Book Image

RapidWeaver 5 Beginner's Guide

By : Joe Workman
Book Image

RapidWeaver 5 Beginner's Guide

By: Joe Workman

Overview of this book

<p>RapidWeaver allows users with any level of expertise to build beautiful and professional looking websites. The novice user will love the drag and drop, what you see is what you get interface. The advanced users will love that they can get down and dirty with some code when they need to. <br /> <br /> This book covers all aspects of developing a website with RapidWeaver. Whether you want a family website to display photos from your latest vacation or a small business that is looking to increase your web presence, this book has got you covered. If you have a Mac and want a website, you need this book. <br /> <br /> This book dives into all the components required to build a website with RapidWeaver. The first half of this book builds upon itself and shows you all of the basic building blocks that you will need to develop great websites. It starts off with a basic tour of RapidWeaver and gets you building your first webpage in the first chapter. The book progresses onto how to customize the look and feel of your website with themes and adding simple webpages with text and images all the way to blogs and photo galleries.</p> <p>The second half of the book dives into more advanced topics that can really help you take your websites to the next level. This includes e-commerce, blogs, managing web content outside of RapidWeaver, Search Engine Optimization and even a little programming. By the end of this book, you will have a solid foundation that will allow you to build powerful websites.&nbsp;</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
RapidWeaver 5 Beginner’s Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Installing RapidWeaver


In order for us to be able to build our first website, we need to download and install RapidWeaver 5 first. If you already have RapidWeaver installed, please feel free to jump to the next section. As with many third-party OS X applications today, there are two ways to obtain RapidWeaver: the Mac App Store (MAS) or directly from Realmac Software's website. Let's go through both options, and get you up and running.

The Mac App store

The Mac App store has become a very popular delivery channel for software. It allows you to browse through thousands of third-party applications and purchase them directly within the app. Another benefit is that it takes care of all the licensing for you, so you don't have to worry about storing your license keys any more.

Follow these simple steps in order to obtain RapidWeaver via the MAS:

  1. Launch the Mac App Store application on your machine (requires Mac OS X 10.6.8).

  2. Search and locate RapidWeaver using the search box at the top right-hand corner of the App Store.

  3. Once you are at the RapidWeaver page (shown in the preceding screenshot) simply click on the Buy button.

  4. Enter your username and password and the MAS will take care of the purchasing and installing RapidWeaver for you.

  5. Open your Applications folder, locate RapidWeaver, and double-click to launch it.

  6. You can drag RapidWeaver onto your dock for quick access in the future as well.

RealmacSoftware.com

If you do not have the App Store application on your machine or you just prefer not to use MAS, you can purchase RapidWeaver directly from Realmac Software. You can also simply download the trial version of RapidWeaver if you just want to check it out.

You can use the trial version for as long as you like. However, it is limited to just three pages.

  1. Head over to the RapidWeaver product page: http://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/overview/.

  2. Click on the Download button to get your trial copy of RapidWeaver.

  3. Once the download is complete, open the ZIP file found in your Downloads folder.

  4. Drag RapidWeaver.app from Downloads to your Applications folder in the Finder.

  5. Open your Applications folder, locate RapidWeaver, and double-click to launch it.

  6. When you first launch RapidWeaver, you will be given the following three options:

    • Purchase RapidWeaver (either within the app or online)

    • Enter a valid serial number

    • Run RapidWeaver in demo mode