RapidWeaver 7

Craft impressive websites with the minimum of fuss

$99 Manufacturer Realmac Software, realmacsoftware.com Requirements OS X 10.11 or later

RapidWeaver may be the most Apple-y app that Apple doesn’t actually make. This website-creation tool is much more powerful than Apple’s long-defunct iWeb, but it shares that app’s approachability and ease of use. Version 7 doesn’t mess with the formula too much, bringing some welcome improvements without radically changing how the app works.

The app is built around professionally designed themes, with four new ones added to the collection in this release. You use the sidebar to create the structure of your site, the Edit panel to modify pages, the Preview pane to see what it looks like, and there’s a Keynote-esque Master Style for making global changes to your chosen template. You can also add custom code such as CSS, JavaScript and meta tags. It’s all very easy, enabling you to build a website that’s clean, attractive and standards-compliant in very little time, regardless of experience. The trade-off for templates’ ease of use and quality is fairly limited customization options, which isn’t so great if you really want to get stuck into web design.

In addition to some new templates, this version boasts a dramatically improved FTP client for uploads and site management, FTP path browsing, the ability to publish the same site to multiple locations, a Publish Locally option, and the ability to move your project across multiple Macs (the license covers you for two). The app now optimizes CSS and JavaScript code to make it as clean and as quick as possible, and it also includes an SEO Health Check.

In addition to the stock features, the app offers more than 1,000 paid add-ons. This has caused some grumbling online, but when you consider the effort that goes into making a decent theme or shopping cart app, the average asking price range of $25 to $50 is hardly daylight robbery – and it’s surely better to keep the main app’s price down rather than force you to pay for features you won’t use.

For website beginners, RapidWeaver’s key rival is Karelia’s Sandvox, which is simpler and $20 cheaper. However, RapidWeaver’s templates are more attractive, the app is more powerful and, as with most kinds of design, you’ll often find your requirements become more ambitious over time as your web design skills improve.

the bottom line. It’s superb, but the reliance on templates means losing some design flexibility.