RapidWeaved interviews RapidWeaver Classroom

Just this past Friday I had the opportunity to talk to Ryan Smith of RapidWeaver Classroom, the original, longest running RapidWeaver tutorial/screencasting website. In light of the recent relaunch of RapidWeaver Classroom for it's 1st anniversary, I thought it would be nice to sit down with Ryan and talk about the last year and what the future has in store for the popular resource.

seyDoggy: When did you start RapidWeaver Classroom?

Ryan Smith: May 1, 2008. So it's just been a year

seyDoggy: What was your initial inspiration?

Ryan Smith: I had been doing one-on-one training and consulting with RapidWeaver users for about 6 months at the time. I thought there had to be a better way to teach users without having to do it individually and scheduling meeting times. I picked-up on the screencasting idea soon thereafter and it took-off from there!

seyDoggy: Tell me then what RapidWeaver Classroom has to offer RapidWeaver users?

Ryan Smith: RapidWeaver Classroom's video tutorial library is currently at around 130 screencasts totaling about 17 hours of instruction. I cover every feature of RapidWeaver (versions 3.6 and 4.0) in detail, and my approach is to assume that there is no familiarity with any of it. This is so a brand new RapidWeaver user, with no website design experience, can get very comfortable with the application, having each feature thoroughly explained. Beyond the program itself, I cover the 3rd-party plugins and even some 3rd-party themes. Most of the major plugins are already available, though I am posting weekly updates with new plugin screencasts.

Beyond the instruction available through the website, I want to provide a service that has great value, where with little expense, a person can learn how to create and maintain their own website, or even offer website design as a service. I want everyone who subscribes to become confident in their abilities to use RapidWeaver and design a website.

seyDoggy: Do you handle certain tutorial requests, and if so, what are some of the most frequently asked questions?

Ryan Smith: I do have subscribers request specific tutorials on occasion, and I keep a list of these for future consideration. I am most likely to fulfill requests on subjects that I receive more inquiries on. For example, a popular subject is SEO, and so I am planning an entire section on the subject. For those who have very specific project-specific needs, it doesn't make sense to publish a screencast on the topic, but I do still provide my consulting service, and I can even create personalized screencasts for those individuals.

seyDoggy: In the last year RapidWeaver has seen a lot of changes and the user base has grown significantly. How has this effected your overall approach?

Ryan Smith: I think it confirms the approach I take as I create my tutorials. Instead of just "showing" how to do something, my intention is to actually teach. So it's not about seeing how something works, but seeing and understanding why. With all of these new users adopting RapidWeaver as their development platform, it's important to me that they understand the value of the application, its strengths and capabilities. This is also why I continue to release tutorials on the 3rd-party plugins and themes, to help users understand how RapidWeaver can be enhanced to do even more for them.

seyDoggy: I have heard many users say you have a measured, patient approach and your technique makes no assumptions as to the users ability. What are the things you try to keep in mind about your students when preparing a new video?

Ryan Smith: That's great you've been told that, because that is absolutely my intention. I have an I.T. support background, and I.T. support people have a tendency to be too technical when speaking with the average user who is needing support. I think through that experience I developed my methods of explaining and teaching - to make no assumptions and to explain things accordingly, without antagonizing someone at the same time. So this is my approach as I create my tutorials. I might provide too much detail for some users, but I'd rather be accused of doing that then take the chance of skimming over crucial details.

seyDoggy: So you've recently relaunched your site and service in celebration of 1 year in service. What was the motivation for this?

Ryan Smith: In all honesty, when I first launched RapidWeaver Classroom a year ago, I was more focused on the content (screencasts) and didn't put enough effort into the design of the website. I think the original design of the website was average, and since I am teaching people how to use RapidWeaver, I needed to do a better job of showing-off its capabilities. I spent a lot of time in choosing the design, the layout of my content and which plugins I should utilize to achieve what I wanted. I'm especially thankful to you for your help with the theme, and to Isaiah (YourHead) for the Stacks plugin - which I have used heavily in the new design.

seyDoggy: How has the decision to make some tutorials available on DVD been received and will you make the rest available at some point?

Ryan Smith: There have been some sales of the DVD, but it's not "flying off the shelves" by any means. The intended audience for the DVD is those who have bandwidth restrictions imposed by their ISP, those with poor or unreliable connections, or those who travel a lot and don't always have Internet access. I am always open to feedback from students and visitors, so I am kind of "playing it by ear" in regards to the DVD.

seyDoggy: What great things can we expect from RapidWeaver Classrooms in the next year?

Ryan Smith: Lots of things, and I hope they are considered great! There will continue to be the weekly updates of new screencasts, with the goal of exceeding 200 screencasts by the end of 2009. In addition, I am in the planning stages of something completely new, and I expect to have an announcement on this by the end of June.

seyDoggy: What are some of your favorite RapidWeaver innovations since you've started using RapidWeaver?

Ryan Smith: Well I absolutely loved the entire overhaul that was done to the interface with the 4.0 upgrade. Browsing themes became so difficult with the narrow theme drawer and the horizontal scrolling in 3.x, so the theme drawer in 4.0 was a very welcome improvement. I think that the overall usability really improved with 4.0, though the built-in pages haven't seen many major changes. The 3rd-party community has really taken the application to a whole new level since I started with RapidWeaver back in November of 2005. Blocks and now Stacks, PlusKit, Accordion, Carousel, Collage, e-commerce with PayLoom, GoogaLoom and the new RapidCart, and ExtraContent-enabled themes now take content layout to a whole new level. I don't know what RapidWeaver would be without the 3rd-party developers - I don't even want to imagine it!

seyDoggy: And one final question... you are stranded on a tropical island and have to choose between a hot model or a Macbook Pro (solar powered of course). Which one gets sent packing?

Ryan Smith: I suppose my wife is not with me so I'd have to take the MacBook Pro to communicate with her. There's also that email thing that could probably be beneficial in getting me off the island. Besides, how would I keep RapidWeaver Classroom updated without a computer?

Theme Review: Neutron by GWDI

Aside from the BlocksBox review a while back, I haven't been reviewing RapidWeaver themes, and I hope that's something that changes beginning with this new review of Neutron by GWDI. GWDI has built-up a nice portfolio or RapidWeaver themes, and by browsing the previews you will see that they are quality themes that should not disappoint. GWDI was kind enough to provide me with its newest theme, Neutron, for review here at RapidWeaved.

Theme Style and Options

Neutron is a clean, flexible theme that doesn't rely on heavy graphics to get the job done. You receive a good amount of theme variations, including: width of 600-1000px, logo placement, body text alignment, title alignment, fonts, font sizes, line height, sidebar placement, and color-picker support. I especially appreciate the range of width options, font sizes, line height and color-picker support. The font size options actually give you pixel measurements for the smaller sizes and EMs for the larger options -- so regardless of which "font-measurement camp" you are in, you should be satisfied. :) Color-picker support covers pretty much everything and there are 6 additional built-in styles to get you going.

Neutron has nice logo support through RapidWeaver's Site Setup panel. I added logos of several different sizes and shapes -- both square and rectangular, and they all appeared perfectly. The header itself is not one complete image, but a repeating horizontal image that boasts a nice vertical gradient, overlaying whatever header color you choose through the color-picker. This means you won't be adding full-size custom headers, but I bet you could pull something off using the RapidWeaver's logo feature.

There are 3 levels of navigation in Neutron. The primary navigation bar is located at the top of the layout just above the header, with the 2nd and 3rd nav levels appearing horizontally just below the header. As far as content is concerned, Neutron has styles for all 6 Headline tags and a nice script-like font styling for the blockquote. Of course you can do a lot of text customization using the available theme variations. The line-height option is a nice touch and I'd like to see that available in all themes.

Quirks
There's a small number of minor quirks I encountered while testing the theme. The theme's default styles gives you some text color issues, specifically in the nav bar where the inactive page link is a dark blue on black, and in the footer where the hyperlink color is white on white. Of course these can be quickly adjusted with the color-picker so it's very minor. Apart from that, you might see a few confusing results when using the color-picker. Adjusting the Title Text also adjusts the breadcrumb and footer hyperlinks with the same color, and Link affects the H1-H3 tags (not H4-H6) in addition to the links, even though I don't have the H-tags linked. You will also want to adjust the line-height variation for the blog page, otherwise the two lines of the blog title (title and date/category lines) run into each other -- more significantly in some browsers than in others. Speaking of browsers...

Browser Compatibility
I exported a sample Neutron site and viewed it in Safari 3, Firefox (Mac & PC) and IE6 & 7. Aside from a minor issue in IE6 everything looked great in all browsers. As I mentioned above you'll probably want to increase the line-height for the blog page, though. The IE6 issue is that the container extends out to the right an additional 5px or so, creating a thin, vertical line to the right of the header and all the way down the page. It blends with the content and footer areas since it is the same color, but it sticks-out on account of the header being different. There is a separate stylesheet for IE6, so it's likely a quick fix to eliminate this issue.

Conclusion
Neutron is a great, clean theme with a lot of flexibility and very little to be concerned about when it comes to bugs. I took a quick peek at the main styles.css document and it's very cleanly coded and CSSEdit-friendly for all you theme modification freaks... *points at self.* Thanks again to GWDI for the opportunity to review Neutron, and I definitely look forward to its future offerings.

10 Questions: Chris of Varsis Studio

Chris of Varsis Studio has been busy developing the highly anticipated CoverFlow plugin for RapidWeaver. Well-known for their 3rd-party theme offerings, Varsis Studio has their first plugin in the late stages of beta testing. Chris was kind enough to field some questions for this RapidWeaved interview. Enjoy!

RapidWeaved: To my knowledge you are the first developer of both themes and plugins for RapidWeaver. What do you enjoy about developing for RW?

Chris: I am not the only, but only one to make a somewhat sophisticated plugin. Josh Lockhart made a Yahoo search plugin [RapidSearch].

I enjoy everything about developing for Rapidweaver. I don't have to handle much on the back end but it has been a large learning experience, from beginning to start. I started doing themes a long time ago, and enjoyed that. I like mostly the large community and helpful people, I know how much help it is for people to get one-on-one experience and I like to do the same for customers and for my themes. Also, I enjoy others doing the same respect for me. I love doing this, and being a part time job has paid off a fair bit for me, as I don't have too many large, long breaks it helps to be doing this.

RapidWeaved: What was your motivation to branch into plugin development?

Chris: I wanted to learn something new, and I did and I still am learning. I have learned a lot on the way.

RapidWeaved: Before you started the CoverFlow project you asked the community what plugin they'd like to see. What was it about CoverFlow that made you decide to take it on?

Chris: CoverFlow seemed to be something new and innovative. It also was the most popular request I noticed, and I happened to find a lot of helpful stuff in creating the plugin; also got an experience in Flash which I did learn awhile back but never used it. It [Flash] has evolved a lot in the last few years.

RapidWeaved: Not only did you involve the RW community in deciding your first plugin, you've made everyone a part of the entire development process. You've made the betas public from very early on and have possibly the longest thread on the support forum! How has the experience been with making this process so public?

Chris: I have enjoyed it. I wish I could do themes like that, unfortunately there is no way to secure development on a theme, unlike a plugin. I like to implement what the community wants, not what I want, and it does seem to be very helpful to work, and also giving people the public beta gives them a chance to tell me what they would like or need.

RapidWeaved: Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the feedback and requests?

Chris: Sometimes, yes. It has been overwhelming in-between school and this. But I try to get back on everything, and fulfill as many requests as I can though some are hard to do, or are almost impossible to do within coverFlow.

RapidWeaved: What makes you consider and address one feature request over another?

Chris: I try to weed out the impossible ones over the possible ones. It is hard because most of them are possible, but I try to get the most needed ones, or most requested.

RapidWeaved: What are some of the challenges you've faced during development?

Chris: I have had to learn how to replicate the users experience, but I have had to learn how to fix the problems. This is technically my first project, and learning the RapidWeaver API is like learning a new language. I've had to learn how to do everything just about from top to bottom.

RapidWeaved: Any projections on when CoverFlow could go final?

Chris: I hope to be getting close to the final here. With Flickr going to be supported in the next version, I hope the requests will finally slow down.

RapidWeaved: Have you started to consider what your next plugin might be?

Chris: I have considered it, but I haven't found any ideas which I will enjoy as much as this one yet.

RapidWeaved: Final question: Ben vs. Dan in a sock wrestling match. Who do you put your money on?

Chris: Who's the bigger guy? LOL I have never met them in real life so I don't know, but just for the sake of it, I would say Dan!

BlocksBox & JonasThemes

I've recently had the pleasure of working with the BlocksBox theme and talking with its developer, Jonas of JonasThemes. BlocksBox is probably the most unique of all the available RapidWeaver themes in that it is a blank slate -- no menu, no content containers -- and pretty much relies fully on the Blocks plugin from YourHead. The power of Blocks, combined with BlockBox and its variations, allows the RapidWeaver user to essentially develop their own theme and website with little limitation beyond their own imagination.

BlocksBox is literally a blank page when you first bring it up in RW's Preview mode, but there are categories of variations that allow you to quickly style the layout for your website. The variations in the Theme Inspector include: background color using the color picker, a custom background image, background image position, background image repeat (horizontally, vertically, or both), top spacing, header logo, font, font size, text color and styling using the color picker, photo album styling, blog styling, file sharing styling and contact form styling. These variations let you define some constants throughout your website, but everything else can be as dynamic as you wish since it is all added through Blocks.

RapidWeaver users are so accustomed to the navigation menu being one of the defining features of a theme that it can be a bit awkward to envision a theme without a navigation menu. The Blocks plugin provides the flexibility to create your menu with BlocksBox -- using plain text, image text or images you've collected or created yourself. Blocks' mouseover feature for images presents some particularly exciting options for your navigation menu where you can create some really cool hover effects for the menu options.

For my testing I created a splash page for a website using BlocksBox. I used a repeating image horizontally and vertically for the background of the site and placed the logo in the top left-corner of my Blocks page. I then added some text in a text block and added some text images I created in Photoshop for the menu options. Using the mouseover feature I animated the menu links by having them change colors on hover. In about 20 minutes I had a nice-looking splash page that doesn't look like something normally created in RapidWeaver. The BlocksBox-included variations made it especially easy to accomplish an attractive background without knowledge of CSS.

As it exists in its current version, BlocksBox is quite a powerful tool for creating a completely original website. The limitations I noticed were on account of what is expected to exist in a "normal" RapidWeaver theme. Typically a Blocks page will be the content area of your website that fits into a structured content container, but in the case of BlocksBox the Blocks page is the website, so that means that you will need to create the containers and divisions of your site's layout using lines and/or graphics if that's what you want. Graphic designers or people with some graphic skill will benefit when using BlocksBox -- not to say that BlocksBox users need to have graphic design skills to create something impressive. By the way, there is a nice showcase at the JonasThemes website that will give you some examples of the power behind BlocksBox.

Jonas has given me a beta version of his next update to BlocksBox, and at first glance it appears the new features will address some of the perceived limitations. At the least the update presents options that will make the design process even easier, so I look forward to the public release of this update in the future. And speaking of Jonas, I asked him to answer a few questions for me and so I will close-out this article with some insight from the BlocksBox Man himself!

RapidWeaved: How did your idea for BlocksBox come about?

Jonas: At first I build websites using the standard RapidWeaver themes. But after making about three websites I wanted to be able to have more influence on the layout. Because of the predefined layout in RapidWeaver I was forced using iWeb instead. But then I missed all the great page-styles and plug-ins, so I switched back and found the solution in using really minimal themes in combination with Blocks. I still wondered why there was no theme made specially for Blocks. I contacted Isaiah from Yourhead and he was shocked as well that no theme-developer created it yet. At that moment I never wrote a single line of code but three weeks later the first (not so stable version) of BlocksBox was launched to my own surprise.

RapidWeaved: What were some of the challenges you faced while developing the theme?

Jonas: The biggest challenge was to learn all the necessary code (.plist xhtml and css) and at the same time writing the BlocksBox-theme. I learned a lot during the development. And actually I still do not like writing codes but that's why I wrote BlocksBox.

RapidWeaved: How dependent is BlocksBox on the Blocks plugin? Can the theme be used without Blocks?

Jonas: BlocksBox has been written with Blocks in mind. BlocksBox can't function normal without it. Due to page-blocks most other page types can be imported into the Blocks pagestyle. BlocksBox makes Blocks a lay-out editor instead of just a content editing plug-in.

RapidWeaved: Since you started with a virtually limitless theme, do you see yourself creating more themes in the future?

Jonas: I am having some more theme ideas but at the moment I want BlocksBox to be better and more customizable first.

RapidWeaved: What are your plans concerning updates/upgrades for BlocksBox?

Jonas: I am currently working on a major BlocksBox upgrade. In the new version people do not need to enter the theme if they want custom background and it will also be possible to use the standard RW menu-system. Due to my study it may take some more time then originally planned but it will be sweet. Besides the theme the website will be updated as well with a lot more information.

Week in Review: February 3rd- 9th

In case you missed it...

Plugin Announcements
CoverFlow
Work continues on this plugin and is now available at version 0.6.2.

Theme Announcements
Theme 010
The newest release from Theme Weaver.

OHM 1.1.2
A minor but important update to the Rapid Ideas theme.

Gothic 3.0.1
Another theme update from Rapid Ideas.

Week in Review: January 27th - February 2nd

In case you missed it...

Plugin Announcements
Accordion 1.3.1
The outstanding Accordion plugin has been updated with the latest version of Mootools.

Carousel 1.2 Beta 2
This update to the beta corrects a bug relating to Internet Explorer.

FlexibleList 1.0.2
This update is mostly bug fixes with one new feature supporting Blocks pageblocks.

PageTOC Update
This update adds the smooth scrolling feature as an option.

CoverFlow
Progress continues on this awesome plugin which is now at version 0.6.

RapidGuestbookTdb
This version of the guestbook plugin functions without a MySQL database.

Theme Announcements
Headliner
RapidWeaver Themes has updated this theme to be fully compatible with RW 3.6.

Golden Gate
Michel Honold releases another free theme.

Alpha Theme Update
RealMac has updated its built-in Alpha theme, fixing an Internet Explorer issue.

Gary and the venerable RWT

seyDoggy: RapidWeaverThemes.com (RWT) is one of the original, if not THE original third party developer of RapidWeaver themes; what's it like to be able to fly that banner?

Gary: Well, to be completely honest I try not to fly that banner very often. As you know Dave Cantu was the original owner of RWT and I feel a little funny about claiming to be the first.

seyDoggy: For those that don't know, Dave Cantu cut his theme dev teeth on the now defunct Site Studio (a forerunner of sorts to todays RapidWeaver) before he founded RWT. How did you come to be in the captains chair at RWT?

Gary: Well, where do I begin ... way "back in the day" when RapidWeaver was still in version 3.0, I began using it for some small personal sites. In those days there were not very many 3rd party developers (only Dave, Charlie, Michaelangelo and Scott) so I was naturally intrigued with their themes. But around June or July of 05 there was some pretty strong dialog on the forums about 3rd party themes and how you could and could not use them etc... So much of it seemed really stupid to me so I decided to start my own little business developing themes. I was already familiar with html and was learning the ins and outs of css pretty fast. In the early days, it was seyDoggys' "abLe" theme, RapidIdeas "Diamond" theme and Multithemes themes that really opened my eyes as to what could actually be done with an RW theme. After some time, Dave approached me about buying him out and things just fell into place.

seyDoggy: For a while you ran both Pioneer Themes (your "own little business") and RWT in parallel. Is this still true today or has RWT pretty much absorbed Pioneer themes?

Gary: Originally my intentions were for it to be the other way around. I wanted for Pioneer to be the "mothership" and eventually do away with RWT. But I soon realized how powerful a name can be. (example: I could sell the exact same themes on Pioneer and RWT and the sales from RWT would be 10 times what Pioneer would be)

seyDoggy: You and I have seen RapidWeaver come up from being a small time app with a great community, to a critically acclaimed app with an unbelievably vibrant and lively community. Do you think you would be developing themes today if RapidWeaver were just as big but without the great community?

Gary: I seriously doubt it. A great part of what makes it so rewarding is the RW community. Dan and Co. have done an outstanding job of creating a RW "ecosystem".

seyDoggy: You probably have the most extensive theme library of any pro 3rd party developer. What drives you most to be as prolific as you are?

Gary: The monthly bills I have to pay ... lol, but seriously, usually it goes something like this. I see a website that I like and I say "ooh, I bet I could do something like that" and so I will sit down and try. A lot of times I will get an e-mail asking for a particular type of theme and I try to oblige.

seyDoggy: Where do you see RapidWeaver and RWT one year from now?

Gary: Boy I wish I knew ;). I am they type to always see the big picture. As I see Apples market share growing more and more that tells me that Realmac and RapidWeaver will only grow. They have a strong product and a great community. I think that that will bode well for the developers who have stuck it out. (You and me would be included in that list) As far as RWT ... there are so many things I would like to do with RWT but the but we're a prisoner to the name. Our Name will always be "RapidWeaverThemes". Where we go has a lot to do with where Realmac goes. If version 4 brings us some much needed changes then there will be a lot of room for expansion. If version 4 is pretty much the same then it will be harder to expand.

seyDoggy: What changes in RapidWeaver have impressed you the most since RW 3.0, and what changes do you think are still needed?

Gary: Well, the most obvious change would be the addition of the Color Choose that 3.6 brought. I would also have to say that the 3rd party plug-ins that are now available have been the most welcome change. I would like to see RW add native support for more navigation menu's as well as native support for 2 sidebars. Being able to do more in the footer area would also be a welcome addition. Gone are the days when RW was just a good "bloggers" web app. It has become so much more and I would like to see RW incorporate those into version 4+.

seyDoggy: Final question, I promise... wings or drumstick?

Gary: Drumsticks for sure.