I am enquiring if Blocs would be suitable as a Rapidweaver Replacement. While I like Rapidweaver well enough, the addons I would need to make a reasonably robust program for website creation are getting to be quite pricy.
Also, as Blocs doesn’t allow website publishing during the trial period, is it possible to have the “index.html” included in the list of url links? I ask because for now, my wife and I would be using Blocs for our own home intranet, to be published to a local folder.
I would be most grateful for anyone’s assistance with this enquiry.
Whilst Blocs doesn’t allow for website publishing during the trial period, you will be able to preview your site locally through the preview function. This is a fairly accurate way of seeing what your finished site will look like.
On your first question, either Blocs or RW is capable of building a good website. I still use RW7 occasionally to update a couple old sites until I have time to refresh them with Blocs. I agree the cost of ownership with RW can be pretty high and this was one of the main considerations that pushed me into jumping ship. The main factor though was the speed of development with Blocs.
A lot of those stacks you would have to buy in RW are included as standard in Blocs and there is no need to buy the Stacks plugin or a framework like Foundry or Foundation either. The flexibility of using custom classes in Blocs is fantastic for precise control and does this with a much cleaner interface.
There are some stacks that would be difficult to match in Blocs at present, but there is a huge amount that can be done with Blocs by itself without needing any additions and there are various things that RW cannot match. For example, in the near future Blocs will be able to export as Wordpress.
I haven’t actually used the Blocs trial demo, because I bought it immediately on the day of release but I think you should be able to preview any work you do. For me the biggest difficulty in switching was not a question of features, rather accepting that Blocs works in a different way and that you have to approach this with an open mind.
In RW7, when a site is exported, an “index.html” file is created in the folder the site is exported to; this file is what the homepage of the site is. Without including this in the “TidyLinks” feature in RW, attempting to return to the home page of the site from the folder it was published to would present a user with a directory structure of the site. I’m curious if there is a similar feature in Blocs that would allow the “index.html” file that is created to be included in the links to the site.
Again, my sincere appreciation for your assistance in this matter.
I think think you want this option for clean urls.
This puts the index.html file inside a folder for each page. It has the same effect as Tidy Links in RW, however it is a tick box selection at time of export.
This does not require a set up in the folder structure of each page like in RW.
Thank you! That answers my question perfectly! :-). The reason I asked this question is my wife and I would be using Blocs to create our home intranet intially. It’s a little challenging getting used to the way things are done in Blocs; however, anything worthwhile is a challenge. My wife and I are glad to know that the numerous addons we would be required to purchase in RW won’t be necessary in Blocs. Thanks again.
There may be some instances where you choose to purchase a custom bric for easier implementation of certain features or effects, however the core functionality is there already in Blocs without the need of additional paid frameworks or plugins like Stacks simply to use them.
For more advanced uses you can always insert code from third party resources that allows you to build more or less anything using Blocs. Chances are you will never need to do that or buy a custom bric. There are also a growing number of free custom brics at the https://blocs.store/
There is unquestionably a learning curve when switching and the same would be applicable in reverse. I started with Blocs 2 and there were definite periods of frustration, however Blocs 3 is a massive leap forward, whereas I don’t see nearly as much real development in RW beyond what is obtained through paid stacks.
I think there are a lot of RW users who would gladly make the switch, but maybe hold back when they look at the big investment already made in RW that they don’t want to discard. The problem with this logic is that RW can become a bottomless pit of expense once you jump onboard and users enter a mindset of needing a stack for every purpose. From past experience, many of those paid stacks are only used once or never at all.
Coming back to my primary preference for Blocs, I simply find it faster to build a good looking website. Websites are never quite as easy as drag & drop, because there are creative considerations and dare I say it creative blocks, but all things being equal I find Blocs 2-3 times faster and just a nicer place to spend your day.
