Isaiah Carew of YourHead today announced the official 1.0 release of Stacks. Stacks is an amazing RapidWeaver plug-in that allows simple drag-and-drop web page creation.

“We're very proud to announce that we've completed our beta testing and we've released Stacks 1.0. Over the past two months we've had help from thousands of beta testers and have fixed more bugs than we care to admit. The result of all that hard work by the dedicated testers is the most powerful tool for RapidWeaver layout ever.”

Stacks come with a number of ready made Stacks objects: Text, Columns, Image, Left Float Image (text wraps around the image), Right Float Image (text wraps around image), HTML and Stack (think rows). Third party developers are also building Stacks Objects to add even more functionality. Theme design outfit Elixir Graphics has released a free Twitter stack that imports a Twitter feed into your web page.

The best thing about Stacks is that you can “nest” objects within other objects. For example, lets say you want a two column layout on the top of your page and in the right hand column you want to easily place a Twitter feed:



Check out the Stacks page over at YourHead for more info. Isaiah has created some excellent screen casts showing how to use Stacks and highlighting its feature set. You can also download the demo before you buy.

Stacks is $19.95 and requires Leopard 10.5, RapidWeaver 4.2.1 or later and will work on both Intel and PowerPC Macintosh computers.

Tags:plug-ins, new, announcement

Yesterday RapidWeaver Plugs, makers of the wonderful Styled Text+ plug-in for RapidWeaver, released a new, incredibly useful plug-in: Partitions. Partitions allows RapidWeaver’s to slice and dice a page into sections making organizing content a breeze. The real power with Partitions comes when using it on a project with Loghound’s amazing PlusKit plug-in. With Pluskit in the project, you can import any other page style into a partition.

Each partition can be styled separately from the others and there are also alignment controls, border, margin and back ground color settings. See the page inspector images below:




Partition sells for $16.00 USD which is an amazing price for an amazing plug-in. Read more about Partitions here in the Partitions announcement thread at the RapidWeaver support forums. You can also get more information and download a demo at RapidWeaver Plugs.

Tags:plug-ins, new

Yesterday, Henk Vrieselaar released Bohemian for RapidWeaver. Bohemian boasts 4 Extra Content areas as well as TextBoxes.

Bohemian includes:

• 5 different built-in headerimages and the ability to add 10 custom header images, or choose any backgroundcolour or pattern.
• Up to 4 ExtraContent containers (examples)
• 8 different transparent effects on the header image and the ability to use your custom effect.
• Different body and header, beam and content, top and footer, subheader and submenu background patterns built right into the theme. 10 are built right in and you can also add your own or replace the other ones. Or choose a colour! There are thousands of combinations with patterns and/or colours.
• Three options for the position of the Sidebarheader: in the Sidebar, below or on the Header Image.
• BOHEMIAN Split has a SplitMenu and BOHEMIAN Dual has a DualMenu: the first level of navigation is always horizontal and displays at the top of the page. For second level navigation, you decide if you’d prefer it vertically in the Sidebar or horizontally below the header image. Read more about the menus here.
• Many color picker features
• I’ve added the demo BannerZest header above (with title) in the index.html to try it immedately after purchasing the theme. Just enable the radio button “Display the banner” in the Theme Styles.

TextBoxes:

“I’ve added TextBoxes on some pages. They are in the downloadfile. Paste them anywhere (Content, Sidebar, SidebarHeader, Footer, etc). In only two steps you’ve made a textbox. The ReadMe file explains how to style these boxes (size, colours, fonts, fontsize, border, padding, add columns, show it with a backgroundimage, a pattern or a colour, or make the background transparent, and much more). This page shows three different textboxes in the sidebar and an ExtraContent area between the Content and the Footer. TextBoxes are similar with ExtraContent, but you can as much as you like on a RW-page. You can use these textboxes in other themes too! You can turn ExtraContent in this theme off and use TextBoxes instead. Some like only the ease of ExtraContent, others prefer a combination of ExtraContent with TextBoxes. Some don’t like the ExtraContent at all and only want to use TextBoxes. It’s up yo you with this theme!”

Read more...

Tags:theme

We know you’ve all been waiting perched on the edges of your seats. First, though, we’d like to once again thank RealMac Software for their generous gifts. RapidWeaver and LittleSnapper are killer apps and a couple of lucky Mac users are getting them for free this holiday season!

And the winners are:

Sandy L.
RapidWeaver

Paul C.
LittleSnapper

Congratulations to our winners and everyone else, thanks for entering. Winners, keep an eye on your inbox.

Tags:littlesnapper, giveaways

The Holiday Season is a time for gathering with family and friends and reflecting on all we hold dear and giving thanks for all that we have. It’s a season of joy and excitement, especially for the little ones, and over indulging and bulging waistlines for us adults. Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la...

It’s also the season to get stuff! Ho Ho Ho! Santa (Nik from RealMac Software) just stopped by AYAAW’s corporate headquarters and dropped off a couple of really neat gifts. Time to make your list and check it twice. If you’ve been naughty you might get a present but your chances are better if you’ve been nice. Actually not, we’re just trying to promote niceness here.

So what are these gifts we’re giving away? Glad you asked. We’re happy and excited to be giving away 1 license for LittleSnapper ($39 USD) and 1 license for RapidWeaver ($79 USD). LittleSnapper has already become the premier, at least in our opinion, OS X screen snapping and cataloging app. Read more about LittleSnapper in our First Look At RealMac Software’s LittleSnapper post from last week.

RapidWeaver is, of course, the best and most powerful website creation software available for OS X or any other platform. You just can’t beat its simplicity and extensibility. RapidWeaver also boasts the best user to user forum on the internet so you always have hundreds if not thousands of other RapidWeaver users on hand to help you through any issues you might run into.

If owning either of these best-in-class apps appeals to you and you haven’t already purchased a license for them then read on.

To enter the giveaway, just head on over to our Holidays Giveaway page, enter your info and click submit. That’s all there is to it. Don’t worry, we’re not collecting info to sell to spammers or for any other nefarious reason. We need your name and email address because if you win we need to be able to contact you and send you the license codes. You may enter from now until 11:59p.m. Central Standard Time on December 27th.




From all of us here at AYAAW to all of you have a safe and happy holiday season!

RSS Feed (you can also find this link in the sidebar)

Tags:giveaways, littlesnapper, software

Yesterday, Elixir Graphics released Float for RapidWeaver. Float boasts:

“a huge number professionally designed, stylish background styles. The backgrounds included in this theme serve as both a header and a site background. Included in Float are 27 graphical backgrounds along with the ability to use the color picker to choose your own solid color. Or, simply hide the background altogether.

Float includes seven sidebar variations. Not only can you place your sidebar on the left or the right, but you can also choose to locate it at the bottom of the site, just above the footer. In addition to normal sidebar styles you can choose to dress up the sidebar as well. We offer an option for a 3D inset look on either the left or the right, as well as a talk-bubble-esque look for the sidebar at the bottom.

Float incorporates a very stylish search feature into its menu bar. When a visitor to your site clicks the magnifying glass located on the right-hand side of the menu bar a search field will float up and allow them to use Google to search your site.

One of the main highlights of the Float theme is its beautiful floating menu bar. It allows users to navigate your site in style. In setting up your site with RapidWeaver, and our Float theme, you have a wide variety of options available to you.”

We bought Float straight away and found it to be a really great theme. It’s light-weight, fast loading and the integrated Google site search is a great addition. Adam Shiver of Elixir Graphics and the creator of Float has to be one of the most talented artists we’ve found working on themes for RapidWeaver. When you buy a theme from Elixir you know you’re getting a well crafted, beautiful theme.

If you’re wanting or needing some extra graphics to dress up your website, check out Elixir’s Extras page for add-on packs of headers, icons, Collage and Accordion styles. We love his style and no doubt you will too!

Tags:theme

YourHead Software yesterday treated RapidWeaver’s to a sneak peak of the as yet unreleased Stacks plug-in. Stacks looks to be a “must have” RapidWeaver plug-in and will no doubt be a big hit among novice and advanced weaver’s alike. With Stacks, users get Blocks like drag and drop functionality. Stacks goes further, however, and adds dynamic text fluidity to webpage layout. Stacks coolest feature, in our opinion, is nest-able objects. According to YourHead’s Stacks page:

“Build columns within columns within rows within columns. Or group a stack of objects inside a box. Almost anything is possible with Stacks.”

We were lucky enough to get in on beta testing and can safely say that Stacks floored us. It might be going a bit too far to say that Stacks brings revolutionary new features and ease of use to building websites with RapidWeaver, but from our early testing we aren’t too far of the mark. Stacks truly is a very special plug-in. Here are the types of stacks available:

• Text
• Images
• HTML
• Columns
• Left Floating Image
• Right Floating Image
• YouTube
• Stack (gives you another area to drop all of the above)

Each stack is also customizable. You can change the color of the stack background, for example, or rotate, scale and blur images via pop-up HUD’s. Oh and did we mention that @import and Loghound’s awesome Plus-Kit plug-in works just fine with Stacks? Well, it does at least in our testing. If you’re curious to see what you can do with Stacks check out our Stacks Demo page. For even more Stacks info watch the screen cast included on the Stacks page. Isaiah Carew of YourHead runs through many of Stacks features and gives a better idea of what it will bring to the RapidWeaver table. Then check out SupportCasts Stacks screen cast for another great video on Stacks,

We’re very excited here at AYAAW and can’t wait for the official release of Stacks next year. Isaiah, here’s our wallet, take what need.

Tags:plug-ins, yourhead

The fine folks at Realmac Software have been hard at work since releasing LittleSnapper last week and have released the first update. Version 1.0.1 includes plenty of fixes and improvements and of course is a free update to paid users.

If you don’t know what LittleSnapper is, check out our “First Look” post from release day and then head on over to Realmac Software’s LittleSnapper website and download the trial. If you’re in need of an outstanding screen snapping app with fantastic organizing features LittleSnapper may be for you.

Tags:update, littlesnapper

We're not sure how this slip past us but RapidWeaver Themes, one of our favorite RapidWeaver design outfits, released a new theme on Friday by the name of Buzz. Buzz incorporates the new Extra Content feature we reported with the announcement and release of seyDesigns Gotem theme.

“NOT ONLY IS THE BUZZ THEME A "3 COLUMN MASTERPIECE" IT IS ALSO ONE OF THE FIRST THEMES TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE ALL NEW "MY EXTRA CONTAINERS" BY ADDING 4 EXTRA CONTENT CONTAINERS TO THE THEME. THE "MY EXTRA CONTAINERS" IS A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT FROM ADAM MERRIFIELD AT SEYDESIGN, GIUSEPPE CARUSO AT (((BONSAI STUDIO))). THESE EXTRA CONTAINERS WILL GIVE YOU CONTROL THAT YOU HAVE NEVER HAD IN A RW ... UNTIL NOW.”

Besides the Extra Content feature, Buzz offers:

• 17 Stock and Customizable Headers
• 5 RWmultitool Header Slots
• Web friendly width of 960 px
• 7 Pre-Installed "File Sharing" Icons
• Ability to show Blog Categories in either sidebar or in both sidebars
• Colour Picker Options for nearly everything including the "My Extra Containers"
• Valid XHTML and CSS

Buzz is priced at $15.00 and can be purchased at RWT's theme store.

Tags:theme

Yesterday, seyDesigns released seyDoggie Gotem theme for RapidWeaver. Gotem is the first RapidWeaver theme that incorporates a new feature: ExtraContent. ExtraContent allows the user to insert extra content into areas of a webpage not normally available in RapidWeaver via a special code snippet that comes bundled with Gotem.

ExtraContent came about when a handful of 3rd party developers got together to address the need for more content spaces in RapidWeaver. While the content area and sidebar are ample space for the vast majority of RapidWeaver users, there are some who want more flexibility to add content in ways keeping with todays modern web designs. ExtraContent was the solution agreed upon by (((Bonsai Studios))), RapidWeaverThemes.com and seyDesign, as an easy means of end users adding more content to their site, in developer designated areas of ExtraContent enabled themes. While these areas will vary from theme to theme, the process will be very much the same. These developers worked closely to come up with a solution that would give all users a common experience.
Features:
◦ ExtraContent enabled
◦ Two ExtraContent areas
◦ 10 Custom headers
◦ RWmultitool Ready
◦ Split navigation
◦ Width control
◦ Header height control
◦ 3 background textures
◦ Dual sidebar control
◦ Choice of font style
◦ Color control
◦ and more...


Gotem sells for $19.49 (CAD) and you can preview the new theme over at seyDesigns.

Tags:theme

yabdab Software, makers of the PayLoom and GoogaLoom plug-ins for RapidWeaver, announced today the immediate availability of FormLoom. FormLoom is a plug-in designed to create forms that go beyond what the Contact page included with RapidWeaver can do. FormLoom offers the following features:

• AJAX Powered (never leave the page submission).
• Include CC and BCC addresses.
• Limit which files can be attached based on file extension.
• Filter input for possible spam injections.
• Includes reCaptcha security questions.
• Send Receipt email to sender.
• Custom Success message to sender.
• Customize look with CSS
• Automated MySQL Entry (coming in final release)

Requirements for building and serving up FormLoom pages are:

RapidWeaver 4
Server running PHP 5 or better.
Server running MySQL 5 or better (optional).

We here at AYAAW are very excited about this new plug-in and we've even thrown together a Contact Us page using it. Unfortunately there are a few kinks to work out yet so don't bother trying to send us anything through the page. We won't get it. Don't worry, as soon as its functional we'll let you know.

Tags:plug-ins

RapidWeaver MultiTool 2 will be on sale today over at MacZot for the low, low price of $12.00. Normally a $20 application this companion app to RapidWeaver makes swapping out RapidWeaver theme graphics a cinch. With a simple drag and drop approach, RW MultiTool 2 allows you to replace many of the theme elements quickly and easily without have to know anything about theme or how they're made.

RW MultiTool 2 also includes many image editing tools so you can tweak the look of your graphics or images until they're just right: layer transparency, Text tool, flip, rotate and scale, hue, saturation and brightness, filters and borders. As always, you can try RW MultiTool 2 before you buy but the sale does end at midnight tonight so don't dilly dally too long. If you've ever wanted to change a graphic or the look of your RapidWeaver project's theme, but didn't know how, look no further than RW MultiTool 2.

Tags:accessories, software

Hey all you budding RapidWeaver's check out our hot-off-the-presses Building Better 404 Pages tutorial over in the RapidWeaver Tutorial section. We give you the low down on creating custom 404 redirect pages that not only make life easier on your website's visitors but it'll make Google happier. After all, that's what its all about right? Making Google spiders happy.

Tags:tutorial

Gary Byrd of RapidWeaver Themes and Mudbug Software (maker of Webify), and Ollie Levy have teamed up as RapidWeaver Plugs and have released a killer RapidWeaver plug-in as their inaugural offering: Styled Text +. Styled Text + is a new page type that builds on the Styled Text page included with RapidWeaver by adding a dedicated header and footer area on each page. The header and footer are set up as mini Styled Text pages within the page so you have all the regular Styled Text page tools at your disposal. This is a truly sweet plug-in and RapidWeaver Plugs is selling it for the absurdly low price of $5. If you use RapidWeaver for building sites and use the Styled Text page Styled Text + will quickly pay for itself in time saved not having to fiddle with snippets or trying to decipher all the code you have pasted into your Styled Text pages. We love it here at AYAAW and are already using it on our site.

Download the demo and try it out before you buy.

Tags:plug-ins

MacZot is hosting 30 RWT RapidWeaver Themes at half off for todays deal. The bundle includes some of the nicest, cleanest and fast loading themes there are. Each theme is highly customizable and the bundle also includes 100 additional header graphics, 100 buttons, several icons and some of the PhotoShop files that RWT used to create the various themes. The bundle, normally priced at an already low $44 is on sale today at MacZot for $22. If you RapidWeave you owe it to yourself to snap this bundle up. RWT is one of the top third party RapidWeaver theme developers and provides outstanding customer service.

Don't let this fantastic deal to own 30 high quality RapidWeaver themes pass you by. You have 19 hours, 8 minutes and 47 seconds left to take advantage of this deal.

Weave on!

Tags:theme, maczot

Recently, AYAAW noted that third party RapidWeaver developers were starting to integrate the Sparkle updating system into thier plug-ins. One of the top plug-n developers, Loghound, has finished upgrading all his plug-ins with Sparkle. If you use RapidWeaver with any plug-ins installed you know how huge this is. In the not too distant future the first step in troubleshooting RW, "check to see if all your plug-ins are up-to-date" will be a distant, bad memory.

We here at AYAAW use a lot of plug-ins, probably more than your average RapidWeaver user. 16 to be exact, 5 of which are made by Loghound. Add those to the 2 YourHead has Sparklefied and that's the majority of the plug-ins we use on a daily basis. Sweet!

So, AYAAW sends out a big thanks to Loghound for all his hard work. He's top-dog in our book!

Tags:plug-ins

I love creating websites in RapidWeaver (one of my all time favorite apps) so anytime a new theme is released I have to check it out. Top notch theme developer seyDesign released DEViANT Pro theme today and it's a beauty! Among the RapidWeaver crowd (there are more of us than you think) seyDesign is known for creating beautiful, light-weight and fast loading themes and DEViANT Pro is no different. Check out the screen shots below. I really like the optional "Wood Fence" background. There are also dark and light gradient background options as well as the standard RapidWeaver 4 theme variations. Check out the DEViANT Pro preview over at seyDesigns.

Tags:theme, new release

Something great is happening in and around the RapidWeaver community: plug-ins are getting updated with Sparkle auto-update functionality. If you use RapidWeaver, which we do everyday for this and other sites, and have bought plug-ins to add features to it, you'll appreciate this. The process of keeping your plug-ins up to date is and arduous one and is generally the first step you take in troubleshooting RapidWeaver ungoodliness (hey if Steve can make up words, so can I). We have 15 plug-ins installed here at AYAAW. That's 15 different change logs we have to check every time RapidWeaver gets updated or when RW starts acting up (ungoodliness). The good news is that RW's awesome third party developers are always improving their plug-ins. That bad news is that its a royal pain in the keister to have to individually check each plug-in to see if its up to date. Anywho, the premier third party developers are now integrating Sparkle auto updating into their plug-ins so hopefully this will be a distant bad memory in the not so distant future.

So far, these are the plug-ins that we know include Sparkle auto-updating:

Yourhead's Collage, Carousel and Blocks
Loghound's PlusKit

If you know of more let us know. In the meantime for help keeping your plug-ins up to date and for other general RapidWeaver goodness, check out Ed Brenner's myRapidWeaver site.

Tags:plug-ins, update

Robbie White announced the release of a new RapidWeaver theme yesterday: Spectrum. The new theme continues to push the envelope in terms of features and beautiful design that RapidWeaver users can incorporate into their own websites.

Spectrum’s fading/glowing navigation system is probably it’s most noticeable feature but not the only one. Spectrum features fading/glowing navigation in the sidebar as well, where your second and third tier page navigation controls reside. The theme comes with a variety of header artwork, Google and RapidSearch JavaScript search snippets and of course, validates XHTML and CSS valid.

If you own RapidWeaver you owe it to yourself to check out Robbie White’s Spectrum live demo.

Joe Henry
AYAAW

Tags:theme, announcement