Adding new features and supporting our apps is an ongoing effort that requires a significant amount of work. To ensure that we can maintain the highest level of service and continue delivering awesome products, we have moved to a “pay for updates” billing model.

How does it work?

Every RapidWeaver Classic license comes with 1 year of app updates from the purchase date. This allows us to continue building the best web building app for the Mac and release new features regularly.

After the first year, your 1 year period of app updates is automatically renewed for another year at the app’s regular pricing. If you choose to cancel the automatic renewal, you can continue using the version of our app that you last had, forever… (no pressure, we don’t limit the app’s functionality if your updates have expired).

Why is this model better?

With our previous billing model, we had to save significant features for major releases. This resulted in frustration from both sides - we couldn’t quickly share all the new and exciting things we’d built, and users had to wait much longer to receive them.

Now we don’t have to worry about saving new features for major releases and can fully focus on quickly delivering new and exciting things to you, which is important for us.

So is this a subscription?

Not in the traditional sense, this model is fundamentally different than a subscription and we will never limit your access to the app.

Renewing for another year of app updates is completely optional and you are free to keep the last version of the app you were using forever. It will still be a completely functional app that continues to provide all the amazing features that you’re used to. If there are any updates in the future that catch your attention, or if you would like to support our team’s continued work, you can renew the updates then.

How can I manage my license and updates?

You can manage your license and updates using our Billing Manager. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll get you sorted!

Welcome to RapidWeaver

This online manual for RapidWeaver is designed to get you up and running quickly, while also providing a full reference guide to everything you can do with RapidWeaver.

We’d like to say thank you to all those who’ve helped shape RapidWeaver over the past 20 years - especially to the third-party developers and all the dedicated users around the world who’ve made sure RapidWeaver continues to grow and thrive.

We couldn't have done this without you.

Happy Weaving!

Upgrading to RapidWeaver Classic

RapidWeaver Classic is 100% compatible with everything RapidWeaver 8.x is compatible with. Take a look at the RapidWeaver FAQ to learn more. You can also purchase a license or upgrade now.

Download RapidWeaver Classic

Download RapidWeaver Classic 9 for macOS.

RapidWeaver Classic requires macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or newer and works great on the latest macOS Sonoma.

Getting Started

Follow our Getting Started guide to building your first website.

This in-depth FAQ is broken down into sections and should answer the most commonly asked questions about RapidWeaver Classic. If your question is not answered below, head to the RapidWeaver Community.

RapidWeaver Classic FAQ

Q: Do I need to upgrade to RapidWeaver Classic?

You can continue to use RapidWeaver 8 for as long as you like. Upgrading to RapidWeaver Classic is optional.

There are many features and fixes that have gone into RapidWeaver Classic. Best of all, it's 100% compatible with all your existing projects and addons.

If you'd like to take advantage of the new features and enhancements available in RapidWeaver Classic, you can upgrade your license at any time.

Q: What are the system requirements for RapidWeaver Classic?

RapidWeaver Classic requires macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or newer.

Q: Will RapidWeaver Classic work with macOS Sequoia?

Yes, RapidWeaver Classic is fully compatible with macOS Sequoia. We'll continue to ensure compatibility as new versions of macOS Sequoia are released over its lifecycle.

Q: Is RapidWeaver Classic compatible with my existing plugins, themes, and projects?

Yes, if it worked with RapidWeaver 8, it will work with RapidWeaver Classic.

When you open an existing RapidWeaver 8 project it will be upgraded to a RapidWeaver Classic project and saved as a copy with the extension .rwc — your original project will not be modified or deleted.

Once you've upgraded a project you should remember to always edit and work on the newer one with the .rwc file extension.

Q: Are RapidWeaver Classic projects (.rwc) backwards-compatible with RapidWeaver 8 (.rw8)?

Just like most software, newer save files are not backwards compatible.

So while RapidWeaver Classic will open RapidWeaver 8 files, RapidWeaver 8 cannot open RapidWeaver Classic files.

Q: Is RapidWeaver Classic available on the Mac App Store?

We have no plans to release RapidWeaver Classic on the Mac App Store.

Q: Can I run multiple versions of RapidWeaver on my Mac?

Yes! RapidWeaver 8 and RapidWeaver Classic can be installed alongside each other. They can even share the same addons folder.

Q: Why can I only launch RWC in Launchpad, where did RW8 go?

RW8 and RWC share the same bundle ID and the Finder uses that to populate Launchpad. We did this so it was easy for users to upgrade, if we change the bundle ID, Sandboxing prevents the new app from accessing the same files/resources/addons - it’s a bit of a nightmare for users upgrading.

The Finder picks the newest app with the same bundle ID, so in this case, it will choose RWC.

Both apps are still installed on your Mac and can be found in the Applications Folder. There is no issue running them side-by-side.

Q: Is RapidWeaver Compatible with Apple Silicon?

YES! RapidWeaver Classic is a Universal app and compatible with both Intel and Apple Silicon-based Macs. To take advantage of RapidWeaver on M-series Macs, you’ll want to make sure all your plugins are up-to-date. If some of your installed plugins are not Universal, they will not run in the native version of RapidWeaver. If a plugin isn't compatible with Apple Silicon you will see the following error:

RapidWeaver Failed to load some plugins

or

PluginName: Couldn't obtain plugin principle class

Please see our troubleshooting guide here for steps on how to fix this problem.

Q: Can I edit the HTML in an exported website?

Yes, but… the best place to edit your website or add snippets of code like Javascript, CSS, analytics, etc is inside the RapidWeaver Project File.

It’s always best to make changes in the original RapidWeaver project file where possible.

Older Versions of RapidWeaver

If you need to migrate projects or open older projects, but no longer have your license number, you can use the ones provided below.

Warning: Older versions of RapidWeaver are no longer supported. We recommend upgrading to RapidWeaver Classic or newer.

• Download RapidWeaver 8.9.4 requires macOS 10.12 or newer.

• RapidWeaver 7.5 requires OS X 10.11 or newer.

• RapidWeaver 6.4 requires OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" or newer.

• RapidWeaver 5.4.1 requires OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" or newer.

• RapidWeaver 4.4.2 requires 10.5 or newer.

Q: I need to register RapidWeaver 7, do you have a license number I can use?

RapidWeaver 7 Project files have a .rw file extension. RapidWeaver 7 licences are a string containing numbers and letters.

Download RapidWeaver 7.5.6 here and use the following license to register a copy of RapidWeaver 7: 4D84A0E0-28E5FCF6-4731D6DB-EC180E8C-2E305E81

Q: I need to register RapidWeaver 6, do you have a license number I can use?

RapidWeaver 6 Project files have a .rw6 file extension. RapidWeaver 6 licenses are very long, and start with RMS.

Download RapidWeaver 6.4 here and use the following license to register a copy of RapidWeaver 6:

RMSC39-827DA8-0D84B7-CBE1DA-319052-9BD77J-HVLKXH-7UV385-FRBDV2-BL6JCK-23GUHE-EUNW4G-DFLV4J-KD74MF-N8TMUS-7A9D2Y-6NU3FZ-4LJZ29-BCH6KL-ARL4KK-HST782-XZF5MG-KSPF4G-R2PZHQ-JTTRUT-KYVVD5-MHMCNE-QA4WDZ-V6H7BM-KD8KC8-2L9PYZ-B8PEFQ-69XNAD-NLDQ2S-QKH22N-LZYGUZ-EMUF3W-EZ5BCB-8HQE5U-VHX9G9

Q: I need to register RapidWeaver 5, do you have a license number I can use?

RapidWeaver 5 project files have a .rwsw file extension. RapidWeaver 5 licenses contain three words separated by a dash.

Download RapidWeaver 5.4.1 here and use the following license to register a copy of RapidWeaver 5: dramatic-cobra-16148132

Q: I need to register RapidWeaver 4, do you have a license number I can use?

RapidWeaver 4 project files have a .rwsw file extension. Licenses for both RapidWeaver 3.6 and RapidWeaver 4 start with RW3SN.

You can download RapidWeaver 4.4.2 here and use the following license to register a copy of RapidWeaver 4: RW3SN-P1BE-9WPG-A9WT-M9TV-YEP9

Q: I need to register RapidWeaver 3.5, do you have a license number I can use?

RapidWeaver 3 project files have a .rwp file extension. Licenses for RapidWeaver3.5 and earlier start with RWPL.

Use the following license to register a copy of RapidWeaver 3.5: RWPL.4408.58.1978.1891

Below you'll find licensing information for our software.

License recovery

If you've lost your license, visit our License Manager and use the automated system to help find your previous purchases.

If you’ve tried using our license manager and are still having issues, please email support@realmacsoftware.com, and we’ll get you up and running.

Be sure to check your Spam folder. Just in case!

Manage your subscription

Our Billing Manager can help you check a subscription status, change payment details, and cancel your subscription. All you need is access to the email address you used to purchase our software.

If you no longer have access to the email address, contact support@realmacsoftware.com, and we'll be able to help you directly.

Reset a license manually

If you have access to the activated version of our software, do this:

1. Open your registered version of the App.

2. Go to the App menu → Registration…

3. Click "Deactivate" under the "Activations (1 of X)" button.

4. Confirm your decision.

That's it. You can now use the same license to register the app on another Mac.

If you don't have access to your old Mac, don't worry, you can still deactivate it following the steps above.

Managing License Activations

You can manage your license activations in the "Register…" window. This includes seeing what machines are licensed and deactivating any machines you no longer require.

RapidWeaver Classic > Registration…

Cancel your subscription

Hopefully this day will never come, but if you need to cancel your subscription for one of our apps, visit the Billing Manager page.

In the event you cancel your subscription, any apps registered will continue providing all of its updates till the end of the current subscription period (the one you’ve already paid for).

Update Period Expired

You'll see this message if you're trying to activate a newer version of RapidWeaver that was released after your subscription period ended.

If your subscription has expired and you're trying to use a new version of RapidWeaver that was released after your subscription period you'll see the "Update Period Expired" window. You now have a couple of options. You can choose to purchase a new subscription to get access to the new version or get an older version of RapidWeaver that was covered during your active subscription period.

RapidWeaver will show you what version you can still use underneath the "Renew License" button. Clicking the button will take you to the release notes page where you can download this version.

Licensing FAQ

Q: How do I know if I have a RW8 or RWClassic License?

A: RapidWeaver 8 licenses are valid for 8.9.x and below. A RW8 license number will start with a random string of characters such as 1234A5BC-.

RapidWeaver Classic licenses are valid for RapidWeaver Classic 8.10 or newer. A RWC license will start with id, followed by random characters, and end in devant.

Q: I'm getting an "Activation failure (404)" Error when I try to register. What should I do?

First, make sure you are running the latest version of RapidWeaver.

The first thing to check is that your license number is correct. You'll often see this error if the code is slightly wrong or missing a digit.

If you've triple-checked and made sure you're license code is correct, try the following steps:

1. Launch RapidWeaver and choose "Registration…" from the "RapidWeaver Classic" menu.

2. Deactivate your Mac using the "Activations (1 of 2)" button, and RapidWeaver should become Unregistered. (if required)

3. Restart your Mac.

4. Launch RapidWeaver.

5. Open the Registration window again and press the "Activate License…" button and enter your new license details.

6. You should now be up and running.

If you're still having issues, you can email support@realmacsoftware.com, and we'll be able to help you out.

Q: Help, my license won't activate!

If you see the following "Unable to Activate" message, it may mean your license was entered incorrectly, or RapidWeaver is having trouble validating it over the internet.

You can email support@realmacsoftware.com with your license, we can check if it's valid and working. If it is, and your license is still not activating on your Mac, you should try the following things:

1. Check you don't have iCloud Private Relay or a VPN running.

2. Check you've not installed anything that blocks or tracks network traffic (i.e. LittleSnitch.app).

3. Reboot your Mac.

4. Try activating your license on another Mac.

5. Try activating your license on another network (3G/4G from your Phone).

6. Try starting your Mac in Safe Mode. A guide can be found here on how to do this.

Trying out the above will help you narrow down the problem and determine if your Mac or network is causing the issue.

Purchasing

This purchasing FAQ is currently being updated regularly based on questions we've been asked or seen on related forums.

If you have any issues or need anything clarifying, please email support@realmacsoftware.com - we're always here to help 🙏

Q: I didn't receive a license email. Where is it?!

If you purchase one of our products, you will receive an order confirmation email within 5 minutes confirming your order along with your license number for the product. The email will be sent from "mailer@fastspring.com" which is our payment provider. If you can't find the email it's usually because of one of the following reasons:

• The email from us ended up in your Spam Folder.

• You entered your email address incorrectly when purchasing (no shame, we've all done it!).

The first step is to check your spam folder for anything from Realmac Software or mailer@fastspring.com.

If you still can't find your order email, you can contact us directly: support@realmacsoftware.com. Please include your name, email address, what product you purchased, and when — this will help speed up the search!

Q: Do you offer refunds?

Yes! We offer a 30 day money-back guarantee.

If you've purchased RapidWeaver from us and are not happy, let us know within 30 days, and we'll issue a refund for you.

Please forward your original email receipt from your purchase to obtain your refund. While you don't have to do this, it does make it much quicker for us to find and process.

Send this email to support@realmacsoftware.com

We generally issue refunds within 48 hours (often quicker).

Q: Is RapidWeaver subscription based?

Not in the traditional sense. When you purchase a RapidWeaver license from our online store, you are automatically subscribed to one year of app updates. The license itself will not expire (you can use it forever), however the one year period of app updates will renew on an annual basis.

Please note the following:

• Subscriptions automatically renew unless you cancel them.

• If you cancel, your one year period of app updates will remain active until the next renewal date.

• You can manage your subscription here.

Q: What is your subscription cancellation policy?

You can cancel your subscription anytime via your Billing Manager.

We offer a 30 day money-back guarantee from the date you initially purchase a license for our software. During those initial 30 days you can cancel your subscription and request a refund with no questions asked.

Subsequent automatic subscription renewals are not refundable under our 30 day money-back guarantee.

Q: What happens if I cancel my subscription?

Your one year period of app updates will remain active. You will continue to receive updates until the next renewal date. If you wish to receive further updates after that renewal date, you will need to manually re-subscribe.

Q: What happens if my subscription expires?

You get to keep the version of RapidWeaver you're currently using, you just won't receive any further updates to it. You'll need to re-subscribe to start receiving updates again.

With a history spanning more than 20 years, RapidWeaver is the premier web building app for Mac. With RapidWeaver you have the power to easily create beautiful websites that are both modern and feature-rich.

Here we will cover how to purchase RapidWeaver from our website so that you can get started building your awesome website.

Step 1

Visit our store at https://www.realmacsoftware.com/store/ and click the “Buy Now” button in the RapidWeaver 9 box.

Step 2

Enter your billing details in the pop-up window and click the "Pay" button to continue.

All billing and payments are handled by our payment processor FastSpring.

Step 3

Upon successful payment, you will see an order confirmation pop-up window. This will contain a download link for RapidWeaver, as well as your license key which you will use to activate the app. Don't worry, this information will also be emailed to you.

Click on the "Continue" button to proceed.

Step 4

You will be redirected to our purchase confirmation page. Thanks for purchasing RapidWeaver!

You can download RapidWeaver from this page if you haven't done so alraedy.

Step 5

You will have received two emails, one order activation email, and one purchase receipt. Your purchase receipt will contain your RapidWeaver license key, along with a download link for RapidWeaver if you need.

Congratulations!

You have successfully purchased your copy of RapidWeaver and have taken your first step towards building an out of this world website.

This is a quick visual guide to finding your way around the RapidWeaver interface.

Any page that you add to your RapidWeaver project appears in the Page List, and the navigation menu for your website is based on the layout of the pages in the Page List. You can drag and drop pages to re-order or drag pages onto other pages to create a nested page. You can also re-order the different groups (Pages and Settings) in the Page List. You’ll also notice a blue dot appearing to the right of each page: this signifies that there are changes that have yet to be published. When the changes to each page are published, the blue dot is hidden. Right-clicking on a page in the Page List displays a contextual menu with some useful options, including Duplicate a page or Mark As Unchanged (and the blue dot for the page will disappear). Just like in other apps, you can edit the name of any Page List item by double-clicking it. The Page Inspector is where you can change settings relating to the selected page, and change the browser title or the file name of the page. Give each page you add to your site a proper name. The filename should usually be index.html, while the folder name should be descriptive, for example;

/about-us 

would be

mycompany.com/about-us/index.html

Here we will cover how to download, install, and activate RapidWeaver on your Mac.

Let’s get started.

Step 1

After purchasing RapidWeaver, you will have received a download link which you will use to download the app. When clicking the download link, RapidWeaver will be downloaded to your Downloads folder on your Mac (or a custom folder if you have set a custom folder for your downloads).

In this tutorial we will assume you have left your Downloads folder as the default. Double-click on the RapidWeaver.zip file in order to extract the app.

Step 2

Move (drag and drop) the RapidWeaver app to your Applications folder.

Step 3

RapidWeaver should now be located in your Applications folder. Go ahead and open it.

Step 4

When opening RapidWeaver for the first time, you will be greeted with a registration window. Click on the “Activate License…” button in order to activate the app.

Step 5

Enter the email address you used when purchasing the app, along with the license key you received after your purchase. Then, click the “Activate” button.

Nice work!

Your copy of RapidWeaver should now be activated, and you can start building your very first amazing website!

Markdown is one of the most popular ways to write for the web. By using a lightweight and easy to read syntax you can write and edit text without having to wade through HTML.

You start writing, and when previewing or publishing your Markdown pages, RapidWeaver will generate the HTML for you!

The Basics

**Text contained within sets of two asterisks appears in bold**

_Text with an underscore on either side area is shown in italics_

[This text will link to the Realmac Software website](http://realmacsoftware.com)

About Markdown

Markdown is incredibly simple to get started with. There are also some advanced options that you can make use of - for a complete list of Markdown syntax that you can use, visit the official Markdown documentation.

If you have a basic knowledge of Markdown, then use this cheatsheet as needed.

Page types are fully supported in RapidWeaver Classic.

• Blog

• Contact Form

• File Sharing

• HTML code

• iFrame

• Markdown

• Offsite Page

• Photo Album

• Sitemap

• Styled Text

The HTML page type allows you to enter any HTML code in the content area of your site in the editing view. Your code can be as simple or complex as your knowledge of HTML and web development. Or you can simply use this page to paste embedded code such as Google Maps, or even videos hosted on YouTube or Vimeo.

If you want to create an HTML page that retains the theme of the other pages on your website, be sure to leave the ‘Apply Theme’ checkbox located in the ‘Page’ tab of the Page Inspector selected. Unticking this box will remove the theme layout from the page, giving you an entirely blank canvas to start from scratch.

You can enter anything into the HTML page type, including Javascript, CSS, PHP and more. Just remember that the page’s extension needs to reflect the content on the page, so be sure to check that the Page Inspector has been set up correctly.

If you're using PHP, you should also check whether your web host supports PHP as some hosts may not support PHP. Also, please check what version PHP your code will require and make sure your hosting is set properly.

When you have multiple publishing destinations configured, you can easily switch servers by clicking the drop-down menu beside the Publish button and selecting a different destination.

By default, RapidWeaver gives each destination a generic name, but to make it easier to identify them. You can change the name by going to the Publishing item in the Page List. Then, click on the name at the top of each destination and start typing.

The name of the currently-selected destination will show under the toolbar’s Publish item.

RapidWeaver comes with many preferences to help you tweak the app’s behaviour. Each section of the Preferences window is covered below.

General Preferences

The options here will adjust RapidWeaver's default behaviour.

On Launch: Show Projects Window

If you prefer to open projects directly from the Finder, you can turn off the RapidWeaver Projects window.

Alert: Show Notifications

RapidWeaver will show notifications when publishing your site via the macOS Notification Centre by default. You can turn them off here.

Show Notifications > Play Sounds

If you prefer RapidWeaver not to play sounds with notifications, you can turn them off here.

Play Sounds

RapidWeaver has various sounds that play while using the app. If you'd prefer not to hear them, you can turn them off here.

Render PHP on Local Preview

This enables RapidWeaver's built-in PHP server, so when previewing your site, RapidWeaver will under your PHP code locally without uploading it to a server to see the results.

Default PHP Version

Choose the default version of PHP for new projects (supports PHP 7 and PHP 8). This feature is only available on macOS Catalina 10.15 or newer.

The PHP version can also be set on a per-project basis in the Settings > Advanced area of a project.

Use Smart Quotes

If you're experiencing issues when trying to enter code into RapidWeaver make sure any HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code used in your project is not formatted to use Smart Quotes. If there are small fragments of raw HTML code visible, this is likely the cause - and very easy to fix.

Note: Smart Quotes are disabled by default in RapidWeaver, however OS X may have Smart Quote substitution enabled. You can turn this off in System Preferences’ Keyboard pane.

To turn off Smart Quotes in RapidWeaver, disable the Use Smart Quotes option in the RapidWeaver preferences.

Unsplash Preferences

Image Size:

This will set the size of the image that's referenced in your RapidWeaver project. This setting directly relates to Images found via Unsplash in the Media Browser.

Publishing Preferences

All the options in the preference pane relate to publishing your website with RapidWeaver. These can often be set once and forgot about.

Clear page status when publishing

Whenever RapidWeaver publishes your site, by default the “changed” flag is removed to let you know that all changes have been published. In RapidWeaver 7, as there is no “Export”, simply “Publishing to a Local Folder”, the preference to reset this status on “Export” has been removed.

Close publishing window on successful publish

If this is enabled RapidWeaver will close the publishing window upon a successful publish. If the publishing fails the window will remain open to display the error.

Open after Publishing Locally

If you’re publishing your RapidWeaver project to a folder on your Mac (either to preview, or to upload using another means), this option will open the homepage of your exported site after the export completes.

Enable Upload Logging

To help diagnose any publishing problems you can enable upload logging. Once enabled RapidWeaver will log the output of the publishing engine. You can access the logs on a failed publish by pressing the “Send Upload Logs” button in the publishing window. Pressing the “Send Upload Logs” button copy the logs file into a new email ready to be sent to support@realmacsoftware.com You can also look at this log to see if you can locate what the error might be.

When you’re ready to publish your RapidWeaver website, you'll want to select the Publishing view in the sidebar. You can configure RapidWeaver to publish your website to more than one location - for example, a preview server and a live server.

RapidWeaver can publish to the following locations and services:

• Local (to your Mac)

• FTP

• SFTP / FTPS

• Amazon S3

Publishing your site is an exciting moment: you’ll be able to enter a website address into Safari and see the fruits of your work.

Depending on who your hosting provider is, you may need to tweak a few options in RapidWeaver before you publish your website. This is entirely normal and is simply due to web hosts having different requirements when publishing your site.

Most importantly, you’ll need to remember that the details you enter into RapidWeaver are supplied by your hosting provider, not RapidWeaver or Realmac Software. Many hosting providers will require you to use publishing details that differ from any details you may use to access their control panel in a web browser. While this may be frustrating, it’s designed to keep your private information safe. If you are at all unsure about what to enter into RapidWeaver, drop your hosting provider an email, and they’ll be able to advise you.

What is FTP?

RapidWeaver publishes websites using a technology called FTP, which nearly every hosting provider supports. Three different flavours of FTP can be used: FTP, FTPS and SFTP (sometimes known as FTP over SSH). Some hosts may require a specific variant of FTP, and most support more than one. One thing you should note is that FTPS is the rarest of the variants, so if you’re asked to enable it we recommend clarifying that with your host!

Need Hosting?

RapidWeaver works with almost any host (and if you’ve already sorted some web hosting, you can skip ahead now!). If you’re still deciding on a hosting provider, and are looking for a company with roots in the RapidWeaver community, Chillidog is the official hosting partner of Realmac Software. Every aspect of Chillidog’s hosting is built to ensure absolute compatibility with RapidWeaver, and all the friendly support staff at Chillidog are all familiar with RapidWeaver.

Publishing with FTP

If it's a brand new site you're publishing for the first time, when you press the Publish button, you'll see this dialogue box.

With the information you've received from your hosting company, fill out that information and click Next. If all goes successfully, you'll be asked next to choose the directory on your server for your site. Once again, this is information you'll get from your hosting company.

Sometimes, the automatic method doesn't work and then you'll need to choose the Other Methods button and choose Configure Manually.

Here's how the manual publishing window looks in RapidWeaver (see below). Enter the details your hosting provider gave you, and press the “Test” button to check the connection works. If everything worked, you can then press “Publish” in the toolbar to get your website online.

We've tailored this specifically to Chillidog Hosting as they are our preferred hosting partner, but the details will be similar for all hosts.

Server

This is the address for the online server that hosts your site and is required to publish your site. In many cases, it looks like a regular web address (e.g. ftp.mysite.com), or is exactly the same as your domain name. Some hosts require that you use a particular port number to connect. To specify a custom port number, add a colon and the port number to the end of the server address you enter, e.g. ftp.mysite.com:404

Username

Your username is part of the identity used to authenticate with your web host. Make sure the username is exactly as your host supplied it - check zeros are not Os, and that the case of every letter matches.

Password

When entering your password, make sure the password is exactly as supplied by your web host. Check the number of characters in the password field match the password given to you by your host, and when copying and pasting be careful not to copy any extra whitespace or characters. You can use the “Reveal Password” option to show the password - when you reveal a password, the password will be selected to easily show any extra whitespace at the beginning or end of your password. Passwords that you enter into RapidWeaver are stored securely in the OS X Keychain - RapidWeaver never stores passwords in your RapidWeaver project. Instead, RapidWeaver stores a reference to the Keychain in your project and requests the password from your Keychain when publishing a site.

Path

When publishing your website, RapidWeaver needs to know which folder to place your website into on your host’s server. The “path” is used to describe the location of this folder to an FTP app. The most common publishing issue is an incorrect publishing path - this is because the path varies greatly from host to host (or sometimes even between different hosting packages with the same company!). If you don’t know what your publishing path is, contact your hosting provider. Note: In some cases, you may not require a path at all - in this case, you can just leave the Path blank. A blank path tells RapidWeaver to publish your site to the folder your server provides when the app logs in.

Test Connection

We strongly recommend that you use the Test Connection feature to check your credentials are correct before publishing your site.

Publishing with FTPS

To publish your RapidWeaver website to your web server account using FTPS follow these instructions:

• Open RapidWeaver on your Mac.

• Open your project.

• Select File > Publishing Settings.

• Enter the following settings:

  1. Publishing Method: FTPS

  2. Server: Supplied by your hosting company

  3. Username: Supplied by your hosting company

  4. Password: Supplied by your hosting company

  5. Path: public_html/ (your path may vary, but that is a common one)

  6. Website Address: https://www.example.com/ (Replace example.com with your actual domain)

  7. Mode: Extended Passive (Default)

• Click the Test button to ensure there are no error messages.

Publishing with SFTP

RapidWeaver supports a wide variety of publishing configurations, including Active Mode FTP, three different methods of FTPS authentication, and FTPwith SSH Key Authentication. If your host requires this, or you’ve chosen to use SSH Key authentication, read on!

Setting up SFTP (without Public Key Authentication)

We highly recommend SFTP for publishing as it's a more robust and secure protocol. It's often set up in the same way as FTP, but you might need to add a port number to the end of the server address.

You may need to contact your hosting company for the exact details.

Setting up SFTP with Public Key Authentication

While password-based FTP is still the most common way to upload to a web host, RapidWeaver also supports authentication using SSH keys. SSH keys are a great way to allow multiple users to access your web hosting over an encrypted connection, without needing to share a password. Each user generates a pair of cryptographic keys on their Mac - one private, one public. The public key (which is uploaded to your web server) can then be used to verify that a private key is permitted to access the server. Check with your web host to see if they support SSH key authentication - the instructions for getting an SSH public key onto your server will vary between hosts. You can learn more about generating SSH keys using GitHub’s guide.

Set Up SSH Key Authentication

We’ll assume that you’ve already generated a private/public key pair and that your server is configured with your public key. Start by selecting SFTP as your publishing method: enter the server, username and path details, and then check the Use Public Key Authentication option.

You’ll now need to enter a few further details: the locations of your private and public keys, and the passphrase for your private key (if there is one).

With your keys selected, run a test with your credentials to ensure they’re valid.

FTP over SSH

SFTP (FTP over SSH) is not to be confused with FTPS (FTP with TLS), these are very different.

Due to the varied, and sometimes complicated, nature of SSH authentication, we can only offer limited technical support when using an SSH-based setup. We only recommend using SSH Key Authentication if you’re familiar with key-based authentication, and are aware of how SSH keys are stored on your Mac.

Publishing With Amazon S3

RapidWeaver can publish directly to Amazon S3. Keep in mind that Amazon does not support PHP, so make sure all your pages are just html. Your page file names should end with .html. To Publish to Amazon S3 you will need an AWS account, and the relevant details. Server, Access Key ID, Secret Access Key. To generate the required Access Key and Secret Access Key, login to your Amazon S3 account. Click on your name in the toolbar at the top of the page. Select My Security Credentials from the menu. Next, click on the Access Keys (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) toggle. You will then get presented with a blue button to Create New Access Key. Click this button and follow the onscreen instructions. If you will be the only person who ever needs to login at a root level to change files, they you can create a key for yourself. If you intend for other people to have access for file uploads, you may wish to consider setting up something called an 'IAM User'. Amazon provides full documentation on their website, if this is required. Now you have a key and secret key, you can paste these into RapidWeaver, and press the Browse button to locate the folder where you want to publish your website too. For more information on Hosting a static website on Amazon S3 you can watch this video.

RapidWeaver comes with five example projects built-in so that you can familiarize yourself with the app and how to create websites with it.

When opening RapidWeaver you are greeted with the Project Selection window. On the right-hand side of this window you will see two tabs, Recent and Examples. Click on the Examples tab. Here you will see five built-in example projects for RapidWeaver. Each project highlights one of the modern, responsive themes included with RapidWeaver Classic and includes a selection of different pages, meaning you can use these examples as a starting point for your own project/website.

Let’s open the first example project Mountains by double-clicking on it.

Welcome to RapidWeaver’s Project window, where all the magic happens. 🪄

The above doesn’t look like much and you might be thinking “Where’s the stunning website?!?!” 🤔

Don’t worry, you are currently in RapidWeaver’s Edit mode. This is where you do your website building, your very own website construction zone. 🚧🏗️👷

In order to see a preview of what your website looks like as you build it, click on the Preview mode button in RapidWeaver’s Toolbar.

Tada 🎉, there’s a preview of your website. You can scroll up and down in the Preview area, click on links, etc. to see what your website looks like and how it functions.

Now let’s look at the other pages in Mountain's example project file. Click on the Edit mode button, then click on the Blog page from your Page List area.

The Blog page is built with RapidWeaver’s built-in Blog page type. Here you can build stylish, feature-rich blogs that you can publish for your website audience. Click on the Preview mode button to view Mountain’s example Blog page.

Gorgeous. 😍

Now let’s check out Mountain’s last example page, Gallery. Click on the Edit mode button, then click on the Gallery page from your Page List area.

The Gallery page is built with RapidWeaver’s built-in Photo Album page type, another one of RapidWeaver’s built-in page types. It allows you to build quick and easy photo galleries and slideshows for your website that look great across desktop and mobile devices. Click on the Preview mode button to view Mountain’s example Photo Album page.

Beautiful. 🤩

Click on the images in the Preview area to view them in full size. You can scroll through the images via the gallery’s navigation buttons.

Now that you’ve viewed all of the pages in the Mountains example project file, go ahead and open up the other example projects to better familiarize yourself with some of RapidWeaver’s different themes and how pages can look differently depending on which theme you select for your project.

To open the other example project files, click on File >> Show Projects…

Then double-click on the next example project you’d like to open and view.

Great Work!

You’ve now viewed and familiarized yourself with RapidWeaver's five example projects. This should give you a better idea of how website building in RapidWeaver works, and the amazing websites you can build with it.

In the next section, we'll go over how to build your very first website with RapidWeaver.

The Offsite Page type allows you to create a link to an external web page that's displayed in your website's navigation menu. This is useful for linking to pages that were not built in RapidWeaver yet should be prominently displayed in your website's navigation. Some examples might include an eCommerce page built with a third-party service, an image gallery hosted by a third-party photo sharing site, or a donations page created with a third-party fundraising platform.

Getting Started

In order to add an Offsite Page type to your RapidWeaver project, simply add the page type to your Page List, then give the page a name. This page name will be displayed in your website's navigation menu. In the below example we will be adding an Offsite Page that links to a third-party website that sells piano scores (sheet music).

Next, add the URL to the external site in the Inspector > Offsite Page > Offsite Options (Option-Command-6).

You should now see the link in your website's navigation menu. When clicked, visitors will be redirected to the external site.

If you'd like for the link to open the external site in a new browser tab, you can go to Inspector > General Settings > check the box "Open in new window" (Option-Command-1).

Your linked page should now open in a new browser tab.

Important note;

By default the Offsite page plugin links directly to a URL, RapidWeaver will not create a file for this page.

If you check the “Use Redirect Page” option, RapidWeaver will create a file for the page and run a redirect script when a user views that page.

The Contact Form page type allows your website visitors to send you emailed messages and attachments. Contact forms are easy to create and use, and are customizable with a variety of available options.

The Contact Form page supports six different form elements:

• Text Field: a single-line text field.

• Text Area: allow visitors to type larger messages, without line or character-limits.

• Check Boxes: allow visitors to select options by clicking its box.

• Popup Menus: allow visitors to make a single selection from a defined popup menu.

• Radio Buttons: allow visitors to make a single selection from a defined list of options.

• Attachments: allow visitors to attach a file when submitting the form.

Each of these elements can be marked as a Required field, meaning that item must be selected or completed before a visitor can successfully submit the form.

Getting Started

When you add a Contact Form to your project, some form fields are pre-configured that enable visitors to send a message to the address specified in the Page Inspector. If you allowed RapidWeaver to access your Contacts when first launching the app, the primary email address specified in your “Me” card will be pre-filled for the contact form to use.

To add a new field item to the form field list, click the [+] button at the bottom of the Form options area. Type a label for the new field’s name and then select the desired field type. To remove a field item, select it and click the [–] button at the bottom of the Form options area.

You can rearrange the order of a field item by selecting it, then dragging it to your preferred location.

Popup Menu and Radio Button Options

The Contact Form includes popup-menu and radio-button field types. These allow you to create a list of options of which your web visitor can select one. When the popup-menu or radio-button field type is selected in the upper section of the Contact Form's edit area, you can then add, edit, and remove options in the lower section of the Contact Form’s edit area.

Click the [+] button shown below the Options list to add a new option for the select popup-menu/radio-button, then type the desired Option name. Double-click the Option name to edit the item. Repeat as required to add your desired number of options for the selected form element.

To remove an option, simply select the it within the Options list and then click the [–] button.

Contact Form Settings

Now that you've got your Contact Form created with all your desired fields, it's time to configure the settings so that when your web visitor clicks the Submit button, you receive the form in your email Inbox!

General Tab

On the Contact Form Page, in RapidWeaver go to Inspector > Contact Form > General tab (Option-Command-6).

1. Send To: Enter the email address you want the submitted form to be sent to.

2. From Name: Select the form field you'd like to appear as the name of the person the email was sent from. In the above example we use the "Your Name" field.

3. From Email: Select the form field which is used for your web visitor's email address. In the above example we use the "Your Email" field.

4. Subject: Select the form field that will be used as the subject in any emails received from the form. In the above example we use the "Subject" field.

5. Show Reset button: Select this option if you'd like to give your web visitor the ability to clear the form completely. Useful if your web visitor would like to start over with filling in their form details.

6. Required: Enter the message you'd like the form to display if a required field is left blank when submitting the form.

7. Symbol: Enter the symbol that will be used to highlight required fields on your form.

8. Submit Button: Enter the text you'd like displayed for your "Submit" button. This is "Submit" by default.

9. Reset Button: Enter the text you'd like displayed for your "Reset" button. This is "Reset" by default.

Advanced Settings: (Generally only used for troubleshooting form deliverability issues)

1. Send email using your email address - By default, the Contact Form sends the form email using your web visitor's entered email address. For example if your web visitor enters the email address aaron@example.com in the "Your Email" form field, you will receive an email from aaron@example.com in your Inbox. In some cases web hosts do not allow email to be sent from an email address that's not linked to your account (to prevent SPAM). If you are not receiving emails sent via your Contact Form, you can try enabling this "Send email using your email address" setting by checking its box and republishing your Contact Form page. With this setting enabled the Contact Form will not use your web visitors email address to send the form, instead it will use the email address you enter in the "Send To" field (#1 from above) to send the form. In this case it's important the address you enter in the "Send To" field is linked to your web hosting account.

2. Define email address in PHP mail script - This setting might be required on some web hosts (for example if your website is hosted on a Windows based server). We generally don't recommend enabling this setting unless you are trying to troubleshoot issues with receiving your Contact Form submissions.

Customizable Text Tab

On the Contact Form Page, in RapidWeaver go to Inspector > Contact Form > Customizable Text tab (Option-Command-6).

1. Header: Here you can enter any text, images, or other information that you'd like to appear above your form's fields.

2. Footer: Here you can enter any text, images, or other information that you'd like to appear below your form's fields.

3. Email Sent Feedback: Here you can enter the text that will appear on the page after your web visitor clicks the "Submit" button. Generally this is used to inform your web visitor that the form was successfully submitted, as well as provide any "next steps" they should take after submitting the form. This text is only displayed on the Contact Form page, it's not emailed to the web visitor.

Troubleshooting Contact Form Deliverability Issues

If you are having troubles receiving form emails, below are some general steps that usually help to resolve potential issues.

• Make sure you are using an email address linked to your web hosting account in the "Send To" field in your Contact Form settings. For example let's say your Contact Form page is located at https://www.example.com/contact-us. In this case, you would want your "Send To" email address to be connected to that domain "example.com" (e.g. contactus@example.com). You would not want to use a GMAIL or HOTMAIL address.

• Some web hosts might block Contact Form's from sending email if the website is not SSL secured. It's important that your Contact page is secured with an SSL certificate and loads over https (e.g. https://www.example.com/contact-us). If your website or contact page is not SSL secured, you will want to reach out to your web hosting provider and ask that they help you get an SSL certificate installed and activated on your website.

• It's important that you have valid SPF and DKIM records set up for your website's domain name. In a lot of cases, if these DNS records are not set up (or set up incorrectly), outgoing emails sent from your web hosting server will not be received (this includes your form emails). The steps to get valid SPF and DKIM records set up vary depending on your web hosting provider, so it's best to ask your web hosting provider for assistance. An example question you can ask your web hosting provider... "I'm trying to set up SPF and DKIM records to ensure my emails are received by the recipient, can you help me get those set up correctly?"

• Make sure to check your Spam folder in case your form emails are being inadvertently delivered there.

• Some web hosting providers do not allow mail to be sent via a PHP mailer unless it's authenticated (such as with SMTP authentication). RapidWeaver's built-in Contact Form does not offer outgoing mail authentication, as such if your web hosting provider blocks this type of mailing it will be necessary that you find an alternative web hosting provider that allows this type of outgoing mail, or a third party Contact Form solution that allows for outgoing mail authentication. There are several third party Contact Form addons in our Marketplace. For recommendations feel free to ask on our Community Forum!

The Blog page allows you to create and manage a collection of blog entries; recording events, thoughts, ideas and more that are important to you (and your readers). Audio and video files can also be added to blog entries to create Podcasts – all of which can be syndicated using RSS feeds.

Getting Started

To add a new blog entry, click the [+] button in the edit window. When you create a new post, the list at the top of the edit window will show the new entry, and the editor beneath will allow you to create your post. Your full blog post should be written in the "Body" tab.

You have the option to create a summary of your blog post in the "Summary" tab. If you include a summary, this is what will appear on your main blog page (the page listing all your articles). A "Read more" link will be automatically added at the end of the summary which your reader can click on to view your full blog article.

The Post Settings area is shown on the right of the main edit window. Here you can edit a post’s Title, Category or Tags. The date and time for each post is set automatically to the time the entry was created (using your Mac's system time). The date and time of a post can also be edited manually. Pressing the refresh button next to the Date field will reset it to the current time.

Permalinks

A Permalink is a permanent link to a specific blog entry so that visitors may return to it even if it has been archived and moved off the main Blog page. When enabled in the General tab of the Blog’s Setup area (Option-Command-6), RapidWeaver will automatically create a Permalink for each blog entry using the blog entry's Title. If you’d prefer to create a custom Permalink for a specific blog entry, enter it into the Permalink field.

Adding Images to your Blog Entry

RapidWeaver's blog editor area allows you to add images to your blog posts via drag and drop. You can also add images from Mac's Photo App, from the Unsplash image sharing service, and from RapidWeaver's resources folder, all from within RapidWeaver's Resources panel (Command-4).

1. Photos: Add photos to your Blog entries from your Mac's Photos app.

2. Unsplash: Add photos to your Blog entries from the Unsplash image sharing service.

3. resources: Add photos to your Blog entries from your resources folder in RapidWeaver.

Below are some examples of how you can add images to your blog posts via drag and drop:

Drag and Drop images from your Mac

Drag and Drop images from RapidWeaver's Resources panel (Command-4)

You can edit your blog images and give them some effects directly in RapidWeaver. Simply double-click the image you'd like to edit to pull up the settings window. Adjust the settings per your preference.

1. Filename: The filename for your image. For better SEO your image filename should be descriptive and relate to the image.

2. Alt Tag: Give your image an Alt description. This can be the same as the image filename, or you can give it an alternative description. Again this is good for SEO.

3. Scale: Select if you want RapidWeaver to scale your image, or if you'd prefer to set a fixed width and height.

4. Rotation: Select if you want to rotate your image, and the degree to which you'd like to rotate it.

5. Flip Horizontally / Flip Vertically: Select if you want to flip your image horizontally or vertically.

6. Shadow: Select if you'd like to give your image a shadow effect.

7. Border: Select if you'd like to give your image a border.

Aligning Blog Images

Your blog images can be aligned to the left or right of your text with ease. Simply click on the image to highlight it, click the [<>] icon in the formatting toolbar at the bottom of the blog's editor window, and select either Align Image Left or Align Image Right.

Podcasting

RapidWeaver allows you to easily add Podcasts to your blog entries.

Podcasting is a standard that allows audio or video files (most commonly in MP3 or MP4 formats) to be published online in a way that allows Podcast-capable applications (such as Apple's Podcasts App) to automatically subscribe to them and download the media for playback at the listener’s convenience.

When you add a Podcast to your blog entry by clicking the Add Podcast... button, RapidWeaver presents a Podcast pane that allows you to drag-and-drop your Podcast media-file into your blog entry. The file needs to be in a QuickTime compatible format such as MP3 (audio) or MP4 (video and audio).

Once the media file is dragged in, you can specify custom tags to help compatible Podcasts Apps to correctly categorize your podcast. The custom tags are applied on an episode-by-episode basis using the iTunes Tags tab.

Category

This is the category which Apple Podcasts should categorize the podcast under. It should be just a single category, such as Comedy or Technology.

Keywords

This allows you to be more specific than a category. Think of them as tags, allowing you to refine the description of the episode so perhaps Mac, macOS Sonoma, and RapidWeaver Classic would be considered Keywords of a Technology-centric show. Keywords should be comma and space separated.

Author

Enter your name, or the company name you wish to associate with the show. It will appear in the Apple Podcasts source list and over-ride the email address defined in the blog’s RSS setup.

Subtitle

If you’re looking to add some extra details about the episode, a subtitle may be useful.

Summary

If you want to add more in-depth show notes, perhaps detailing the entire content of the show (such as topics covered, guest appearances, etc), you can enter them here.

Block

If you want your podcast episode to not be visible in Apple Podcasts check the Block box. This is how you are able to simply make your episode 'private', meaning that Apple will not make your show visible in their public catalogue. This also works to block your podcast episode from Google Podcast's public catalogue as well.

Explicit

Apple Podcasts allows you to flag any content that may contain any explicit content (such as profanity). Checking the ‘Explicit’ box will ensure that Apple Podcasts is made aware of the content. You should always ensure your episodes are flagged if they contain any explicit content, as Apple Podcasts may remove any incorrectly-labelled podcasts.

Item Image

Drag and drop an image relating to your podcast episode.

Once you’re finished editing the details for your podcast episode, click OK. When you next publish your site, RapidWeaver will attach the chosen files to your blog post, and generate the necessary code that ensures podcast clients can download the episode from the server.

If you'd like to add or edit default tags for your entire podcast series, perhaps to write a general summary describing what your whole podcast series is about, or add a custom Channel Image which will be displayed in Apple Podcasts as your show's album art, go to Inspector > Blog (Option-Command-6) > Advanced tab > iTunes tab and add your default tags in their respective fields.

Using External Audio Files in your Podcast

If you'd like to link to existing online content, do not drag in any media to the initial podcast drop- box. Instead go to the Custom RSS Tags tab and check the ‘Override default Podcast settings’ box. Simply enter the full URL to the media (e.g. https://realmacsoftware.com/podcast.mp3).

Be sure to enter the full data for the size in bytes in the size box and specify the correct MIME type. You can get the full size, in bytes, by using the Finder’s Get Info on your audio file. Podcast ‘enclosures’ can be in the following formats:

• .mp3 (audio/mpeg)

• .mp4 (audio/mp4 or video/mp4)

• .m4a (audio/mp4)

• .m4v (video/mp4)

• .mov (video/quicktime)

• .pdf (application/pdf)

Blog Settings

RapidWeaver comes with ample settings to customize your blog just the way you like it. To pull up the Blog's settings panel, go to Inspector > Blog (Option-Command-6).

General

1. The top section of the General tab contains the archiving options for your blog in which you can customize the archive behavior, if used. By default, archiving is active (we strongly recommend leaving it enabled). Disabling it will cause RapidWeaver to keep all of your blog’s posts on the same page, growing longer with each blog entry you add. If enabled, archiving will move all your old posts to separate pages, keeping only the current week’s or month’s posts on the main page, as selected in the "Archive by" popup menu. You can also set the minimum number of posts that must appear on the main blog page before older posts are archived in the "Keep" field, and whether or not to show gaps in the list of available archives by checking the "Show gaps" checkbox. Finally, the Blog plugin supports 8 different smiley emotions when "Smileys" is enabled . For example, entering :-) in your blog, RapidWeaver will convert it into the appropriate graphic.

Smile :-)
Laugh :-D
Sad :-(
Wink ;-)
Gasp :-o
Embarrassed :-[
Angry :-|
Foot-in-mouth :-!

1. The middle section of the General tab allows you to enable Permalinks in your blog and to set the Permalink’s link title. If you use summaries in your blog entries, you may choose whether the Permalink points to the summary rather than the blog entry itself by clicking the "Include Summary" checkbox. When published, the Permalink will point to the summary, which will include a "Read more..." link to the full blog entry. You may also change the phrase used for "Read more..." links. Finally, we recommend leaving the "Display inline comments" box unchecked.

2. The bottom section of the General tab allows you to add a commenting system to your blog or not. RapidWeaver integrates with the Disqus commenting platform. Once you have registered for a Disqus account and added your site to their system you will need to enter your Disqus 'Site Shortname' into the "Short Name" field in order for your comments section to show under your blog posts.

Categories

Categories are automatically enabled for each blog you create, allowing you to set a category for your blog entries. If you’d rather not use categories, you can disable them by unchecking the "Enable" checkbox. When categories are enabled, you can also choose to display the number of blog entries that are in each category within the sidebar by checking the "Show Post Count" checkbox. If you'd like for your categories to be listed alphabetically in your blog's main page sidebar check the "List alphabetically in sidebar" checkbox.

You can create additional categories for your blog by clicking the (+) button at the bottom of the categories list and typing the name of the new category. To remove a category, click on its name and click the (-) button. You can also arrange the categories in the list by clicking and dragging them into a new position. At the bottom of the Category Settings, you will find "Title" and "Separator" fields. RapidWeaver uses these fields to display your blog article's category(s) and they are located directly under your blog entry's title (next to the blog entry's date). You can modify these fields per your preference.

Tags

Tags can be considered as sub-categories, describing more accurately a blog post’s content. To enable tags for blog posts, check the "Enable" checkbox in the Tag Settings. If you would like to display a Tag Cloud on your blog's main page sidebar, check the "Display tag cloud" checkbox. The Tag List keeps track of how many times you've used a specific tag for a blog entry under the "Count" column.

A blog post's tags are displayed below the summary and full blog entry (as in the above screenshot). If you'd like to change the "Tags:" text to something else, you can do so in the "Title" field in the Tag Settings panel. Finally your blog entry's tags are separated by a comma followed by a space by default. If you'd like to change the separator to something else you can do so in the "Separator:" field.

RSS

To help increase the audience for your blog, RapidWeaver can generate what’s known as an RSS feed. This is a file that contains the posts from your blog, along with a link to view the article. Visitors to your site can subscribe to this feed in apps like Reeder or News Explorer and read your blog articles from their preferred app. RapidWeaver includes a link to the RSS feed in your website’s source code so that apps can automatically detect it! While RSS use has declined in recent years, we strongly recommend that you offer it for your readers for those that prefer it!

Before you can syndicate your blog or broadcast your podcasts, you must first configure your blog to use RSS feeds. Check the "Enable" checkbox from the RSS Feed Settings panel and complete the fields.

• Title - The title for your RSS feed.

• Description - A description of what your blog is about.

• Creator - Your or your company's name.

• Copyright - Add a copyright notice to your RSS feed.

• Language - Select the language your blog is written in.

• RSS Link Name - This is the text link that will appear in your blog's sidebar.

• RSS File Name - We recommend leaving this as the default "feed.xml".

• Use Custom Feed - Enable this if you are using a third party RSS service to host your RSS feed (e.g. FeedPress). Generally it's easier to let RapidWeaver handle your RSS feed so only enable this if you need advanced RSS Feed features or analytics.

• RSS URL - Enter the URL to your custom feed from your third party RSS service mentioned above if you are using one.

Some sites truncate their RSS feeds in order to drive visitors to read the original on their website. While we typically wouldn’t recommend you do this, you can specify how many words from each of your blog entries should be included in your RSS feed (from one to fifty words) by selecting the checkbox labelled "Summarize entries in RSS feed" and then moving the slider to select how many words you'd like to be included in the RSS feed.

Advanced

Date Format

You can customize the way the date and time are shown by selecting the "Date Format" sub-tab.

In this tab, you can specify how the date and time are displayed, including separators. As you make changes to the settings, an example is displayed next to the "Sample" field in the settings.

iTunes

You can create default values for your Podcast tags and any custom RSS channel tags used in your Podcasts. The values entered here will become the default tags for all of your Podcasts, but you can override these values in any Podcast episode if desired by using the iTunes Tags and the Custom RSS Tags tabs in the Add Podcast pane as outlined in the Podcasting tutorial section.

To set the default Podcasts tags to be added to your Podcasts, click the "Enable" checkbox next to "Custom Tags" and fill in the succeeding fields.

Channel

Use the Channel sub-tab to add any custom RSS channel tags not addressed using the iTunes sub-tab, or to add any new Channel tags that may be added to Apple Podcasts in the future. As a rule, this should be unnecessary, but the ability to add custom RSS Channel tags remains available if needed.

Other

Enabling the dynamic PHP sidebar improves the sidebar navigation on blogs with a large number of tags and categories, and substantially reduces the number of files that require updating when the number of tags and categories changes. We strongly recommend enabling the "Dynamic PHP Sidebar" checkbox when first starting with the blog page, and leaving it enabled, however you can also enable this option if you've already been blogging with RapidWeaver's blog for awhile.

With RapidWeaver's built-in iFrame page type, you can embed documents, forms, and even websites that are hosted on external platforms directly into your website's design.

Getting Started

In order to add an iFrame page type to your RapidWeaver project, simply add the iFrame page to your Page List, then click on the newly added page to give it a name. This page name will be displayed in your website's navigation menu. In the below example we will be adding an iFrame page that embeds a survey onto your page from the popular form building platform MachForm.

Now, add the external URL to the resource you are embedding in the Inspector > iFrame > iFrame Settings > URL field (Option-Command-6).

1. URL: The URL of your external resource that you'd like to embed. This can be a URL to a form, or a document, or even another website.

2. Width: This is the width your embedded content will take up on the page. You can set this as a fixed width (Pixels) or a relative width (Percent) from the drop down menu. We recommend setting this as Percent so that your embedded content is responsive across multiple device sizes.

3. Height: This is the height your embedded content will take up on the page. This can only be set in pixels. You can adjust this amount until you are satisfied with the iFrame's fixed height.

4. Use Frame: This will simply add a small border around your embedded content in order to visually separate it from your page's content or make it stand out more on the page.

5. Refresh Page: This will refresh the page in RapidWeaver's Preview mode. Useful if you are making changes to the settings (such as width and height) and need to see those new settings reflected on the page.

That's all there is to the iFrame page. Below is an example of what our embedded MachForm survey looks like on the page.

The File Sharing page type allows you to easily share files, web addresses and other documents with visitors to your website. You can link to files either on your Mac or located elsewhere online. Any files you link to from your Mac will be copied and uploaded when publishing your project (just as they would be when adding the file as a resource to your RapidWeaver project).

Getting Started

At the top of the File Sharing edit window is a styled text area. Any content added here will be displayed above the download links on your published page. You can add text, format it, and add images as with any Styled Text page in RapidWeaver.

The lower area of the File Sharing edit window displays a table of files, or web addresses, that will be displayed on your published page. The table is a series of rows, with one row for each file or URL you add. Each file has four fields for information.

1. Title - The title for your shared resource.

2. Description - A description of your shared resource.

3. Source - The location of your shared resource (linked internally from RapidWeaver's resources, added externally from your Mac, or a web address).

4. Source Type - The type of resource (File, Web Address, or Resource).

To add a resource, simply click on the [+] button at the bottom of the File Sharing table list.

Next, select the Source Type from the drop-down menu. Select File from the drop-down menu if you will be adding a file directly from your Mac's Finder. Select Resource if you will be adding a file from RapidWeaver's internal resources folder. Select Web Address if you will be linking to a website address (URL) or external resource. Then, double-click on the resource's Source field to add it to your page/project. Finally, double-click on the resource's Title and Description fields to edit them. Make sure to give your resources a descriptive title and description so your web visitors know what they are either downloading or being redirected to!

To remove a resource, highlight it and click on the [-] button.

To rearrange the contents of the table list, simply click and drag the row to your desired location. Your shared resources will be displayed on the published page in the order in which they are arranged.

When publishing fails you might see one of the following issues, here's what they mean and how to fix them.

Unable to upload file, the server may be out of disk space.

This error is exactly what it sounds like. Your web server has run out of space. You can either contact your hosting company to upgrade your plan and increase the server space. Or delete some files from your server using an FTP client such as Transmit from Panic.

Couldn't upload to your FTP server (Retry in 5s)

This can sometimes mean the login credentials are correct, but the Path you specified is not right. Re-enter the Path into the Publishing setup and press “Browse” to confirm the location. Once this has been done, RapidWeaver will show a Change Publishing Path? dialogue. Press the Change and Re-Publish button, this should resolve the issue.

Couldn’t connect to your FTP server

If RapidWeaver consistently displays this message when publishing, try disabling Extended Passive Mode – which is enabled by default in the FTP Publishing Setup. To do this, show the Publishing Setup window (Command-K), select the settings button next to the FTPProtocol field, then choose another publishing Mode option until you find one that works for you.

This guide will walk you through publishing your website with RapidWeaver via FTP or SFTP to your Chillidog Hosting account.

Chillidog Hosting offers two different ways you can upload your site to your server. Here are the settings for FTP.

FTP Publishing

Publishing Method: FTP

Server: ftp.yourwebsite.url

Connections: 6 (Lightning Fast!)

Username: your cpanel username (provided in your New Account email from Chillidog)

Password: your cpanel password (provided in your New Account email from Chillidog)

Path: public_html/ if you only have one site on the server. If you have created Addon Domains via your cpanel at Chillidog, then you can use the Browse button and look for the appropriate folder.

Mode: Extended Passive

SFTP Publishing

If you wish, you can also Publish to your Chillidog server via SFTP. Here are the settings:

Publishing Method: SFTP

Server: ftp.yourwebsite.url:23261

Connections: 6 (Lightning Fast!)

Username: your cpanel username (provided in your New Account email from Chillidog)

Password: your cpanel password (provided in your New Account email from Chillidog)

Path: public_html/ if you only have one site on the server. If you have created Addon Domains via your cpanel at Chillidog, then you can use the Browse button and look for the appropriate folder.

Custom 404 Page

To have a custom 404 page, you'll need to create a page at the root of your project and name it "404.shtml" - notice the "s" in ".shtml".

This is very important as if you name the page "404.html" the page will be ignored by the server.

RapidWeaver allows you to add a folder on your Mac as a publishing destination, just as you would add an FTP server - and with RapidWeaver supporting multiple publishing destinations, you can use Smart Publishing to export changes incredibly quickly to any destination. To add a new local folder destination, go to the Publishing item in the Page List, and choose Add New Destination. In the Publishing Method pop-up menu, choose Local Folder. To select the folder RapidWeaver should publish to, click on Choose Folder…, and navigate to your preferred folder. When you’re in the right location, click Choose to set the location and close the folder selection panel.

The code that RapidWeaver generates is designed to help your site load as quickly as possible, and wherever possible the app will look to optimise your site. To help optimise your site, Health Check will analyse your project settings and let you know about enhancements you can make to your site.

Project Checks

RapidWeaver will run the following checks on your project to see if the features are being used, or need tweaking.

• If your site is using the new banner image feature, and an alternate label has not been specified, you’ll be prompted to add one.

• If you’ve chosen to add a logo to your project file, but have not set an alternate label, Health Check will warn you about this.

• CSS Consolidation helps to keep your sites loading quickly. It’s recommended for all sites and enabled by default on new projects.

• Tidied URLs help your sites be better discovered by search engines.

• Minification helps compress your CSS and JavaScript. It’s enabled by default for new projects.

• Missing Favicon & WebClip icons ensure your website’s identity is shown in the browser.

• XML Sitemaps help search engines know about the pages in your project. RapidWeaver can generate one automatically, and submit it on your behalf.

• Keep up to date with the latest versions of your plugins. Health Check will let you know if there are plugin updates available.

Page Checks

• It’s important to give your pages a descriptive title - not only does this appear in the name of the tab of your browser, but it’s also used by search engines as your web page’s name in search results. Health Check will flag any missing, or overly-long Browser Titles.

• Giving your web pages descriptive URLs can help people find content on your site. If you’ve got folder names such as “page58”, RapidWeaver will flag this to be fixed.

• Description Metatags are a useful addition to your pages and are normally shown as the blurb beneath a web page’s name in search results. Health Check will check whether a description metatag has been entered in the Page Inspector’s SEO tab. Any hand-coded HTML will not be analysed.

• Giving your images descriptive file names can help search engines index your page. Health Check will highlight any images with generic filenames.

• In addition to descriptive filenames, you can improve the accessibility of your website by using the Alt attribute to describe the image’s content. This will be used by screen-readers, or when a visitor chooses not to show images on web pages.

• RapidWeaver will analyse links that point to pages that no longer exist inside your project. Health Check will not check links entered by hand - only those selected via the Add Link sheet’s popup menu.

The preview system in RapidWeaver gives you the ability to reliably preview all PHP inside RapidWeaver, and some magical ways to work with RapidWeaver and your favourite browser.

To preview your project in RapidWeaver press command-r or the "eye" button in the main toolbar.

Here’s how to preview your website inside the Browser:

1. Open a project file, and stay in Edit mode.

2. Use Cmd + P to preview your website in your default browser.

3. Go back to RapidWeaver, and make any changes in Edit mode.

4. Return to the browser, and see the changes reflected.

The live preview in Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc also allows you to navigate around your RapidWeaver project. Simply follow your site navigation while in the Browser and RapidWeaver will switch pages in the background, making it easier than ever to make changes.

Not to be confused with an XML Sitemap (which is enabled by default for the benefit of search engines), sitemaps can be incredibly useful on a larger website, allowing users to browse a complete list of available pages.

RapidWeaver will add every page in your project on a Sitemap page unless you’ve chosen to not show a page in your site’s navigation menu.

Header Text

Text and images in this area will appear above the sitemap list.

Footer Text

Text and images in this area will appear below the sitemap list.

Page Options

There are no extra options for this page type. It is however worth noting that only pages that have the "Show in navigation" option checked will appear in the sitemap.

The Styled Text page is one of the most commonly-used page types in RapidWeaver. It’s flexible enough to enable you to style content with rich text formatting but extensible enough to allow the more code-savvy among us to place it in HTML if you need it (e.g. pasting in an embedded YouTube video).

You can write in RapidWeaver or paste in content from other apps. If you’re pasting in from Microsoft Word, we recommend you use the Edit menu’s Paste as Plain Text option. This will ensure that any unusual formatting from Word is not transferred to your website.

Working with Images

Styled Text pages support JPEG, PNG and GIF images, which can be added to your page via Drag and Drop or via the iMedia Browser (available on the View menu). If you need to make some adjustments to the image, open the Media Inspector by double-clicking on the image, where you can scale, rotate, and rename the image.

We recommend you give each image a non-cryptic filename such as “realmacsoftware- logo” and ensure that you fill in the Alternate Text field. This alternate field will be shown to visitors who may have images turned off (or are viewing your site on a slow connection) and is a great way to improve the accessibility of your website.

Formating a Styled Text Page or Area in RapidWeaver

Let’s get started by adding some text. You can write in RapidWeaver or paste in content from other apps. If you’re pasting in from Microsoft Word, we recommend you use the Edit menu’s Paste as Plain Text option. This will ensure that any unusual formatting from Word is not transferred to your website. Watch the video to see how formatting works.

Using HTML Code in Styled Text pages

RapidWeaver’s Styled Text pages, and any other page types that use the styled text areas available to plugins, also allow you to paste in HTML. To ensure your code appears as you expect, you should identify blocks of code as such by choosing Format > Ignore Formatting. By using this option, you’re telling RapidWeaver not to alter or stylise the content.

So what should you do if you’ve got code that you want to show as an example on your website? Highlight the block of code and then use the Format > HTML > Code. This will apply the appropriate HTML tags to ensure the code is displayed properly when previewing and publishing the site.

Can't get your website online or updated. Don't worry. 99% of the time the issue is due to incorrect setup of publishing details. This is due to the fact that everything needs to be entered 100% correctly otherwise publishing fails. After watching this video, please follow our written guide below and you'll be back up and publishing in no time.

By far the most common cause of publishing issues is that the credentials entered are not accurate. It’s incredibly important that you double-check the details you’ve entered. To view your configured publishing details, choose: File > Publishing Settings (Command-K) or choose the Publishing item under Settings in the sidebar. Check that all the fields are entered correctly: Server Address, Username, Password, Path, etc. Entering an incorrect Path is the most common cause of publishing problems in RapidWeaver. Some common site paths may include:

• /

• httpdocs/

• www/

• public_html/

You can always use the “Browse” button inside the publishing settings to pick the correct path on your server.

The list above is by no means an exhaustive list as paths vary greatly between different hosts, so if you’re still experiencing issues, please consult your web host’s online help to determine the Path required to upload to the correct folder. Sometimes, the Path may be known as the “Upload Folder”. You may also want to contact your web host directly and ensure that they have not made any recent changes to the server which may affect your settings and that you’ve not run out of webspace. Done that and still no luck? try this next:

Tweak Server Configurations

RapidWeaver has a number of options to configure publishing - particularly if you’re using FTPS uploading. Please check what your server is expecting, some hosting providers require specific settings. Due to the nature of how FTP works, RapidWeaver cannot reliably detect the correct settings that you should use. If in doubt email your hosting company. If you think it's all set up correctly, try this next:

Concurrent Connection Limit

If your host limits the number of connections that can be made to your server, you can set RapidWeaver to use a smaller number of connections when publishing. If in doubt set this to 1. To do this, open RapidWeaver’s Preferences window, and adjust the slider for the Maximum Concurrent Uploads to 1 before attempting to publish your project once again. If that didn't help, it's time to try something completely different:

Switch from FTP to SFTP

If you're having issues publishing via FTP, we recommend publishing via SFTP as this is often more reliable (and secure).

Contact your hosting company to check your SFTP details as they can often be slightly different to your FTP details.

Use a Standalone FTP Client

If you have no luck publishing inside RapidWeaver, we recommend entering your details into a third-party client to verify they work and are correct. Transmit and Cyberduck are both great FTP clients and can be downloaded freely for this test. If you're still having issues logging into your server with a third-party client it means your login credentials are incorrect. Please contact your hosting company to verify your details. If you successfully log in to your server with a third-party client, you can then export your site to a local folder with RapidWeaver, and then upload it directly using an FTP client as a temporary workaround. Now that's working, let's jump back over to RapidWeaver to try and resolve the upload issue:

Re-add your publishing details

If you have verified your publishing credentials are correct in another FTP app and it's still not working inside RapidWeaver please delete your publishing destination, and re-add a new publishing destination. By doing this you ensure all the details are new and verified. If you're super technical and can log into your hosting cPanel, you could try setting up a new FTP accountant see if that works. If this means nothing to you, you can safely ignore this and move on to the next troubleshooting step.

Check server space

This issue is surprisingly common, especially if you're publishing multiple websites to the same server. By default, RapidWeaver will backup your project file to the server, and this can easily build up over time and you can run out of server disk space. If you've run out of server disk space RapidWeaver will give the following error: “Couldn't upload to your FTP server” and if you click on the “i” to get more info it may say “Transferred a partial file” or “Operation was aborted by an application callback”. If you're seeing these errors, check how much space you're using on your server, and check how much you've allocated by logging into your hosting provider. You can safely delete some of the older RW backup files to make room for new uploads. If in doubt you can always email your hosting provider and ask how much space you're using and how much you have available. Once you have enough space, you should be able to resume updates to your website.

Changes aren't visible on Website

Use the File menu’s Re-Publish All Files option to re-upload your site. It may be that some files are missing and were not uploaded. You may also want to remove the history and browsing data in your web browser. Sometimes web browsers can display older cached data.

Some hosts may require you to use a path that begins with a forward slash (which has a special meaning to a web server). Unless you explicitly state that your path should start with a forward slash, you should not attempt to use a path with a forward slash - otherwise, you may well run into publishing difficulties.

Still need help publishing?

RapidWeaver can also be configured to produce a more in-depth report about publishing that the Realmac Software support team can use to identify potential problems. First of all open RapidWeaver’s preferences (Cmd,) and select the Publishing preferences pane. Make sure that the Enable Upload Logging option is checked.

• Quit RapidWeaver.

• Re-open your project in RapidWeaver.

• Attempt to republish your RapidWeaver project by choosing File>Re-Publish All Files.

• If the publishing feature returns an error, hit the “Send Upload Logs” button.

• It will then attempt to generate an email with the publishing logs, enter some details about your issue, and hit send!

Error Messages

Exporting If you’re seeing an error message when exporting your site, this may mean that there’s a problem with either an addon or a resource in your project. If an error message appears consistently when exporting a particular page, take a look at the page - are there any resources missing, or a particular addon that may be causing a problem?

Contacting Realmac Software

When contacting Realmac Software, please include as much detail as possible. Please also use the Help menu’s Copy Support Logs. Please be sure to include the following details in your message:

• Who are you hosting your website with?

• Which version of RapidWeaver are you using? What version of macOS is running on your Mac?

• How large is your RapidWeaver project file?

• Which, if any, third-party addons are you using with your project? Please include any third-party themes.

• Are you seeing an error message when publishing? Please include the full text of the error or, ideally, a screenshot.

We aim to reply to all messages within 2 business days. We know it's frustrating not being able to publish, but do remember we're only human and we do our best to help in what can be a very complex issue.

RapidWeaver’s Photo Album page makes it quick and easy to build online photo galleries and slideshows that look great across desktop and mobile devices.

Getting Started

To add a Photo Album page to your RapidWeaver site, simply add the Photo Album page type to your Page List. Click on the newly added page to give it a name. In the below example we will name the page "Gallery".

To add images to your new Photo Album page, click the [+] button at the bottom of the main edit window and add the images from your Mac's Finder (alternatively, you can drag and drop images into the main edit window). To remove images from the list, click the image(s) to highlight them and click the [-] button at the bottom of the main edit window.

The File Name and Caption fields are editable. To edit these fields single-click on the image's file name or caption field and enter your desired text.

Photo Album Settings

The Photo Album page comes with a variety of configurable settings to style your gallery or slideshow.

On your Photo Album page, go to Inspector > Photo Album > General tab (Option-Command-6).

1. Quality: Select the image quality for your added images and thumbnails. Quality options include Best, High, Medium, and Low. Using a lower image quality can save on page/file size resulting in faster page load speed, however it will reduce the display quality of your images. Likewise a higher quality will increase the page/file size slowing down your page load speed, however your image will look better.

2. Scale images: Check this box if you'd like for RapidWeaver to automatically scale your added images. This is selected by default and the default maximum size is 640px width. You can edit this value to your preferred maximum width size.

3. Maximum size: If the above Scale images box is checked, this field will be activated. You can enter your desired maximum width size for your added images.

4. Album type: Select if you'd like your images to be displayed as a Gallery or Slideshow.

5. Sort Order: Select how you'd like your images to be sorted on the page. Sort options include Custom, Filename, or Date. The Custom sort option will sort your images as they are arranged in your main edit window. You can drag the images around in the main edit window to rearrange the sort order. The Filename sort option will sort the images alphabetically on the page. The Date sort order will sort the images chronologically on the page. The date is pulled from the image's metadata.

Gallery Settings

1. Title: Give your Photo Album gallery a title. This will be displayed on your Photo Album page (see screenshot for example).

2. Description: Give your Photo Album gallery a description. This will be displayed on your Photo Album page (see screenshot for example).

3. Thumbnail Size: Select the size for your image thumbnails.

4. Use square thumbnails: Select this option if you'd like for RapidWeaver to display your image thumbnails uniformly as squares instead of retaining their original dimensions.

5. Captions: Select where you'd like your image captions to be displayed. Caption options include Nowhere, Everywhere, Thumbnails Only, or Full Size Images Only. *Please note if you do not add captions to your images, RapidWeaver will automatically use the Filename as the caption.

1. Home: Enter the text you'd like displayed for the link that will take your web visitors back to the main gallery page.

2. Use name of parent page: If this is checked, the "Home" link will use the name of your Photo Album page. In the above example, the "Home" link would be displayed as "Gallery" instead.

3. Previous: Enter the text you'd like displayed for the link that will take your web visitors back one image.

4. Next: Enter the text you'd like displayed for the link that will take your web visitors forward one image.

Slideshow Settings

1. Various slideshow settings:

• Controls: When selected, when hovering your mouse over the slideshow, the slideshow's controls will appear (forward arrow, back arrow, pause, etc.).

• Info: When selected, the image's caption will be displayed overlayed on the image.

• Loading Icon: When selected, a loading icon will appear while the images are being loaded in the slideshow.

1. Size: Select the desired width and height (in pixels) for your displayed slideshow.

2. Transition: Select from a list of transition effects between images. Options include Blend, Cube, Flash, Flip, Focus Fade, Gray Scale, Pivot, Push, Stack, Zoom In, and Zoom Out. Enter a transition time (in seconds) in the box next your selected transition effect.

3. Scale: Scale your images. Options include Scale to Fit, Scale to Fill, Downscale to Fit, and Downscale to Fill.

4. Image Pause: Enter the time (in seconds) for each image to be displayed in the slideshow.

5. Ken Burns: Select from a list of Ken Burns effects. Options include None, Random, Pan, Zoom In, and Zoom Out. Enter a time (in seconds) in the box next your selected Ken Burns effect.

EXIF Image Data

RapidWeaver's built-in Photo Album page can display your images' EXIF data on the Gallery album type. Simply check the EXIF tags box and then select which EXIF tags you'd like to be displayed from the list.

EXIF tags that have no data will not be displayed unless you select the box "Missing EXIF tags". When this box is checked, then your selected EXIF tags from the list will be displayed on the page, whether they contain EXIF data or not.

RapidWeaver has always been an excellent choice for those that are privacy-conscious, but we’ve gone even further with RapidWeaver Classic. All built-in themes use local resources, and this means none of them makes requests to third-party servers, you seriously can't get better than that.

You can find adjust the Privacy settings for your website under the "Privacy" section in your project file.

If you are using you might include a message like this:

This website uses cookies that help the website to function and also to track how you interact with our website.

Macros in RapidWeaver were initially implemented to help with theme development, however, some of them can be useful when used in the pages you create inside RapidWeaver. Let's get started by taking a look at an example that uses the Site Title macro.

Macro Example

Macros are tags that can be used within RapidWeaver pages to pull in content or details about your website. Macros tags also start and end with the % character.

For example, if you place "%site_title% within a text area on a page, the syntax would be replaced with the site title you specified in the Site Settings area.

Input: Welcome to %site_title%, I hope you like it.

Would then be turned into:

Output: Welcome to My Website, I hope you like it.

Why use a macro tag? If you used %site_title% throughout your site, you'd only have to update it in one place (Site Settings) to change the name of your website. Instead of having to manually change the instance on every page within your site.

Macro Syntax

RapidWeaver Classic support the following Macros:

%title% - Outputs the title of the current page.

%site_title% - Outputs the site title from the site setup.

%site_slogan% - Outputs the site slogan from the site setup.

%logo% - Outputs the logo from site setup, including required html. e.g.

<img src="rw_common/images/my_logo.jpg" width="350" height="100" alt="My Website">

%footer% - Outputs the contents of the footer from the site setup.

%email% - Outputs the email address from the site setup.

%website_address% - Outputs the website address as specified in the site setup.

%sidebar_title% - Outputs the sidebar title.

%sidebar% - Outputs the sidebar content.

%base_url% - Outputs the base URL of the website.

%resource(image.png)% - Outputs a link to the name resource.

%last_published% - Outputs the last published date as dd/mm/yyyy

%ogTitle% - Outputs the Open Graph Title (under Social Tags)

%ogDescription% - Outputs the Open Graph Description (under Social Tags)

%ogImage% - Outputs the url of the Open Graph Image (under Social Tags) e.g.

/resources/my-social-image.png

Resources Macro Example

The resources macro is one of the most useful macros. If you need to embed an image or have use for an image’s address, instead of hardcoding the link you can use a resource macro.

Whenever a resource macro is found in your project, RapidWeaver will substitute it for a link to the resource. Here's an example of the syntax:

%resource(image.jpg)%

The above macro would become a path to a resource called image.jpg. If the resource is inside a folder, be sure to include the name of the folder in your macro, like this:

%resource(folder-name/image.jpg)%

You can get a resources macro by right-clicking on an image or file in the Resources Browser and choosing "Copy Macro", a super handy, yet little known feature.

You can then paste the "macro" into any area when you want to link to that resource.

There are a few options when it comes to backing up your project, the first method we'd recommend is to publish a copy alongside your website. This can be done automatically inside of RapidWeaver.

Automatic Backup when publishing

When RapidWeaver publishes your website, an optional backup of the RapidWeaver project file can be uploaded at the same time. The project file is compressed as a ZIP file, and is placed in a secret folder on your website, meaning that if you know the address it can be downloaded and re-used.

You can enable backups to happen every time you publish, or on a less regular schedule. Backups only occur when your site is published, and do not happen in the background.

Project backup will increase the amount of time taken to publish your website. RapidWeaver cannot use multiple concurrent connections to upload a backup, as concurrent connections can only be used to upload different files.

Manually Backing up your Projects

You should always make copies or backups of your RapidWeaver Project file as this is the master file for your entire website. It's super important. You don't want it stolen or accidentally deleted! You have a few options to keep your site safe. First of all, we'd recommend backing up with Time Machine. This is built into macOS, and you just need an external drive to backup too. As well as using TimeMachine to back up your Mac on-site. We'd recommend using a cloud backup service alongside it. Our preferred solution is Arq, it's easy and cheap to set up.

Adding a site badge is a new feature in RapidWeaver Classic, it allows you to display a badge in the corner of your website. This feature is great to show your support for a cause or draw attention to a sale or product. While the feature may seem limited at first, the scope of things you can use it for is huge.

By Default, RapidWeaver will show a "Built with RapidWeaver" badge on all new projects. If your copy of RapidWeaver is registered you can turn it off or change the way it looks in the "Settings" area under "General".

Some of the basic settings are built into RapidWeaver, making it easy to customise:

• Icon (e.g. rapidweaver-icon.png)

• Title (e.g. Made With RapidWeaver)

• URL (e.g. https://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver)

• Position (i.e. you can pick a corner)

• Animation (i.e. how the badge appears)

• Delay (i.e. when the badge appears, either time or scroll distance-based)

The badge support light and dark mode and will switch background and text colour depending on the system settings.

However, you can go further by customising the way it looks with a little bit of CSS.

Badge CSS Options

The Badge supports the following CSS properties. They are listed out below along with some examples of customization.

--rw-badge-dark-background
--rw-badge-dark-color

--rw-badge-background
--rw-badge-color

--rw-badge-position-offset
--rw-badge-transition-duration
--rw-badge-font-family
--rw-badge-padding
--rw-badge-font-size
--rw-badge-border-radius
--rw-badge-box-shadow
--rw-badge-display
--rw-badge-align-items
--rw-badge-text-transform
--rw-badge-text-dectoration
--rw-badge-gap
--rw-badge-font-weight
--rw-badge-image-width
--rw-badge-image-height

How to customize the badge with CSS

You can customise the look of the badge with CSS, either per page or site-wide by writing code in the CSS Code areas.

Use the rapidweaver-badge CSS selector to make changes.

rapidweaver-badge {

}

Example CSS

To hide the badge on a certain page you can use the following CSS in the page "CSS" area.

rapidweaver-badge {
 visibility: hidden;
}

The following example, makes the background of the badge red, and the text semi transparent.

rapidweaver-badge {
  --rw-badge-background: red;
  --rw-badge-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
}

This example displays a larger icon, and puts a linear gradient in the background.

rapidweaver-badge {
      --rw-badge-color: white;
      --rw-badge-background: linear-gradient(to right, red, purple);
      --rw-badge-dark-background: linear-gradient(to right, orange, green);
      --rw-badge-padding: 1rem 3rem;
      --rw-badge-font-size: 2rem;
      --rw-badge-image-width: 64px;
      --rw-badge-image-height: 64px;
      --rw-badge-position-offset: 50px;
}

When all else fails and it's time to have our team take a look we recommend enabling upload logging inside of RapidWeaver for us to completely diagnose any publishing problems.

This option can be found in the RapidWeaver Preferences window (command-,). Preferences > Publishing > Enable Upload Logging

Once enabled RapidWeaver will log the output of its FTP engine. You can access the logs on a failed publish by pressing the “Send Upload Logs” button in the publishing window. You can look at this log to see if you can locate what the error might be. If you're still unsure, pressing the “Send Upload Logs” button will copy the logs file into a new email ready to be sent to support@realmacsoftware.com

Adding Resources

This section will cover how to add resources to the Resources Manager for use in your project.

Add File

Add a file to the resources browser for use in a project.

Add Folder

Creates a new folder inside of your Resources.

Add Remote Resource

The "Add Remote Resource" feature will download the resource and save it locally into the project.

When you add that resource to a project it does not link to the version online, it will use the local version of it.

When you upload your project it will upload that image resource to your server.

How to update/change your license key in RapidWeaver Classic

Step 1 - Deactivate Your Old License

First you will need to deactivate your old license. You can do that by:

• Select RapidWeaver Classic » Registration

• Click on the “Activations” button

• Click on the “Deactivate” button next to each device you’d like to activate your new license on.

Step 2 - Activate Your New License

Next you will activate your new license. You can do that by:

• Click on the “Activate License…” button, then enter your new license details, and finally click on the “Activate” button.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully updated your license in RapidWeaver Classic. You will see your new expiration date listed in the registration window. This will be 1 year from the date you purchased the new license.

Upgrade License Video Walkthrough

Below is a video to help guide you through the process.

If you have any questions or encounter any troubles feel free to drop us an email at support@realmacsoftware.com.

This feature is often overlooked but contains a lot of hidden power. IT's a fast and easy way to see how your website will look on different devices.

Getting Started

To open a preview of your site with the Simulator, click the "Simulate" toolbar item.

Here's a preview of the Simulator showing how the Realmac Software site would look on an iPhone X. You can change the size using the drop menu in the middle of the window.

Multiple Simulator Windows

...

Saving Simulator Layouts

RapidWeaver includes over fifty varying templates known as “themes”, including a number of modern responsive designs that you can use.

With a page now added to your project, choose Preview on the main toolbar to get your bearings (you can also toggle Preview mode with the keyboard shortcut Cmd-R). By default, RapidWeaver will apply the “Offroad” theme to your site to preview your content. We’re going to browse the available themes by toggling the Themes option on the main toolbar.

The Theme Browser allows you to apply any theme with a single click - you can customise each theme further once it’s selected. The Theme Browser allows you to search, select a specific folder (for example, to only show the more modern themes), and duplicate the themes to make modifications.

Once you’ve selected a theme, choose Master Styles in the Page List.

The Master Styles area contains the variations available as part of your selected theme, and allows you to customise the theme across your entire site. Master Styles is the best way to lay your entire site out, but if you need to customise the layout of a single page don’t worry - you can override your site-wide Master Styles on a per-page basis if you need to!

RapidWeaver comes with a host of useful keyboard shortcuts.

Project Shortcuts

Global Shortcuts

All .rw8 projects will open and work the same in RapidWeaver Classic as they did in RapidWeaver 8. RapidWeaver Classic also shares the same addons folder.

ALL RapidWeaver 8 projects are 100% compatible with RapidWeaver Classic.

When you open an existing RapidWeaver 8 project it will be upgraded to a RapidWeaver Classic project and saved as a copy with the extension .rwc — your original project will not be modified.

Once you've upgraded a project you should remember to always edit and work on the newer ones with the .rwc file extension.

Plugin Compatibility with RapidWeaver Classic

All plugins are compatible with RapidWeaver Classic.

Running Multiple Versions of RapidWeaver

As each version of RapidWeaver is a standalone app, it can easily be installed side-by-side, and can even share the same addons folder. RapidWeaver 8, RapidWeaver Classic, and the forthcoming RapidWeaver Elements can all be installed alongside each other without issue.

Upgrading from RapidWeaver 8 or earlier

This section details how to upgrade your project from earlier versions of RapidWeaver to the latest. You can download older versions of RapidWeaver, along with license numbers in the RapidWeaver FAQ.

RapidWeaver Classic (.rwc)

RapidWeaver Classic Project files use the .rwc file extension.

RapidWeaver 8 (.rw8)

RapidWeaver 8 Project files use the .rw8 file extension.

RapidWeaver 7 (.rw)

Make sure you're running RapidWeaver 7.5.5 (the latest version) - all files must be saved in this version before attempting to upgrade further. If you're using a custom add-on folder location, simply go to RapidWeaver > Preferences > Addons and choose your dedicated add-ons folder.

• Make a copy of your RapidWeaver 7 project file (backup)

• Right-click on your project file and select Open With > RapidWeaver 8

• Your project file will be upgraded to the RapidWeaver 8 format

• Add-ons: You can copy over RapidWeaver 7 add-ons to RapidWeaver 8 by going to RapidWeaver > Copy Addons from RapidWeaver 7

RapidWeaver 6 (.rw6)

Make sure you're running RapidWeaver 6.4 (the latest version) - all files must be saved in this version before attempting to upgrade.

• Make a copy of your RapidWeaver 6 project file (backup)

• Right-click on your project file and select Open With > RapidWeaver 8

• Your project file will be upgraded to the RapidWeaver 8 format

• Refer to our guide on manually copying add-ons over from RapidWeaver 6 to 8

RapidWeaver 5 (.rwsw)

Make sure you're running RapidWeaver 5.4.1 (the latest version) - all files must be saved in this version before attempting to upgrade.

• Make a copy of your RapidWeaver 5 project file (backup)

• Right-click on your project file and select Open With > RapidWeaver 6

• Your project file will be upgraded to the RapidWeaver 6 format

RapidWeaver 4 and earlier

While this technically could be achieved, we'd recommend starting afresh in a modern version of RapidWeaver to take advantage of the 10+ years of enhancements. Take it as an excuse to revamp your site!

This will guide you through adding Google Analytics to your website.

Please remember you'll need to publish your website online and visit your site before you'll see any tracked visitors in the Google Analytics Dashboard.

Adding Google Analytics to your RapidWeaver Project

Log into Google and go to the Stream details for your website property. You'll want to copy the code under Tagging Instructions > Add a new on-page tag.

Once you have copied the code, you'll need to add it to the header area on your website. To do this go to Settings > Code > Head and paste it in. See below for an example of how this should look.

To embed a video from YouTube you'll need to find and copy the HTML code to embed it. Don't worry, this sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Here's how to do it…

Find the video you want to embed on YouTube, and press the "Share" button located just below the video.

Press the "Embed" button in the pop-up window that appears.

Next, highlight and copy the HTML code on the right of the window.

Paste the copied HTML code into RapidWeaver while in Edit mode. In this example, we paste it into a Styled Text page.

Here's how the page and video appear when previewing the page inside RapidWeaver.

To embed a video from Vimeo you'll need to find and copy the HTML code to embed it. Don't worry, this sounds more complicated than it actually is.

Here's how to do it…

Find the video on Vimeo you'd like to embed, and click the "Share" button located just below the video.

Expand the "Show Options" link.

Next, select the options available to customize the video player that will be displayed on your website.

Then, highlight the code located in the "Embed" box and copy it.

You should now be able to preview your embedded Vimeo video in preview mode. If all looks well you are ready to publish.

RapidWeaver Classic doesn't have online editing capabilities built in. However, there are plenty of plugins and stacks that allow you to build a blog or site with online editing capabilities.

Here are a complete list of CMSs compatible with RapidWeaver.

• from (Blog focused)

• / from

• from

• from ( is open-source)

To edit a .htaccess file, go to your publishing setup in RapidWeaver, and towards the bottom of the panel, you'll see a button named "Edit .htaccess File" — This will search for your .htaccess file on your web server and preset it in a window ready for editing.

From here you can make changes to your .htaccess file, along with adding a comment for the change you are about to make.

You can roll back to a previous .htaccess file by using the Versions" drop-down menu in the editor window.

Redirect Examples

Here's an example of redirecting a page. The following code will redirect users trying to access the "/original-page/" to the "/new-page/".

Redirect 301 /original-page/ /new-page/

If we added the above code to the Realmac Software .htaccess file it would redirect users from this page: https://www.realmacvsoftware.com/original-page/ to this page: https://www.realmacvsoftware.com/new-page/

Redirect with Match

The following example will redirect all subpage URLs from the "/helpdesk/" folder to /support.

RedirectMatch 301 ^/helpdesk(.*)$ /support

What's a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.

Creating a Project File Zip File

Step 1 - Locate your RapidWeaver project file

This is the project you open, edit, and save when working on your website in RapidWeaver. In the below example we are storing our project files in the Documents folder which can be located in Mac’s Finder.

Step 2 - Select the project file

Select the project file you would like to share for troubleshooting assistance.

Step 3 - Compress the project file

Compress the project file by Ctrl-Click, right-click if you have a two-button mouse, or two-finger click if you are using a trackpad, then selecting Compress "filename" (the filename will be the name of your project file).

Step 4 - Drag compressed file to your Desktop

Drag the newly created zip file to your Desktop (if it’s not there already) so it’s easy to find. You’ll need it again at the end or this guide when you are ready to share the files.

Exporting Your Add-ons Folder

Now we’ll make a zip file for your Add-ons. RapidWeaver can do this automatically, so it’s a lot easier. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1 - Open up RapidWeaver

Step 2 - Open the Settings menu

Click on RapidWeaver Classic >> Settings. Alternatively if you already have a project open in RapidWeaver, you can select the Addons button located along the top toopbar menu.

Next select the Addons tab in the preferences pop-up window.

Step 3 - Export Addons Directory

Click the Export Addons Directory button. This will prompt you to save the exported zip file. Save it to your Desktop so it will be easy to find.

Sharing Your Files

If your newly created zip files are too large to send via email, you can share them via iCloud Drive. If you are using a different file sharing service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer, etc., follow their instructions for sharing files.

Below are the steps if you are using macOS Sequoia.

Step 1 - Drag your files to iCloud Drive

Drag the two zip files you created in the above steps from your Desktop to your iCloud Drive folder. In the below example we created a folder in our iCloud Drive folder called “share-with-realmac-software” and moved our zip files there.

Step 2 - Select the correct share settings

Ctrl-Click, right-click if you have a two-button mouse, or two-finger click if you are using a trackpad on the first file you’d like to share (in this example we will select the demo-project.zip file).

A Share File sheet contextual window will pop up. In this sheet, select the following:

1. Collaborate from the drop-down menu.

2. Click the arrow-down icon to view the share options. Select “Anyone with the link” from the “Who can access” drop-down menu. Select “View only” from the “Permissions” drop-down menu.

3. Select Invite with Link.

A share link will be generated and automatically copied to your Mac’s clipboard.

Step 3 - Paste the share link

Paste the share link that was copied to your clipboard in an email message to us.

Repeat step 2 for your My Addons.zip file, and paste that share link in the same email to us. You should now have two share links pasted in an email message ready to send to us.

Step 4 - Send your files

Below is what both you and us should see when opening your share links in a browser window. If you don't see the option to "Download a Copy", your share settings were selected incorrectly. Go back to Step 2 and try again.

Excellent Work

Once we receive your files we will start the troubleshooting process as soon as possible. If you have any questions feel free to follow up in the support ticket that is auto-created when submitting your email to us.

One of the quickest ways to start an online store is to use a service called with RapidWeaver.

You can download the for RapidWeaver and sign-up for a to get started.

👉 We have a collection of videos showing you how to get up and running with Ecwid in the .

Knowing who visits your site can be incredibly useful. Now that we’ve published your site, let’s look at ways of measuring how the site is performing. Initially we’re looking to make sure visitors are coming to your site (and how they’re discovering it). To do this, we’re going to add some simple code snippets to your RapidWeaver project that allows you to view visitor statistics via either Google’s free Analytics service, or a free GoSquared analytics account that’s included with every copy of RapidWeaver.

If you’ve never used Google Analytics before, this explains the basics. At the end of the Google Analytics registration process, you’ll be asked to add a site to your account. After entering your website address, Google will present you with the code that you need to carefully copy, and enter into RapidWeaver.  You should place the code that Google provides into the Code item in the sidebar, under the Head sub-tab.

Google Webmaster Tools

While Google Analytics provides you with details of how people are using your website, is a free service that allows you to see any potential issues for search engines that visit your site. The service highlights potential issues with broken links, missing sitemaps, and dozens of other items that may impede your appearance in search engine results.

Making your site SEO ready

Search Engines use a wide variety amount of different “signals” to judge the quality of a page - everything from the speed that a page loads, to the quality of the links to the page and the number of times any given phrase appear on each page. Unlike the early days of search engines, where pages could easily “game” their way to the top of a results page with keyword density, almost every aspect of your site can be used to rank it. Google produces a great to teach the basics - and there’s also a number of tools that you can use to inspect how your site performs once online. We’ll show you some of these in the next chapter, but first let’s make sure we cover the fundamentals that you site should include before we publish it!

The importance of responsive websites

If you’re using a responsive theme, this means you need to do absolutely nothing! All themes in RapidWeaver are fully responsive, which, in combination with any of the built-in plugins or version 4 of the Stacks plugin, allow you to build a fully-responsive site that works beautifully for mobile devices and desktop computers!

Optimise your Site

Over the years, we’ve learned a few tips about how to make your website sing when a search engine visits it. Here’s some top tips for preparing your website - we recommend you run through this checklist before you publish your site for the world to see! This checklist also forms the basis of RapidWeaver's Health Check feature - to get started, click the Health Check toolbar item and run a check!

• Make sure you’ve added descriptive browser titles in the RapidWeaver Page Inspector. Don’t be overly-verbose, or potentially spammy. Google and other search engines penalise sites that use “keyword stuffing” (the practice of cramming in lots of keywords you’re wanting to appear under).

• Use concise but descriptive filenames for web pages. For example,the Realmac Software About page uses as its web address. Keep website addresses short - some users will attempt to guess the address of pages, and http:// rapidweaver isn’t that guessable.

• Test your web site on a few different devices to gauge how the page displays, and how quickly it loads. If your site is responsive, don’t fret about making your site layout pixel- perfect at any given screen size. The whole point of responsive design is to allow the content to dynamically reflow: as long as there’s no quirks or overlapping content, you’re good to go.

• Make sure you’ve added concise description meta tags in the RapidWeaver Page Inspector for every page. While “description” metatags are no longer used by Google to determine your page’s ranking, they are used to generate the short snippets on Google’s results page. e.g. “Learn more about RapidWeaver, the award-wining website creation app for Mac”.

• Add “Alternate” descriptions to images in the Media Editor. Double-click on every image in your site, and in the popover ensure that the Alt Tag is something meaningful and human-readable. The Alt tag is shown when an image isn’t downloaded, and helps visitors who may not display images (e.g. visitors with a visual impairment may be using a screen reader to read pages aloud, or users using on a mobile connection while abroad may choose to disable images to avoid expensive roaming charges). Don’t try and over- load this with extra information, simply describe the content the user would otherwise see, and avoid generics such as “Logo” or “Button”. If you’re using photos, you may want to describe the content of the image: “Brighton Pier at Sunset”.

• Use the built in Search Engine Sitemap feature. RapidWeaver automatically adds your pages to a special, machine-readable, XML file that is automatically submitted to Google and other search engines on your behalf. If you want to hide a page from this sitemap, you’ll need to uncheck the Show in Navigation option in the Page Inspector.

As with all SEO tips, be aware that these are merely a set of suggestions, and not all- encompassing ways to appear on your chosen results page. Google uses a huge number of different “signals” to rate your page, and ensuring there’s great content to make it worth while for visitors should be your primary focus before embarking on any optimisations specifically for search engines! Remember also that changes made to your website will not instantly impact your appearance in search results, and it could be a month or more before substantial changes have any effect.

RapidWeaver SEO Tips

Good examples:

Use Page Titles to Describe Your Content

The page title is really important. Google tries to match the words in your title to the content the user sees. The two most important things to think about when writing page titles are: Use as many of the keywords you want to be found for as possible, without being spammy.

Describe the Page Content

Whilst most people think putting their company name at the beginning of the title is important, if you want the best results then your most important keywords should be at the beginning. Google cares more about the content than your company name. The page title should be between 50-60 characters, as this is the amount that will typically be displayed on Google. Going over 60 characters won’t harm you, but anything after roughly the 55 character mark won’t be displayed, or help your SEO score. Plus it looks neater, and more professional, if your entire title is displayed in search results.

Bad Examples:

• BCS - Brewing (Really bad)

• Ben’s Coffee - Location (Bad)

Coffee Brewing. Brewing Coffee at Ben’s Coffee Brewing Coffee Shop (Spammy, don’t do this) The first two examples are bad because they are short, don’t describe the page content, and don’t include many keywords. The third example is spammy, and will harm you in the long run. Google are getting better at filtering out sites that are attempting to game the system. So whilst you might see some short-term results, you’ll be feeling the wrath of Google once they realise what you’re up to. No-one wants to be banished to page ten for eternity.

Good examples:

• Learn how to brew amazing coffee at Ben’s Coffee Shop

• Drink the Best Coffee in Brighton at Ben’s Coffee Shop

These examples are good because they use keywords a coffee shop might want to be found for, describe the content on the page, and are roughly 55 characters long. These titles will give you the best long term results. Just make sure your content matches up with the title (we’ll talk about content more later). You can customise the title for each page on your RapidWeaver site by using the “Page Title” text box in the Page Inspector. Responsive Design At this point responsive design is pretty standard across all sites. If you’re maintaining a site that isn’t responsive, you need take the leap and make it responsive. Why? Because, for a while now, Google have been giving sites that are responsive, or “Mobile friendly” as they label them in search results, more points on searches made from a mobile device. The reason for this is because Google wants to ensure the sites they send you to are easy to use, on the device you’re using. If you keep getting sent to sites that are hard to use, you’ll find the “Google experience” annoying and might start using a competitor (Hello Bing). All RapidWeaver themes released in the last few years are responsive, so it’s easy to create a responsive, mobile friendly site. And with RapidWeaver’s built in “Responsive Preview” you can easily see how your site will look on desktop, tablet, and mobile. So just pick a theme, make sure your content layout is good on a variety of screen sizes, and you’re good to go!

Make it Fast

Make it Secure

You’ll want to get HTTPS setup on your server. This sounds scary, and it used to be, but these days we have sites like CloudFlare that will take care of it for you. Why do you need HTTPS? Again, mostly because Google is giving more points to sites that are secure (there are other reasons why secure sites are important, but it’s beyond the scope of this post). HTTPS is not something RapidWeaver can setup for you, it’s something that is handled by your server. You could go through the hassle of purchasing and installing a certificate, or if you’re just starting out I suggest you signup for a free CloudFlare account and setup HTTPS with them. Once you have your site setup with CloudFlare, it is literally two clicks and your site can be served over HTTPS.

Content is King

It’s true what those SEO experts say, “Content is King”. If you only do one thing, concentrate on adding quality, relevant content to your site. And do it on a regular basis, don’t allow your site to become stale. The best way to do this is to create a blog, and make a commitment to post regularly. You don’t need to go crazy and post updates five times a day — you’re not trying to replicate your twitter feed. Start slow, say one or two posts a month, and cover a topic that’s relevant to your business. Cover the topic in-depth, as doing so will show your visitors (and Google!) that you know what you’re talking about and that you’re a good source of information. Think about, and plan, what you’re going to write in each post. SEO experts will probably bang on about “keyword research”, giving you a long list of must-have tools that help you research and choose which keywords to use. Don’t worry about all that, there’s an easy way to get started... Start typing a couple of words in to Google, and see what it suggests. Those suggestions are the keywords you’ll want to focus on. For example, my imaginary coffee blog will likely cover how to brew coffee. If you start Googling for “coffee brew” you’ll get the following suggestions:

• coffee brewers

• coffee brewing

• coffee brewing methods

• coffee brewing ratio

Those are the most popular phrases people are searching for. Use those phrases as your keywords, and start writing posts that contain them both in the title and the body (you should also tag your posts). This is the basics of how you target the keywords you want to be found for. The main thing to keep in mind is, and I can’t stress this enough; Write good quality content that’s relevant to your business. Write something you’d want to read. Write it on a regular basis. I keep saying “good quality”, and I mean that in every sense of the word. Don’t be sloppy! Make sure there are no spelling mistakes and don’t use jargon or acronyms. Your content should sound professional and be easy to read. If you put this in to practice you’ll start to find people link to your articles, perhaps via their own blog or on social media. This is known as “link building”, which I’ll cover in another post, but in short: Link Building is increasing the number of inbound links to your site. You need to do this because it really helps your ranking score. SEO Roundup As I said at the start, implementing these tips won’t guarantee you a top spot on Google, but it’ll certainly give you an excellent foundation to build from. You won’t get to the top of Google (or even page one) over night, be patient and stick at it.

We’re always updating RapidWeaver, to keep things running smoothly. However, if you do find yourself running into a problem with RapidWeaver, there’s some very quick and easy ways to help diagnose what might be going on.

As RapidWeaver supports third-party addons (such as plugins, which run within RapidWeaver) it’s important to be aware that Realmac Software cannot offer technical support for third-party addons and you’ll need to contact the developer directly for help.

Step 1: Disable Addons

If RapidWeaver is crashing or not behaving itself, we recommend launching RapidWeaver without any third-party addons enabled. To do this, simply: Close RapidWeaver, then re-launch it while holding the Option key. This will disable all plugins.

If the fixes the issue when not using any RapidWeaver addons, you may want to try uninstalling individual addons one at a time to figure out which addon developer to contact.

Suppose a particular addon causes a problem either with your site or the performance of RapidWeaver. In that case, you should always contact the addon developer so that they can investigate and fix the issue.

Step 2: Check for Updates

Make sure you’re running the latest version of RapidWeaver. You can re-download RapidWeaver from the Realmac Software website at any time. You'll also want to ensure that your addons are up to date. Don't worry. It's simple. Go to the RapidWeaver menu (next to the File menu) and choose to Check for Updates. RapidWeaver > Checkfor Updates... This will check for updates to both RapidWeaver and any third-party plugins. We strongly recommend that you keep RapidWeaver and all Addons up to date. Use the latest version of macOS. Every release of macOS sees performance and stability improvements, and we recommend that you use the newest version of macOS supported by your copy of RapidWeaver. RapidWeaver also checks for updates on launch.

Step 3: Ask for Help

If you're a member of the RapidWeaver Community, you can Ask for Help. (Don't forget to search for help first to see if the question has already been answered.) If you're still having issues, you should contact support. Please include as many details as possible. Details about the plugins you're using, the project files, and screenshots always help. Suppose a particular addon causes a problem either with your site or the performance of RapidWeaver. In that case, you should always contact the developer of the addon so that they can investigate the issue.

Should you come across a bug in RapidWeaver there are a few things we need to help resolve the bug or issue you are seeing.

All bug reports should be sent to support@realmacsoftware.com so we can deal with them more swiftly. We'll contact you directly should we require any more information.

How to record your screen

Use QuickTimePlayer.app, this can be found in your Applications Folder.

To create a simple recording, choose File › New Screen Recording from the menu. Click the red record button, then follow the instructions on the screen. To save, choose File › Export and select the quality.

Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut to bring up the onscreen Screen Recording controls.

How to find a crash log

Whenever an application on macOS crashes, it’ll automatically create a .crash file containing details as to what may have caused the crash. In the rare event that RapidWeaver crashes, sending us a crash log will help us find out what caused the crash, and how we can fix it.

How to find your crash Logs(s):

• In the Finder, go to your Applications folder, then Utilities and launch Console.app

• Under the User Diagnostic Reports portion of the sidebar, locate the most recent crash.

• When found, Control-click it, and then select “Reveal in Finder” from the shortcut menu.

• Copy, or drag out the selected file from the Finder window and attach it to an email and send it to support@realmacsoftware.com

RapidWeaver takes care of everything for you, however, sometimes you need a little extra control or just prefer the way another tool works. We've listed out a collection of great tools and resources that work well alongside RapidWeaver.

Previewing Your Website

RapidWeaver has its own built-in Preview, as well as a Device Simulator with support for multiple devices, custom sizes and so much more. It also supports local PHP rendering. No need to spend time setting up MAMP.

Here are some alternative apps and services if you'd prefer not to use RapidWeaver's built-in tools:

• BrowserStack (Web App, Subscription)

• MAMP, local webserver (Mac App, Paid)

SEO

Search engine optimisation tools.

• SEO Site Checkup

Hosting Your Website

If you need somewhere to host your website we recommend using our official partner, Chillidog Hosting. We have a full publishing guide to using Chilidog with RapidWeaver.

Online Store Integration

The following services can be used alongside RapidWeaver to build an online website with Store front.

• Ecwid, sign-up here.

• ReflowHQ

• PayPal

Website Monitoring

Downtime happens, certificates expire and links break. Ensure your website is blazing fast, error free and properly indexed without the hassle of multiple tools.

• Oh Dear! (Used by Realmac Software)

Newsletter Software

Looking to start a Newsletter, here's some great options…

• Buttondown (Used by Realmac Software)

Open Graph

The following tools can help preview how your site will appear on search and in social media posts.

• OpenGraph Checker, Preview and generate open graph meta tags.

• Meta Tags Toolkit, Preview and generate open graph meta tags.

Publishing Your Website

RapidWeaver has a built-in publishing engine that supports FTP, SFTP, FTPS, and Amazon S3. RapidWeaver also keeps track of changes, so on subsequent publishes it will only upload the changed files.

There are plenty of alternative FTP clients on the Mac, here are just a few:

• Transmit (Mac App, Paid)

• Cyberduck (Mac App, Free/Donation)

• Command One (Map App, Paid)

• Forklift (Mac App, Paid)

Analytics for Your Website

• Matomo (Subscription)

• Plausible (Subscription)

• Fathom (Subscription)

• GoatCounter (Open source)

• Google Analytics (Free)

User Analytics

• CrazyEgg, heatmaps, surveys, A/B tests, and more.

Cookie Support

• CookieYes, Generate a customizable cookie banner, record user consent.

Contact Form

• Letterbird, a free contact form on the web that’s good enough.

Font Resources

• System Font Stack, a great option if you want to not load a separate font.

• Modern Font Stack, the fastest fonts available. No downloading, no layout shifts, no flashes.

• Google Fonts, making the web more beautiful, fast, and open through great typography.

• Font Style Matcher, a tool to match fallback fonts with web fonts.

SVG Graphics

• SVG Repo, free svg icons

• SVGOMG, SVG optimizer and minifier

• SVG Backgrounds, Customize and apply backgrounds.

• fffuel, SVG generator for gradients, patterns, shapes, and more.

Graphics and Animation

A collection of advanced tools to take your websites further.

• Tumult Hype, Create Interactive HTML5 web content and animations.

• Couverture, Easing Curve Editor with CSS export.

Learning More about Web Design

A collection of links to learn more about building websites.

• Web.dev, learn web design.

• Lean Web Club, course for learning javascript.

• HTML 5 Boilerplate, the web’s most popular front-end template.

Web Design Inspiration

A collection of design gallery to get inspiration for your next website project.

• Awwwards

• CSS Zen Garden

• Godly

• Landing Love

• One Page Love

• Bento Grids

• Dribbble

• Minimal Gallery

• Dead Simple Sites

Advanced Resources

A collection of resources for advanced users.

• Security Headers, check how your site scores on security.

• Brotil Test, check if your web server is sending the Brotli compressed images.

• HTTP Guide, learn more about the http protocol and headers.

• Why No Padlock, a simple tool that will tell you about any insecure items on your SSL page.

Sitelok works well with Rapidweaver and was chosen to create the Vibralogix.com website! They have released a manual for Rapidweaver 8 (RW8), which can be downloaded from the Sitelok page manuals section. 👉 SiteLok for RapidWeaver 8 Manual Here's a video from Vibralogix showing how to create a members area using Sitelok-generated snippets in Rapidweaver.

RapidWeaver Classic is a Universal app and compatible with both Intel and Apple Silicon-based Macs.

To take advantage of RapidWeaver on Apple Silicon based Macs, you’ll want to make sure ALL your plugins are up-to-date. If some of your installed plugins are not Universal, they will not run natively in RapidWeaver on Apple Silicon.

If a plugin isn't compatible with Apple Silicon you will see the following error:

RapidWeaver Failed to load some plugins

or

PluginName: Couldn't obtain plugin principle class

This guide will show you how to locate RapidWeaver Addons, Projects, and Preferences. This is especially helpful if you're upgrading or moving to another Mac.

How to Find and Backup Your Addons

To locate your third-party Addons launch RapidWeaver, and open the Preferences window and go to the Addons Tab.

You can then use the "Reveal in Finder" button to show the location of your addons. Alternatively there's an "Export Addons Directory" button that will export and zip your entire Addons directory.

The "Export Addons Directory" option will ask for a location to save the "My Adons.zip" file. This is useful to back up your addons or move them to another Mac.

How to Find Your RapidWeaver Preferences

The RapidWeaver preferences are located in the following locations:

~/Library/Containers/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver8/Data/Library/Preferences/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver8.plist

~/Library/Group Containers/P97H7FTHWN.com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver8/Library/Preferences/P97H7FTHWN.com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver8.plist

The license file(s) for RapidWeaver Classic are stored here (and also in the Keychain, search for DevAnt).

~/LibraryContainers/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver8/Data/Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver Classic/.licence

/Users/Shared/RapidWeaver (you can remove this folder)

Press command-shift-g in the Finder and paste each of the above into the Field, and hit Return. This should take you to the exact location.

How to Find Your Project Files

You'll need to copy over your project file(s), this file or files (depending on how many websites you’ve created in RapidWeaver) are often stored somewhere in your Documents folder — the files would be in the location you chose when saving your projects. For example, we keep ours in ~/Documents/Website Projects/ RapidWeaver Classic project files end with .rwc, and RapidWeaver element project files end with .rwe. Once you've found all your project files, you can copy them over to your new Mac.

Don't forget about Project Resources

By default, RapidWeaver is set to copy over any resources (files, images, etc) that you added to your project so you shouldn’t need to worry about this when moving projects to a new Mac. However, sometimes (if you chose) your project resources may be external, if that is the case make sure you copy over all images and files that your website may need. RapidWeaver will prompt you to locate these if it can't find them when you open your project.

RapidWeaver Classic is a very expandable and flexible piece of software. It supports many types of addons to allow you to build anything from a personal website to a complex online store.

What are Addons?

This is an umbrella term used to refer to any third-party or official extras you add on to RapidWeaver. Addons include things like plug-ins, but also extras like themes, snippets, and styles.

Where can I get Addons?

RapidWeaver users can browse and download addons at the . This is a free service run by Realmac Software to help customers find new and exciting addons!

Are you an Addon Developer?

Plug-in (.rwplugin)

Plug-in: This is an add-on that changes the way RapidWeaver works by adding binary code. Plug-ins can fundamentally alter the way RapidWeaver operates (like PlusKit) but usually just add another page type (like a Blog or Photo Album) when you click the + Add button.

Snippets (.rapidweaversnippet)

Snippet files can be sections of code or blocks of written content, you can even use them for general notes. Snippets are app-wide and specific to a Project file. To reveal and share a Snippet you can right-click on it in the Snippets window and select "Reveal Snippet" from the menu.

Styles (.rwstyles)

Theme styles are a way to globally or on a per-page basis change the way a theme looks. Styles often override colours, fonts, or layouts.

Theme (.rwtheme or .rapidweavertheme)

The layout and design of a RapidWeaver Classic site is controlled by a theme. A theme is a type of addon made up of HTML, CSS and Javascript files. Given the ease of changing a theme in your project (a single click in the Theme browser is all it takes!).

In this article, we'll walk through the process of creating zip file archives for both your project file and your Addons folder, then show you how to share the zip file with another RapdiWeaver user.

When the zip files are shared, you'll get links that you can copy & paste into an email.

Creating a Project File Zip File

First, we'll make a zip archive of your project file. Zipping the project compresses it and helps make it easier to send over the internet. Here's how to do it:

1. Locate your project file

Locate the RapidWeaver project file in the Finder. This is the project you open, edit, and save. If you don't know where the file is located in the Finder, searching for the file name in Spotlight () will help you find it.

2. Select the project file in the Finder

Just click on it so that it's highlighted.

3. Compress the project file

Ctrl-Click (or Right-Click if you have a two-button mouse) and choose Compress "filename" (except "filename" will be the actual name of your project file). The Finder will create a file called something like: filename.zip

4. Drag the zip file to the Desktop

You're done creating the project zip file. Now just drag the file to your Desktop, so it's easy to find. You'll need it again at the end when sharing these files.

Exporting Your Addons Folder

Now we'll make a zip file for your Addons. RapidWeaver can do this automatically, so it's a lot easier. Here's how to do it:

1. Open your project in RapidWeaver

Open any project in RapidWeaver. Even a new project is fine.

2. Click the Addons toolbar button.

If you can't find the Addons toolbar button, you can open the Settings… from the RapidWeaver menu. And select the Addons tab in the preferences window that appears.

3. Click the Export Addons Directory button.

This will prompt you to save the exported zip file. Just save it to Desktop so it will be easy to find.

Sharing Your Files

If your resulting Zip files are too large to send directly via email, you can share them via iCloud Drive. If you decide to use a different file-sharing service, just follow their instructions for sharing both zip files.

If you will be using iCloud Drive with macOS Ventura (macOS 13.x), this is how to do it:

1. Locate the zip files

Find the project and addons zip files we made in the above steps. Both should be on your Desktop. Move these to a folder in iCloud Drive, for example you can move them into a folder called "Share with Realmac Software".

2. Drag the zip files into your chosen iCloud Drive folder

Drag both zip files (the project zip file and the addons zip file) from the Desktop into your iCloud folder. In the below example we only moved the project zip file into iCould Drive, but you should move both your project and addons zip files in iCloud Drive.

3. Copy the project zip file link

Your project zip file should now be in your iCloud folder.

Select your project zip file by clicking on it. Ctrl-Click (or Right-Click if you have a two-button mouse) on the project zip file.

Choose Share from the pop-up menu.

A Share File sheet will pop up. In this sheet, select the following:

1. Collaborate from the drop-down menu.

2. Click the drop down arrow to expand the "Who can access" options.

3. Select "Anyone with the link" from the drop-down menu.

4. Select "View only" from the drop-down menu.

5. Select Invite with Link.

The share link will be copied to your clipboard.

4. Paste the project zip file link

Paste the link that was just copied to your clipboard into an email to Realmac support. Below is what the link looks like when it's opened.

5. Copy/Paste Addons Link

Repeat steps 3 and 4 for the addons zip file.

Send the Email

Once you've pasted the second link, you're all done. Now you can send the email with both links to anyone that needs to open or edit the project.

Version 1.0.7

Fixed: Banner shifting bug when scrolling down the page.

Version 1.0.5

Fixed: 3rd level sub navigation not accessible in slide-out navigation.

Version 1.0.2

Fixed: Navigation “Menu” button and mobile navigation not accessible.

Version 1.0.1

Added: Color picker for mobile menu background.

Added: Color picker for nav title hover underline.

Added: Color picker for Banner Import links.

Added: Scroll down nav menu is less wide.

Added: Site Logo hover now shows hand cursor.

Fixed: Scroll down nav menu background flash.

Fixed: Disable Nav Parent Pages, sub pages not accessible on iOS.

Fixed: Firefox, poor performance on navigation hover.

Fixed: Main and Sub HIDE hover underlines, not working.

Version 1.0.0

Original theme release

Q: Will past purchasers of Nick's Aspen theme get support from Realmac?

A: Yes, we'll offer support to anyone that previously purchased the Aspen theme directly from Nick Cates. However, we always recommend asking css/html and site building related questions on our Community Forum. Q: I already purchased Aspen from Nick Cates, do I need to buy it again?

A: No, the Realmac version has few changes. Keep using the version you purchased. You can download the most recent version of the theme from Nick Cates, using his order lookup tool. Realmac Customers should use the Realmac order lookup tool. Q: Are there any updates or are you just taking over support?

A: No significant updates were needed for Aspen. However, if updates are required, Realmac will make those changes and publish an update. This will be available to customers that purchased directly from Realmac.

Q: The Aspen theme is fairly old, does it still work okay?

A: Yes, absolutely, it's a great theme and can produce amazing websites that look and perform great on the web. The age of this theme is reflected in the price.

All premium themes are compatible with RapidWeaver 8 and RapidWeaver Classic and can be purchased from the Realmac Store.

Introducing Marvel, a Premium RapidWeaver theme that's truly EPIC! Unleash your creativity with Marvel's built-in features including edge-to-edge page sections, a drag-and-drop image/video banner area, and a super slide out navigation panel that's responsive across all devices. With its customizable features, responsive design, and stunning styles, Marvel is the ultimate choice for those looking to create websites that are out of this world!

or as part of our !

Below you will find some helpful tutorials to guide you through Marvel's features.

Marvel's Main Features

Theme Presets

Site Wide

Go to Master Style > select desired theme style from the Theme Styles dropdown menu.

Per Page

Mixed Media Banners

Below are the different banner options available in RapidWeaver's Premium Marvel theme and tutorials on how to add them.

Custom Banner Image (Site Wide)

This tutorial will show you how to add a site wide banner image to the Marvel theme.

1. In RapidWeaver, go to Settings > General, then drag and drop your image in the Banner input box.

Custom Banner Image (Per Page)

This tutorial will show you how to add a unique banner image per page to the Marvel theme.

Custom HTML5 Video Banner (Per Page)

This tutorial will show you how to add an HTML5 Video Banner to your pages in the Marvel theme.

<video loop muted autoplay class="feature"><source src="%resource(my_video.mp4)%" type="video/mp4"></video>

• Replace “my_video” with the name of your video file (no spaces).

In preview, your HTML5 video should now be playing!

Custom YouTube/Vimeo Video Banner (Per Page)

This tutorial will show you how to embed a YouTube or Vimeo video banner to the Marvel theme.

1. Copy your YouTube or Vimeo embed code. Usually you can find this by clicking the "Share" button located on the video's page. Below is an example for Vimeo.

• Add class="feature" to the iframe tag.

In preview, your YouTube or Vimeo video should now be displayed!

Custom Velvet Video Banner (Per Page)

This tutorial will show you how to embed a Velvet Video banner in the Marvel theme.

1. In edit mode, place your intended Velvet banner video, as the first Velvet stack in the page order.

In preview, your Velvet Video banner should now be displayed!

Custom SuperFlex 3 Slideshow Banner (Per Page)

This tutorial will show you how to add a SuperFlex 3 slideshow banner to the Marvel theme.

1. In your SuperFlex 3 stack settings, enable the Import option.

In preview, your SuperFlex 3 slideshow banner should now be displayed!

Responsive Video Player

This tutorial will show you how to embed a responsive YouTube or Vimeo video player on your pages in the Marvel theme.

1. Copy your YouTube or Vimeo embed code. Usually you can find this by clicking the "Share" button located on the video's page. Below is an example for YouTube.

1. Paste the embed code into the content edit area.

In preview, your responsive video should now be displayed.

Responsive Audio Player

This tutorial will show you how to add a responsive audio player in the Marvel Theme.

1. Paste the below audio player code snippet in the RapidWeaver page/section where you'd like the audio player to appear:

<audio preload="auto" controls><source src="%resource()%" /></audio>

• Add your audio filename within the resource () brackets in the above code.

In preview, your responsive audio player should now be displayed.

Featured Navigation Links

This tutorial will show you how to create featured navigation menu links in the Marvel theme.

1. Single-click a page link (left panel) to edit the page title.

2. Paste the below code snippet in front of the page title.

<i></i>

When in preview mode, you should now see your featured desktop navigation links.

Create Line Breaks in Marvel

This tutorial will show you how to create line breaks on your pages in the Marvel theme.

<hr>

Create Link Arrows in Marvel

This tutorial will show you how to create link arrows on your pages in the Marvel theme.

1. To style links with forward arrow icons, highlight the text you'd like make a link, then select the link icon.

1. Add a Custom Attribute, give it the name “class”, and value “social-forward”. Finally click the "Set Link" button.

In RapidWeaver's preview mode you will now see those link arrows next to the links you set.

Upper Right – Mobile Menu Button

This tutorial will show you how to move the mobile menu button that is displayed on mobile devices when viewing your Marvel theme built website.

1. The below custom css will make the mobile menu button appear in the upper right corner of a mobile device. Paste the below code snippet in Settings > Code > CSS.

@media screen and (max-width: 800px) { .menu_stick { top: 0;bottom: auto; } .slideout.menu_btn { top: 20px; bottom: auto; } }

Marvel's Split Stack

This tutorial will show you how to create an “edge to edge” section with Marvel's Split stack.

When downloading Marvel, in the folder you’ll find the Marvel Split stack, double-click the stack to install. Using a Stacks page, you can drag in the Marvel Split stack to create an “edge to edge” section within the main content area.

* NOTE: After using the Split stack, all following content MUST be contained within Split stacks to avoid layout issues.

* NOTE: Make sure you select matching Text, Header, and Link colors in your Marvel Split stack's settings so that they match your selected colors for these theme elements.

eCommerce with Marvel

Marvel comes packed with eCommerce features to help you build a successful eCommerce website. Give your customers an EPIC online shopping experience with Marvel.

Ecwid eCommerce

We've put together a short three part video tutorial that goes through how to setup your Ecwid store in RapidWeaver and start selling online with ease.

1) Start Selling online with RapidWeaver and Ecwid

2) Categories & Store Customization

3) Sell Online with Stacks and Ecwid

Cartloom eCommerce

This tutorial covers the built-in Cartloom eCommerce features that come with the Marvel theme.

Marvel comes with built-in Cartloom eCommerce integration and features.

• Display a Cartloom eCommerce shopping cart icon in upper right-hand corner of your page that updates in real-time as items are added or removed from the cart.

• Import a shopping bag, shopping basket, or shopping cart icon that triggers Cartloom's View Cart function anywhere in your page layout/design.

• Import a shopping bag, shopping basket, or shopping cart icon into Marvel's designated social icon areas that link to your eCommerce page.

Interactive Shopping Cart (Upper Right Corner)

To add an interactive shopping icon that updates in real-time as items are added/removed from your shopper's cart:

1. Go to Settings > Master Style > check the Show Cartloom Cart box.

1. Paste the below Cartloom Javascript snippet in Settings > Code > Head:

<script type="text/javascript" id="cljs" src="https://sellername.cartloom.com/cl4/cart.js"></script>

Interactive Shopping Cart (Anywhere)

To add an interactive shopping cart icon anywhere in your site's layout/design, copy any of the below code snippets and paste it into your page's content area within RapidWeaver's Edit mode:

Shopping Bag

<a class="social-bag cartloom-viewcart" href="#"></a>

Shopping Basket

<a class="social-basket cartloom-viewcart" href="#"></a> 

Shopping Cart

<a class="social-cart cartloom-viewcart" href="#"></a>

1. Paste the below Cartloom Javascript snippet under Settings > Code > Head:

<script type="text/javascript" id="cljs" src="https://sellername.cartloom.com/cl4/cart.js"></script>

eCommerce Shopping Icons

To add a shopping icon to Marvel's designated theme areas:

1. Copy your preferred shopping icon code snippet from the below options, then go to Settings > Code > Body > and paste your code there.

Shopping Bag

<a class="social-import social-bag" href="#"></a>

Shopping Basket

<a class="social-import social-basket" href="#"></a>

Shopping Cart

<a class="social-import social-cart" href="#"></a>

<a class="social-import social-bag" href="https://www.example.com/shop/"></a>

Introducing Aspen, a ruggedly beautiful Premium RapidWeaver theme. Immerse your visitors in a captivating browsing experience with Aspen's breathtaking design. Crafted with attention to detail, Aspen offers grand video/image banners, responsive audio and video layouts, and phenomenal creative freedom, making it the perfect companion for your web building adventure.

or as part of our !

Below you will find some helpful tutorials to guide you through Aspen's features.

Aspen's Main Features

Animated Site Titles

This tutorial will show you how to add an animated site title in the Aspen Theme.

Example video snippet:

<i>My</i> <i>Custom</i> <i>Website</i>

Autoplay Video Banners

This tutorial will show you how to set up an Autoplay Video Banner using the Aspen Theme.

3. Paste the autoplay video code snippet into that Slogan field:

<video autoplay playsinline muted loop="true" width="1280" height="720"><source type="video/mp4" src="%resource()%"></video>

1. Add your video filename within the resource () brackets in the above code.

Banner Import Stack

This tutorial will show you how to use the included Aspen Banner Import stack in your website.

Custom Banner Image (Site Wide)

This tutorial will show you how to add a site wide banner image to the Aspen theme.

1. In RapidWeaver, go to Settings > General, then drag and drop your image in the Banner input box.

Your custom banner will be displayed for all pages in RapidWeaver's Preview mode.

Custom Banner Images (Per Page)

This tutorial will show you how to add a per page banner image to the Aspen theme.

Custom Site Logo

This tutorial will show you how to add a custom site logo in the Aspen Theme.

Responsive Video Player

This tutorial will show you how to embed a responsive YouTube or Vimeo video player on your pages in the Aspen theme.

1. Copy the embed/share code from the video host.

• Copy your YouTube Embed code from here:

• Copy your Vimeo Embed code from here:

1. Paste the embed code in the RapidWeaver page/section where you'd like the fluid video player to appear.

Your responsive video player should now show in RapidWeaver's Preview mode.

Responsive Audio Player

This tutorial will show you how to add a responsive audio player in the Aspen Theme.

2. Paste the below audio player code snippet in the RapidWeaver page/section where you'd like the audio player to appear:

<audio preload="auto" controls><source src="%resource()%" /></audio>

1. Add your audio filename within the resource () brackets in the above code.

In preview, your responsive audio player should now be displayed.

Sidebar Split feature

This tutorial will show you how to use the split sidebar feature in the Aspen theme.

Aspen's Sidebar Import Stack

This tutorial will show you how to use the sidebar import stack inside your website using the Aspen theme.

Aspen's Split stack

Tutorial showing how to use the Aspen Split stack in your next website built with the Aspen theme.

Change the "Menu" button text

This tutorial will show you how to change the "Menu" button text in RapidWeaver's Aspen theme.

figure.theme header.theme .nav_btn:after{content: 'MENU';}

Once pasted, adjust the quoted 'MENU' text as needed. This will update the “Menu” button text site wide.

In the above example we changed 'MENU' to 'SUPER MENU'.

eCommerce with Aspen

Aspen comes packed with eCommerce features to help you build a successful eCommerce website. Take your online sales to new heights with Aspen, where only the sky is the limit.

Ecwid eCommerce

We've put together a short three part video tutorial that goes through how to setup your Ecwid store in RapidWeaver and start selling online with ease.

1) Start Selling online with RapidWeaver and Ecwid

2) Categories & Store Customization

3) Sell Online with Stacks and Ecwid

Cartloom eCommerce

This tutorial covers the built-in Cartloom eCommerce features that come with the Aspen theme.

Aspen comes with built-in Cartloom eCommerce integration and features.

• Display a Cartloom eCommerce shopping cart icon in upper right-hand corner of your page that updates in real-time as items are added or removed from the cart.

• Import a shopping bag, shopping basket, or shopping cart icon that triggers Cartloom's View Cart function anywhere in your page layout/design.

• Import a shopping bag, shopping basket, or shopping cart icon into Aspen's designated social icon areas that link to your eCommerce page.

Interactive Shopping Cart (Upper Right Corner)

To add an interactive shopping icon that updates in real-time as items are added/removed from your shopper's cart:

1. Go to Settings > Master Style > check the Show Cartloom Cart box > adjust the Shopping Icon Size per your desire.

1. Paste the Cartloom Javascript snippet below in Settings > Code > Head:

<script type="text/javascript" id="cljs" src="https://sellername.cartloom.com/cl4/cart.js"></script>

Interactive Shopping Cart (Anywhere)

To add an interactive shopping cart icon anywhere in your site's layout/design, copy any of the below code snippets and paste it into your page's content area within RapidWeaver's Edit mode:

Shopping Bag

<a class="social-bag cartloom-viewcart" href="#"></a>

Shopping Basket

<a class="social-basket cartloom-viewcart" href="#"></a> 

Shopping Cart

<a class="social-cart cartloom-viewcart" href="#"></a>

1. Paste the below Cartloom Javascript snippet under Settings > Code > Head:

<script type="text/javascript" id="cljs" src="https://sellername.cartloom.com/cl4/cart.js"></script>

eCommerce Shopping Icons

To add a shopping icon to Aspen's designated theme areas:

1. Copy your preferred shopping icon code snippet from the below options, then go to Settings > Code > Body > and paste your code there.

Shopping Bag

<a class="social-import social-bag" href="#"></a>

Shopping Basket

<a class="social-import social-basket" href="#"></a>

Shopping Cart

<a class="social-import social-cart" href="#"></a>

<a class="social-import social-bag" href="https://www.example.com/shop/"></a>