iWeb, Sandvox, or RapidWeaver?

I like rapidweaver over iweb. It's really easy to pound out website. There are lots of templates for it too. If you want to make your own custom template it's a somewhat of a pain though, but I did it and I didn't know squat about CSS.
haven't tried Sandvox.

I can't speak for RapidWeaver, but I can for GoLive and DreamWeaver...night & day between those and iWeb. For what you will get with the iLife suite, it's worth the money. IWeb is a fast, easy, template-based dran'n'drop app and you will find it incredibly easy (and fun) to work with.

I think you'll be glad you bought iLife; just my humble opinion. : )

--Ap

I own Dreamweaver and have tried the demos of sandvox, rapidweaver and whatever else I could find.
Dreamweaver is the pricey one, but there really isn't anything it won't do, but depends on how much time you want to devote to learning it.
If your needs will require a lot of hand coding Iweb may not be for you.
I use Iweb as much as I can as it suits my needs for the most part. It's quick and easy and generally offers all the options I need.
As for rapidweaver and the like after a short time fussing with them I was back to Iweb.
If you haven't you might take a look at some of the sites people in this forum have created to see if it looks like it will do what you need it to do.
There are several threads dedicated to site examples.
I believe all the alternatives have demo you can fuss with also.
They all have there ups and downs, but I find Iweb to be the most intuitive and it shouldn't take most anyone much time at all to get it going.
Also, if your not publishing to .mac you will lose some of Iweb features. That may be a problem for you also.
good luck.

OK, I am looking for a decent WYSIWYG web site
creator/editor.

I have in the past hand coded, including making all
my graphics in Photoshop, but now don't have the time
(2 little ones will do that). I also am comfortable
with Go Live and DreamWeaver. But I am looking for
something easier. Something my wife will also feel
inclined to play around with.

I have tried and liked Sandvox, and RapidWeaver seems
ok, too. I have a 2005 PowerBook, so I don't have
iWeb. And since there is no trial of iWeb, it is the
one that I have to guess on.

So, I can spend about $80 for the Pro version of Sandvox, $40 for Rap
idWeaver, or $80 for iLife '06.

Has anyone used all three? What are your thoughts?
Also, being just about mid 2006, and given the fact
that I don't need to get anything today, if
iWeb/iLife is the way, should I wait for iWeb 2/iLife
'07?

Thanks

17 PowerBook G4,
100 GB HD, SuperDrive, 1 GB RAM Mac OS X
(10.4)

I have tried Sandvox (on my 1.83 Gigihertz Macbook), and even with that type of speed it was incredibly slow (maybe it is not universal ?). I have worked with iweb and I generally love Apple's software, but for me, iweb was not the right thing for me, I am using Rapidweaver 3.5 and it is the best piece of web design software I have ever used. In all cases I recommed Rapidweaver (The $40 definitely worth it ), Go to www.soplanet.org to see what I did with Rapidweaver.
Wil1113

You are side tracking.

something easier. Something my wife will also feel
inclined to play around with.

Good look and cheap don't mean that your 'wife will also feel inclined to play around with'
What are your WIFE's PREFERENCES?
🙂

I made that completely in Rapidweaver, all I did was edit the Template, if you would like I can email you the template and explain how to customize templates like that, if you have seen the Rapidweaver theme "Tiger Pop", that is what my theme is based on. : )

Wil1113

I too am just starting out with RapidWeaver. I'd be interested in how you created your template.

First I backed up "Tiger Pop", went into the contents of the theme "Tiger Pop" (Applications > Rapidweaver.app > Contents > Resources > Install > Tiger Pop.rwtheme > Contents > Images > button_over.png), and in Photoshop CS I edited the button_over.png file's main color from blue to red. I created the logo from the header_bg.jpg file (Applications > Rapidweaver.app > Contents > Resources > Install > Tiger Pop.rwtheme > Contents > Images > header_bg.jpg) and made the logo in the exact same amount of space as the header_bg.jpg file. I fyou do not know how to go inside bundled applications (from what I can tell, all OS X applications except Microsoft Office) control click on the app (or bundled file such as Tiger Pop.rwtheme) and select the option "Show Package Contents". All I did other then that was edit the blue.css file (Applications > Rapidweaver.app > Contents > Resources > Install > Tiger Pop.rwtheme > Contents > css > styles > blue.css) and edited it in Taco html edit to change certain styles of the text (mainly the links) to the wanted hex color. If you would like me to email you the theme, please email wil@1113architects.com and tell me exactly what you are looking for.
: )

Wil1113

I've tried them all. In January I used iWeb to create a photo website and then started a blog. I went from very impressed to very unimpressed in less than an hour. I decided to give Sandvox and RapidWeaver a try because I found that using a blog was a great way to keep contract with parents and students.

Here's my photo page - version 3. Version 1 was totally stock and looked like everyone else's. Version 2 was similar to version 3 but died in the update wars. Version 3 uses a stock blank background and buttons created in Button Builder. It was pretty easy to set up and I like the way the photos show up.

Sandvox was a bit confusing to get going with - largely because we didn't have much of a manual or quick start guide in the early days. It is quite easy to use once the paradigm is understood. My largest complaints are the rather minimal number of themes and the relative lack of options available. To me, at least, there is much less freedom to personalize a website in Sandvox than one might originally assume.

RapidWeaver is the most mature of the three options so in a way it is unfair to judge Sandvox and iWeb against it. There are lots of third party themes and some themes have a multitude of options while others are pretty straight forward. There are also quite a few plug-ins that provide additional options. Here are a few sites I've created with RapidWeaver:

Vacation, Personal Blog, ReadingList

Verdict: When I want to create a site consisting of pictures, and I want to do it quickly, I'll choose either iWeb or RapidWeaver. Blogs I'll stay with RapidWeaver even though iWeb now allows one to duplicate an entire page, it is still simpler to make a new blog entry in RapidWeaver. Sandvox doesn't make the cut for me.

MacBook (black) / G5 Dual Desktop / Mac mini Core Solo Mac OS X (10.4.2) WinXP (sigh) and iPod