Introduction

It is not completely incongruous to make a comparison between Rapidweaver and Wordpress. Judging by the level of interest shown by the users of each platform for the other, we are not the only ones to find the two to be complementary. The two are indeed complementary: our experience has shown that Rapidweaver and Wordpress are complements rather than perfect substitutes, even though both target the same audience of amateur webmasters like us. Rapidweaver is an all-purpose website editor with powerful blogging features, and Wordpress is best known for its blogging ability while it also offers powerful website editing and management functions.

In this first part of our comparison we will see how the two website publishing platforms measure up in terms of ease of site setup.

Requirements

Technical requirements for running the two pieces of software are not significantly different but impact the ease of use at the crucial time of getting your site up and running.

Rapidweaver requirements. Rapidweaver is not very taxing in terms of system requirements. Get a mac, an internet connection and a hosting solution (we use GoDaddy). The latest version of Rapidweaver requires Mac OS X version 10.4.3 or later. Any hosting will do, and you will not need any support for php or sql, although some of the more elaborate effects will require php on your host.

Wordpress requirements. Any computer will do. You will need a host server with php and sql support. Your host must also offer a ftp solution to put your files on the server. Godaddy offers a clumsy solution and we’d recommend you get a separate piece of software for this (we like the free Cyberduck for the mac).

Wordpress wins this round

Wordpress has more server-side limitations than Rapidweaver, but it can be used whether you run Windows, Mac OS or Linux and these days most hosting solutions offer php and sql support.

Getting and installing the software

Getting the software is very easy. For Rapidweaver, head to their download page and copy the software somewhere in your applications folder. It’s a 14.2 mega download that should not take more than 3 minutes on a broadband internet connection. Add 3 minutes if you want to purchase the product and unlock the few limitations of the demo version (which is not limited in time). You can already create and publish sites with the demo version.

For Wordpress, you should first grab a copy from their download page and save it on your computer. At less than one mega, Wordpress is much slimmer than Rapidweaver and wins the download speed battle handily. However, in order to start creating a website using Wordpress you need to put the software on your website using ftp and you need to create and configure a sql database before you are up and running. Since you setup your website as part of the software install, we will cover this process as part of our site setup review below. Uploading Wordpress via ftp takes surprisingly long: this is due to the fact that there are many small files that need to be uploaded.

Rapidweaver wins this round

Download, copy on your hard drive and you are ready to go. Rapidweaver can be installed in a snap.

Getting serious: site setup

We assume that you already have signed up for a hosting account and that you have your own domain name (like www.yourwebsite.com) or an address where you can put your site (such as www.hostingcompany.com/yourwebsite/).

Wordpress site setup is no small feat for the arch-beginners but is nothing to be afraid of. First you will have to upload your wordpress software to your site. You have to log in to your account using ftp software, as shown on the step 1 image below. With Godaddy the server is www.yoursite.com and your user name and password are your Godaddy login and password. If you wish to run your site at the www.yoursite.com address and not at www.yoursite.com/wordpress/ address, it is better to upload the contents of your Wordpress folder and not the folder itself, as shown on the step 2 image below.

Step 1

Step 2

The next step in setting up a site with Worpress is the creation of a sql database. This is needed to enable the powerful site management features available in Wordpress. Hosting providers have different setup processes, and the one described below applies to Godaddy. Login to your account, choose >”My Hosting account” under the >”Hosting and servers” tab, then choose >”open” to access to your site’s control panel. The click on >”MySQL” under the >”Databases” tab. This opens the Databases control panel in which you can create a sql database. Click on >”Create Database”, which leads you to the screen pictured in our step 3 image below. On this screen enter a database description, a username and a password. Click on >”Continue” and your database will be created within minutes. You will receive an address to access your database from Godaddy.

The next step in your site setup is to configure the Wordpress software on your server to tell it where to find the Wordpress sql database you just created. To do this, you must edit the wp-config-sample.php file found on the Wordpress folder on your hard drive and rename it to wp-config.php. The settings differ somewhat depending on your web hosting provider. At Godaddy, the name of the database is the same as the user name you chose when creating your sql database (it is not your Godaddy login unless you have chosen the same name when creating the database in the previous step). Your database password is the one you chose when creating the database, and the host server address has been provided to you by Godaddy (most other hosting providers allow you to leave it to “localhost”). As shown on the step 4 image below, you can edit the wp-config.php file with any text editor. We like TextWrangler or Coda best. Once your config file has been edited and renamed to wp-config.php, upload it using ftp to the place where the wp-config-sample.php is on your server. You can safely delete the sample file.

Step 3

Step 4

We are almost done. Launch your favorite web browser and type in “http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/install.php” in the address field. This will take you to an installation screen called “first step”, as pictured in our step 5 image below. Click on >”First Step” on this screen and enter a name for your website and your email address in the next screen (shown on our step 6 image below). This will take you to a new screen where you are being told that your login name is “admin”, and where you are being assigned a random password (see our step 7 image). Click on the >”Log in” link, enter “admin” as your name and type in your password, as shown on our step 8 image.

Step 5

Step 6

Step 5

Step 7

That’s it, you are ready to go! If we lost you somewhere during the process, please refer to the Wordpress Famous 5 minutes install guide. There is also a nice video tutorial here (from which some of our screenshots are extracted) and a flashy audio-visual tutorial here.

Rapidweaver site setup is comparatively much easier. When you launch Rapidweaver on your computer, you will be prompted whether you want to register or use the demo version. We’ll use the demo version for now, which has enough functions to test all of the features of the software, the only limitation being that you cannot publish more than three pages on your site. You then face a window telling you more about the website creation process in three easy steps: add a page, insert content and publish. This is pictured in our step 1 image below. We will first proceed with the site setup: go to the >”Site” menu and choose >”View site setup”. A window appears in which you can name your site (step 2 image). If you click the tab featuring a small earth icon to the right, you will be able to enter your website’s address - “http://www.yoursite.com” in our step 3 image below.

Finally, you will have to enter your server login information. Since Rapidweaver work flow assumes that you will want to create content prior to accessing your server, you are not prompted to enter your server information until you publish your content. This may or may not seem counter-intuitive, depending on your work flow. Anyway, as a fourth and last step, hit on the >”Publish” button at the bottom right of the window, which leads you to a window pictured in our step 4 below. Enter “www.yoursite.com” as your server address and enter the user name and password you use to login to your hosting account. You can leave the “/” in the site path line if you want to publish to the root of your website. These settings work with Godaddy. Some other hosting providers are somewhat more complex to use. Once you are done, you can cancel the window as there is yet nothing to publish. Don’t worry, Rapidweaver will remember your settings.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

That’s it, your site is setup with Rapidweaver.

Rapidweaver wins this round hands down

Setting up a site with Rapidweaver is much easier than with Wordpress. This is not at all surprising since Wordpress’ powerful features are enabled through the use of a sql database.

Let’s publish some content!

While we are with Rapidweaver, let’s stay with it and add some content to our site. Click on the >”+” icon at the bottom left of the window and choose a page type. For the sake of comparison, let’s use a blog page. Select that and click >”add” in the window that popped up after you clicked on the “+” sign (pictured in our step 1 image below). You are then facing the blog editor window. Click on the “+” sign which is on the left of the center of your screen. This creates a first blog entry. Type in the title and content of your post. See our step 2 image for details.

Once this is done, let’s choose a theme for our first webpage. Click on the icon to the left of the “publish” button on the bottom right of the window. This brings up the “themes drawer”. Select a theme of your liking, and hit publish. Confirm that you want to save a copy of your site on your hard drive, then click on >”publish” in the pop up window. Enter your website address in your web browser, and there it is: your first blog post. In our step 4 image, the theme we chose was “Alpha”.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Let’s now turn to Wordpress. Login to your wordpress software by typing the following address in your web browser: “http://www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php”. Your user name is admin and your password has been provided to you during the setup phase, unless you have (as you should) immediately changed it in the Wordpress options. Once logged in, choose the >”Write” tab and the >”Write Post” subtab on the left-hand side of your screen (see our step 1 below). You will be led to the blog editor, which allows you to enter a title and some content for your first post, as pictured on our step 2 image below. Click on the >”Publish” button, and there you are, you are now a published author. Click on >”View site” at the top left of the window, and you will see your first post, as shown in our step 3 image.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Marginal win for Wordpress

It looks very much like a tie on this one, but let’s give the win to Wordpress as it is marginally faster and easier to post with it than with Rapidweaver.

Conclusion

The above illustrates the different approaches taken by Rapidweaver and Wordpress to site setup. Wordpress is much more cumbersome to setup than Rapidweaver and does not live up to the five minutes setup promise touted on its website. If only for that reason, we would give the victory to Rapidweaver. This being said, if your only purpose is to publish content on the web with no intent to have extensive control on its appearance, you would choose neither and you would simply sign up for an account at Blogger, Youtube or at Flickr, depending on the type of content you want to make available online.

Each of the two reviewed publishing platforms has its own pros and cons as we will discover in the next part of our comparison. On balance, we will find out that Wordpress’ cumbersome setup procedure may well be worth it!

Popularity: 25% [?]

[...] follows our head-to-head comparison between Rapidweaver and Wordpress in relation to the installation and setup experience. In Part I [...]