Will rapidweaver work for me?

[weeeeeeb]

Hey, I'm quite new to web development prepared to most out there. I have two sites to my name but these were created on quite basic web development programs.

My next project requires more modules or plug-ins than the software I was using previously.

I have just bought a mac and iweb09 is pretty rubbish so was thinking rapidweaver. However I know absolutely nothing about it and want to know a few things before I purchase it.

1. Plain and simple - is it good? By that I mean is it easy to use (requires little knowledge to use) and powerful - does it support a lot of features?

2. For my site I ideally need a few plug-ins - the ability to register (where when they log in they can access certain things e.g their account, what they are selling etc)

3. How good is the SEO with it?

And anything else you can tell me about it will be dandy.

Thanks

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

In terms of development, yes on all counts. If you search for the product name in the forum you'll find overwhelming positive feedback from others. I recommend it for novices and mid-level experienced developers - it's a great product for that niche. I also wish to add it has a nice template system too.

Of course it's a development platform, if you're very new to development also look into pre-written open source CMS's (Content Management Systems) such as Drupal. This is a PHP/MySQL open source product with tons of plugins, themes and a powerful SDK for developing your own plugins - the whole thing saves you incredible amounts of time vs. producing a site and CMS from scratch. You could, of course, use RapidWeaver to edit Drupal source and test plugins in addition to whatever you might write for your own sites.

And also look into MAMP, the Mac PHP/MySQL server platform for localhost development right on your Mac as a great sandbox.

-jim