Choosing a Theme

RapidWeaver’s theme-based workflow allows you to focus on the content in Edit mode. But to bring together a site, you will need to choose a theme. In the main menu bar the ‘Themes’ button shows and hides the Theme Browser. From the there you can choose a theme for your site by simply clicking on the theme’s image. You can customise the theme further via the ‘Theme Variations’ area of the Page Inspector.

Figure 1: Theme Browser

Note: In order to use the Theme Browser, you need to ensure you've added a page to your RapidWeaver project.

Adding a link to another page

Figure 2: Add Link SheetOf course, you will want to create links to other pages, either within your site or to an external page on another website. With RapidWeaver you don’t need to write any code to do this. Highlight the text you want to link, and then at the bottom of the window click the ‘Add Link’ button. You can either enter a URL, or choose a page inside the RapidWeaver project from the drop-down menu titled ‘Page’. If you link to a page in your project, RapidWeaver will always ensure that the tracks the link to ensure it is always correct.

Editing the Site Title and Slogan

Figure 3: Site Setup SheetWithin the site, you will notice the page has a title of ‘My Site’, and slogan of ‘Changing the world, one website at a time’. To change them, open up the Site Setup sheet by clicking the ‘Setup’ button on the RapidWeaver toolbar, or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + 1. The settings for the Site Title and Slogan are found under the ‘General’ tab.

Arranging the navigation menu

Figure 4: Arranging the Page ListRapidWeaver generates the navigation menu of the site automatically based on the arrangement of pages in the left-hand Page List. To create a sub-page in the navigation structure (irrespective of the page’s folder) simply drag the soon-to-be sub-page onto the page that will be above it in the menu as shown to the left. A disclosure triangle will appear to show that there are sub-pages and allow you condense the sub-menu in the Page List to take up less screen space).

Renaming Pages

Figure 5: General Page SettingsOnce you have added a few pages and some content to your site, it’s time to think about other details such as filenames for pages. You edit the details of each page within the Page Inspector (View > Show Page Inspector option, or keyboard shortcut Cmd + Shift + i). Under the General Settings tab, you will find all the settings for the page.

To change the name of the page shown in the navigation menu, change the Page Title to something other than ‘Untitled Page 1’ by double-clicking in the page in the left-hand list. You should also consider changing the Browser Title of the page that appears in a web-browsers Window title. This is a good first step in Search Engine Optimisation.

To change the folder and filename for each page. If you want a page to appear at the root of the site (so at http://www.domain.com/page.html) you simply enter a forward slash ( / ) in the Folder box. You can also type a folder name into the box, such as ‘apple’ (without quotation marks) and RapidWeaver will create a subfolder at the level the page is in the navigation bar and place the page inside that folder when exporting the site.

Whilst spaces in filenames are common-place on the desktop, you should avoid spaces in filenames on the web. Any webpage, image or other file you place on your website must always have an extension.

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Learn how to Find Your Way Around RapidWeaver.