Katie and David talk to John Chandler about the getting started with web publishing including Mac based software solutions, WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, and more.
Links for this episode:
- [Sponsor] PDFpen
- [Sponsor] TextExpander
- by John Chandler
- John's Twitter Account
- Squarespace
- Scriptogram
- Sandvox
- RapidWeaver
- WordPress.Org
- WordPress Engine
- WordPress.com
- Page.ly
- Bluehost
- WordPress Plugin Directory
- Tumblr
- Medium
- Scriptogram
Please support our exclusive sponsor for this episode: Smile:
With productivity boosters like TextExpander and PDFpen, smile makes you a Mac Power User
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:39 — 36.7MB)
Perhaps too big topic to fit into a single show…
And in the run of that, and perhaps with the strengths of the guest and the hosts own choices, Rapidweaver and Dreamweaver didn’t really get their due.
That option has one issue correctly identified in the show, namely handover and multiuser access in general. But the other issue, dynamic content, for most people has been dealt with via plugins and stacks. I have Blogger, Vimeo, Tumblr and Flickr feeding sections of sites, not too mention ecommerce solutions. These feeds are easily made available to others
Stacks for Rapidweaver has been a huge addon, pretty well every page on my RW sites are Stacks pages. With it, I find I have far greater control over the visual layout of my page.
http://yourhead.com/stacks/
For me, as someone who moved from WP to RW, that was a huge motivator. WP updates etc became problematic too, but mainly it was the design capabilities and the ecosystem of themes, plugins and stacks which was so rich.
There are certainly limits to the approach, the multiuser issue, and I would add, the scale of the site which is possible. But for SMEs or individuals and groups, I’d recommend it.
Totally agree with this. I kept waiting for discussion of Dreamweaver. I would suspect it is still the most used program to develop websites. And what about Adobe Muse as a no-brainer application.
Also huge fan of rapidweaver because of Stacks and all that can be done. Includes many responsive templates.
One other thing
In addition to the features outlined on the show you can easily assign a domain name to a Tumblr site. So you can have a site http://www.yoursite.com hosted for the cost of owning a domain name. For some users this is all that’s required, a good blogging platform with possibly a few custom pages, About and Contact details.
Agreed – RapidWeaver was very much discounted as a poor solution. Stacks expand its use to be a very powerful website. There are even content management solutions for RapidWeaver – Armadillo is one of them.
I also use a Stack for my blog part of the site that automatically adds new Tumblr posts to the RW site. I can update my website from my phone and any computer using Tumblr or Armadillo. The Tumblr posts are transformed into something that looks native to the site.
It is a very elegant solution that gives you the ease of use and the power of adding content anywhere you are.
I’d love if you brought on some RapidWeaver professionals like Joe Workman to discuss the real power of RapidWeaver.
Tim
iPodEvolution.net
Although I know you guys really try to be objective, but the podcast glossed over the downsides of Squarespace. It’s very limited, esp. the new v.6. The themes are relatively few and frankly, kind of bland. And you really have NO FLEXIBILITY to do anything, even simple things like changing the sidebar on different pages of a site.
Also, getting “out” of SS is not as easy as they say, and often really doesn’t work esp. with images.
The new WP iOS app is actually better than the SS one too, with great stats, etc.
As someone who was forced to leave SS and go to WordPress, I wish I had just started with WP.com and then I could have much more easily gone into WP.org.
The comparison to Squarespace is WordPress.com, not .org. WP.com basically offers the same easy functionality, hosting, etc. with more features.
Also, I was hoping the podcast would at least give something about Drupal, which has become a lot more user friendly lately.
I dont have first hand knowledge with SquareSpace as I am perfectly happy with WordPress and have built MANY websites for my clients using WP.
What is really strange, this Podcast had a guest and it really seemed more talking was done by David and Katie than it was by the guest so he didnt even have a chance to share any positive stories about WP.
I have listened to every single MPU podcast and this was by far the worst I have heard… really didnt make sense with the guest or topic
The new Squarespace 6 doesn’t support the XML-RPC API for blogging software so one can’t use MarsEdit. It seems like they’re not interested in supporting it. See the post
http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/2809/state-of-the-squarespace
I’ve basically decided based upon this decision that I won’t use Squarespace.
Was rather surprised at the amount of WP bashing from Katie when the real problem with here site was the host and not WordPress. IMHO, WP is BY FAR the best and easiest tool for new folks / companies that need a website, as it has a large library of customization features and developers who can assist them.
Perhaps it is the longtime sponsor Squarespace that has jaded them (not so much on their show, that is owned by Smile) but 5by5 as a whole is in bed with Squarespace.
For any MPU listener who reads these comments, by all means do NOT be afraid of WordPress, it is an amazing solution that can grow with you and/or your business and the costs are CHEAPER than Squarespace.
Finally, David’s desire to have an iOS client that supports the platform, it completely exists for iOS (recent release of Poster 2 is wonderful) and accessing the WP Admin site from an iPad works perfectly well.
Agreed regarding Poster. I only discovered it when version 2 was released a few days after we recorded and it’s already made it to my iPad’s home screen. It’s a fantastic app for using either Markdown or HTML to compose posts and place images (something the official app doesn’t handle well).
David and Katie — it’s worth a mention if you do follow-up to this show.
Funny, how ironic is it that even their own site is hosted with WordPress, yet the homer for Squarespace (see what sponsorship money can do to someone) Shocking gang!
Ok, how can there be a conversation on website creation without even a passing mention of Freeway by Softpress. This application has been around since the mid-late 90′s; has a very loyal following; can be powerful or simple depending upon your needs; is available in the Mac App store and is probably the best blend of flexibility, graphic focused, and great customer service. In the past they would have a small booth at Macworld (Not sure anymore) and they are a small enthusiastic outfit. The application is probably a bit overdue for a major update to better integrate HTML 5 elements which seem to be a bit patchy at the moment. I am just an infrequent user of the app, but have yet to jump to anything else. (Considering Muse when and if it matures)
Check it out. http://www.softpress.com
David, where do I find the new screencasts mentioned at 52:10? I don’t see the link in the show notes, as mentioned during the episode. (I found a month-old screencast for the iPhone app at MacSparky; is that it? I did not find a recent screencast for the iPad app.)
By the way, you mentioned a few shows ago that you were working to improve the show notes. I really like to use the show notes, so I appreciate your efforts to make them better. But I still often find the links not there when mentioned in the show. I can usually find the referenced topic with a few searches, but sometimes not.
Thanks for all the great content you two create.
I’m confident that the sponsorship doesn’t have much to do with them using SquareSpace – David has been using SquareSpace for a long time – well before sponsorship money was even there.
They use what works for them – I use RapidWeaver because it works for me – others use WordPress – use what works for you – you may need 5 – 6 guests to fully realize the power of each platform as you get power users of each of the options out there to talk about it.
Normally love every MPU podcast, but with the expertise of the host, there was too much David and Katie. It was disappointing that there was no real talk about Dreamweaver as the next step to ultimate control of your site past WP.org. Love the show normally, but this one was not up to par with most of the MPU podcasts.
Another +1 for Poster on iOS and BIG +1 for John, he did an excellent job explaining the positives and negatives of WP.