Hello Everyone, I run a small webdesign business on the side and have been using RW for about 10 years now. With the latest news coming from RW about doing their own version of stacks and YourHead Software saying their coming out with a stand alone app, I’m seriously thinking about jumping ship. I stumbled across Blocs and have dove into videos from Blocs Master and downloaded the trial. It’s obviously going to be a learning curve but I really like what I see so far. I would love to hear from some people that have recently moved from RW to Blocs and how they think it compares.
Hey @ajenks 
Welcome to the Blocs forum. There are numerous members who are ex RW users here. I’m sure a few will be happy to share their insights.
Personally, I’ve never used it so can’t really comment in that regard.
One thing I can say is, Blocs is always moving forward with improvements and new features coming almost every month.
We also have a great relationship with our community. We listen and respond (as fast as we can).
I hope you have fun using Blocs.
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I moved over from Rapidweaver to Blocs some time ago, so I am a little out of touch with recent advances, however I believe there are a number of former RW users here. @AdieJAM could probably give you an opinion.
Both apps have their pros and cons, though the development situation and future outlook is certainly more stable at the Blocs end. When switching myself, Blocs was not so advanced but changes over the last few years have been enormous.
I found the biggest challenge was simply accepting that it was different and not trying to make Blocs work like RW. I danced back & forth for a while then after a few months a job came up that I started with RW. After about half an hour I realised it was frustrating and switched to Blocs. I’ve never gone back.
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Hi Ajenks:
I started out with RW after abandoning Dreamweaver.
After a short relationship, I ended up here, at home, with Blocs.
I am not an expert in any of these, but I can tell you, I saved a LOT of money moving to the Blocs infrastructure.
I would urge you to give it a go.
Welcome…
Rich the Weather Guy
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Thanks for the input guys, I believe I’m going to take the leap. I have a lot of money tied up in RW, but with the uncertainty of RW and Stacks I think it’s just time. RW has served me well and I’ve made a whole lot more than I have in it, so it’s just a business expense…lol
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I have both but have not used Blocs (v3) as much as I had hoped to. Not a reflection of Blocs, more lack of time as web design is an interest/hobby.
It does boil down to what sort of sites you build in RW and what additional functionality you need to include.
In a straight RW v Blocs comparison, Blocs wins hands down. The UI is nicer, you get a drag and drop page builder instead of having to by Stacks + stacks. Blocs doesn’t have publishing built in but no great loss and RW publishing engine has always been a source of problems for many.
The rate of new features, and the community engagement from @Norm , is just phenomenal. Blocs for iPad also looks like a big step forward.
RW is very stagnant in comparison, not having many new features added in recent times and user engagement for future features is lacking in comparison. RW9 may change that but it does look like a lot of bridges are being burnt to get there.
The other main difference is 3rd party addons. The Blocs ecosystem is not as well developed as the RW one, so depending what you need for your designs it may not be available to buy. The pool of 3rd party devs is smaller (you will recognise a few 
) but it’s not a bad thing as there is less overlap and costs are not likely to spiral as they can with RW.
Saying that, you can add code from various sources to get what you need and the community here is friendly and helpful in that regard.
I don’t have Blocs Plus, but it might be worth a look to see if it helps with your work flows.
I would say go for it. More tools at your disposal is always a good thing.
I have noticed that there are a good few happy people who have gone from RW to Blocs but I haven’t seen any vocal users who have gone from Blocs to RW.
Personally I’ll be avoiding RW9 and instead going to the Stacks app when it comes out. I’ll also be keeping Blocs and upgrading it to v4.
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I’m thinking along the same lines myself. I own Blocs 3 and really liked playing around with it, but didn’t invest the time required to actually do anything meaningful. I’ve invested time into learning Rapidweaver and so have stuck with it for so long, but with the split between Stacks and RW, I’m wondering about the best decision for the future.
I’d be interested to know what Blocs users do about the following:
More complex forms
CMS/Bogging - are there other options than Vault (no issue with Vault, just considering options)
E commerce - is there a solution like Rapidcart that doesn’t require a monthly fee?
How easy is it to get 100% Google page scores?
Very interested to hear other folks’ experiences
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Volt sir, Volt.
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Highly recommend Blocs, I have not run into any snags with it that weren’t resolved and I can build everything with it. Get it learn it and you build some great websites.
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lol - sorry Janis
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I have had to rebuild all my old RW sites in Blocs with just one remaining to complete. This was because they were done with Foundation 1, which doesn’t support PHP 8 or later.
When PHP 7.4 is no longer supported later this year the contact forms will either become useless or at best insecure until the websites are replaced. Those websites built with Foundation 1 are all on borrowed time, as far as I can tell and some are not that old. Given there was no easy or inexpensive path to continue with RW I’ve just rebuilt them all in Blocs.
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Sorry for not posting sooner @Flashman - read the post, but been on the road for 2 days.
I was a very heavy Rapidweaver user - used Rapidweaver stand alone and then bought a few of the sey doggy templates as loved their design at the time - and then invested in Stacks to bring rapidweaver alive! and spending a fortune on stacks and loved Joe Workmans stacks, then Foundation came out and the work from from Joe again was brilliant…then my Stacks would not work as I needed an updated version of stacks, then I updated that - then it would not work on old rapidweaver…so had to update that…then some stacks would not work in Foundation at the time…as you can see ! there is a pattern here…It was constant financial investment and then things still not working and then huge slow process to make things work.
I then spoke to @Flashman and he recommended Blocs to me…at first I was trying to build like I did in rapidweaver and working on both fried my brain !!!..i had a few months off doing anything and went straight back into Blocs and the speed to built was FAST!!! - Took me a while to learn things and I am still learning now.
What I love is blocs is contained in one stop shop and with the store creating some amazing brics.
The forum is brilliant, its a great community! I often once my kids are in bed and the wife is snoring on the sofa, I make a coffee or pour a beer and login to this forum to see what people are doing…and have a read !
@Norm and @Helen listen to their user base and bringing new improved and huge updates!
Rapidweaver moving forwards from 22-23 etc… seems to be very unsure - Rapidweaver stand alone was not the strongest without the bolt on’s and very strange that Dan as made some decisions for rapidweaver 9…and the bolt on’s are no good without Rapidweaver.
Welcome to Blocs!
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Hi All,
I hope you don’t mind me posting on this issue, as I am a dev on both platforms
The general thoughts on pros/cons of both have been fair & change is the only constant in web design. Thus, you have to keep updating stuff to get the new toys - no way around that
I’m hopefully that @Norm will address the holes in the API that have been holding back devs from doing more custom brics - as that will make the biggest positive impact & attraction for Blocs at this juncture.
Thanks & looking forward to good things.
Bill
BricsDesign
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I have both RW8 and Blocs. Blocs looks amazing on the video. But I found it to run slow on my MacBookPro. I found that I can move items in Stacks a whole lot easier. Blocs is a very attractive looking software and I always try to give Blocs a shot every now and then, but I always end up back with RW8. To be honest, the only thing I use on RW is Stacks 4. My personal decision is to keep both RW and Blocs. They are not that expensive and it’s always good to have a lot of tools in your toolbox.
That’s interesting. The only thing that would slow blocs down is, a low battery, old Mac, large images files that are not web optimised.
I’d love to chat more about the speed issues as many find Blocs is lightning fast compared to RW.
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I have both (only use Blocs now) but Blocs speed is so so quick on my old 2015 mac vs Rapidweaver, now RW is slow. I would say @gmedlock that it could be something else causing it to run slow?
I once tested Source briefly, which seemed pretty snappy on a very simple layout, but otherwise Blocs has always left RW for dust in terms of speed, even when tested on really old hardware like 2007 iMac compared to a top spec 2019 MBP with RW.
The original Foundation with RW was horrendous for page previews and I could be waiting up to 30 seconds at each breakpoint, even if I only changed a single comma. The way stacks are added to a page also makes it necessary to preview far more often than Blocs I found.
For the current website I am working on with Blocs at over 100 pages I am seeing about 5 seconds of spinning ball before a page previews on my i7 mini, though I bet it wouldn’t happen on an M1 machine. On more normal sized websites up to say 30 pages previews are effectively instant. Also Blocs can export a 100 page site to a folder in a few seconds, whereas I would be looking at minutes with RW.
In terms of moving items around on the page or making adjustments in the interface, Blocs always seems faster to me, though I haven’t tried every framework in RW, such as Foundry for example, so I am willing to believe some arrangements may be less onerous.
One key point though with Blocs is that if we have an issue we pretty much know who to contact. When using RW, you have the main app, the Stacks plugin and stacks from 3rd party developers, plus a framework. That is an awful lot of reliance on disparate groups that may be compromised or undermined in different ways. I recall a lot of finger pointing and blame shifting when things didn’t work.
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I tried too many website design apps but most recently I came from Sparkle to Blocs.
Sparkle is a nice website design tool for those who prefer a more drag and drop design experience but managing breakpoints is a HUGE pain in the ass not to mention that adding code to your pages like something in the HEADER will cost you an extra $149! I shit you not!
Blocs is definitely my website design tool of choice. But having come from a graphic design background I had to refresh my knowledge of CSS which was a breeze with the excellent, free tutorial videos available at the Blocs Academy and the Blocs Knowledge Base. I also paid for the Blocs Master Course offered by Eldar Gezalov - Blocs Master Course - $79 helped me get up to speed with Blocs quickly and easily.
Blocs continues to impress me with how quickly you can create a professional, standards based website that works on all devices PERIOD. And managing the breakpoints is an intuitive and excellent experience.
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I was a die hard SoftPress Freeway user from 1999 until they went under several years ago. When evaluating alternatives to Freeway, I checked out Rapid Weaver. I had actually tried it off and on for a long while prior to SoftPress dying, but I never could get my head around it. I loved the Freeway DTP model a lot. To me, it was intuitive to use – just like the 128K Mac was in 1984, as compared to all the text based computers at the time. Then came Blocs. There was a learning curve, but my feeble brain could understand it.
So the fact you came from Rapid Weaver means you have the smarts to use Blocs. Because again, I never could get my right brain to understand Rapid Weaver. Blocs massages my right brain in ways I never thought possible. And the forums here are great because Norm participates in them, and there are some very brilliant and helpful people here too.
You can’t go wrong with Blocs!
–James
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