Build Your First Website
A quick-start guide on building your first website with RapidWeaver Classic
When you first launch RapidWeaver the Project Window will appear.
Welcome to RapidWeaver
When the Projects window is shown for the first time, RapidWeaver takes you to the Examples tab. This area shows the five included example projects, built by some of the best third-party addon developers. Each project highlights one of the modern, responsive themes included with RapidWeaver and includes a selection of different pages, meaning you can use these examples as a starting point for your own projects.
Any projects you create in RapidWeaver will appear in the Recent tab - and for ease of use, RapidWeaver will remember your selection of either Recent or Examples.
The number of Recent sites that RapidWeaver lists will depend on the setting in System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Menu Bar > Recent documents, applications, and servers drop down, and the list of files is derived from the mac OS “Recent Files” list.
In this tutorial, you’ll build a project from scratch so that you can understand how the example sites are made, so choose "Create a new RapidWeaver Project" in the Projects window. You can also use the File menu’s New Project option or the keyboard shortcut Cmd-Shift-N.
The new project is empty right now, so let’s add a page to the project. There are multiple page types you can add:
- Stacks (third-party plugin)
The Add menu shows all the available page types (sometimes referred to as “plugins”) that you can add to a RapidWeaver project. The Add menu will adapt as you use RapidWeaver, suggesting your most recently used plugins.
Let's get started by adding a Styled Text page.
Add a Styled Text page
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 customize 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.
Toggle the theme browser