fast, Super Customizable Library

New Sidebar Interface

New Responsive Content

Where I've Been, Words of Thanks, and What's to Come

Where I’ve Been

Words of Thanks

What’s to Come

RapidWeaver 6 is Here: 52 New Tutorials Now Available

30% Off Any Subscription

Video Review of RapidWeaver 6 Features

RapidWeaver 6 Upgrade Details

RapidWeaver 6 Announced: What to Expect Going Forward

20 Foundation Theme Tutorials Now Available - Series Complete*

New Feature: "Pro Tips" in the RapidWeaver Classroom Blog

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Pro Tip #2: Laptop Users - Improve Efficiency with Added Hardware

3 New Foundation Tutorials Added -- 19 Videos Available

New Feature: "Pro Tips" in the RapidWeaver Classroom Blog

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Pro Tip #1: Send an Email Receipt after a Form Submission

1) Help prevent your future response from being filtered as spam.

2) Immediately provide useful information.

3) Set expectations for your communication.

Four New Foundation Tutorials Added -- 16 Videos Available

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

Two New Foundation Tutorials Added -- 12 Videos Available

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

4 Foundation Navigation Tutorials Now Available

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

2 More Foundation Tutorials Now Available

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

New Foundation Theme Series -- First 4 Tutorials Now Available

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Classroom Subscribers

Details of New Updates

In Case You Missed It (Recent Updates)

Coming Soon (Future Updates)

aMember 4 Tutorials Now Available to Grad School Subscribers

Overview of New Updates

Instructions for Grad School Subscribers