The application that I use to create and publish this site is called RapidWeaver, currently at 3.5.1; but there is a new version on the way. I have been testing a beta of RapidWeaver 3.6 and it is looking pretty good. It's stable enough that I use it to publish now. My site is large, and I am running into problems with the current version because of its wasteful use of memory during export. 3.6 fixes that, so my workflow is to create in 3.5.1, save, and then publish using the 3.6 beta.

I use RapidWeaver because it is just so darn easy to use. I only have to touch HTML and CSS if I want to. Site templates are plentiful and low cost and available from a number of third parties. And there is a developer SDK that lets third parties write plug-ins. The only problems I have are self-imposed: my site has 130 pages or so -- and those are actual pages, not the automatically-generated ones line the permalinks. My home page has more than 450 articles. There are at least 500 images in the Aperture section alone, so probably close to 1000 in total now.

But RapidWeaver is keeping up. Not bad for a piece of software that costs $40 and has had free updates for at least a year and a half. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 3.6. I know what is in it, but you'll have to wait to find out.

[Update: The Realmac Software blog page is now (2007-05-02) starting to reveal some of the new features]

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Interesting Stuff