I received a copy of RapidWeaver, a powerful Mac application for creating highly customizable websites using a variety of templates, as part of an application bundle last year. When I decided to redo a website I had long been unhappy with a few months back, I gave it a try and was impressed. I just tried a new template and am now even more impressed by the power and adaptability of the system.

One of the best things about the application is that, because RapidWeaver uses templates that are for the most part interchangeable, updating the look and functionality is rather simple. If you don’t like the way a site looks or functions you can simply choose a different template. Although it may take a tweak here or there, the entire look – but not structure of the site, can be changed in a relatively brief amount of time.

I also love the plugins.

Over the five months I have been building the site, I have found that I wanted to do this or that and couldn’t because RapidWeaver was not enabled for it out of the box (it is a download but you know what I mean). Thankfully a large and growing number of additional templates and plugins are available. Some are free, but many come from independent developers and cost something nominal. As with all things tech, I have become a RapidWeaver plugin junkie. It was, in fact, my most recent purchase that prompted this post.

I had pretty much gotten the site I was building where I wanted it but, unfortunately, there were some compatibility issues with some browsers and plugins. I received an email that a new template had just been released and I took a look. While it looked a bit more “corporate” than I wanted it was so clean, powerful and fast that I gave it a try.

RapidWeaver Glide Template Demo

Although it was just a template change, the site still took a few hours to reformat (this would have been dozens of hours were it not template-based) and I was quite pleased with the outcome. It was, however, one additional aspect that made this post-worthy.

In sign of just how ubiquitous the iPhone and iPod Touch have become, the Glide RapidWeaver template

is one of only two themes (the other is Unity) currently available for RapidWeaver that can serve two different versions of your site to visitors – a desktop version and an iPhone/Touch/Android optimized version – with no need to maintain two separate sites within RapidWeaver.

What exactly does that mean? Well, I loaded my new site and cleaned it up a bit. I then went to the URL for it on my iPhone and… without my having to do anything, I was offered a version optimized for my iPhone. With the exception of the flash content I have included, everything worked.

RapidWeaver Glide in Portrait

It looked fantastic in landscape.

RapidWeaver Glide Landscape

It looked good in portrait.

RapidWeaver Glide Menus

And even the menus all work.

And because it is a single site, when I update the main site in the future, changes will be immediately available on my iPhone as well.

For more information on RapidWeaver visit the RealMac site. The Glide plugin is available from NimbleHost for $30.