Is RapidWeaver Better Than iWeb?
Having written many an article about how to make iWeb more search engine friendly, and highlighting all the areas where it lacks decent SEO support, I was contacted by the team at macwyse.com to discuss the possibility of giving a course or two on the topic as part of their wider web design with RapidWeaver for small businesses.
Opening the lid on RapidWeaver is like entering a whole other world compared to iWeb. The developer and theme SDKs and documentation are a breathe of fresh air in comparison to the closed development and add-on environment of iWeb. That being said, does this really make it (a) better than iWeb and (b) better at SEO in general? The answer to (a) is quite clearly yes, though with a price tag, a small ransom to pay for improved opportunities, as for (b) compared to iWeb, the answer is most definitely yes.
The problem is that all this software is created by programmers with little thought for the basics of web design and SEO in general. After years of complaint from authors and developers alike, blogs and content management systems are paying better attention to detail but it has been a long and winding road, that’s for sure.
In that respect RapidWeaver is definitely ahead of the game in the types of things it allows users to do, from adding meta-tags to adding breadcrumb trails, creating cruftless links, changing directory path names and file names and more, so in that respect RapidWeaver is definitely better than iWeb, but there is definitely room for improvement and significant failings, as with everything, nothing is perfect, and the new version 4.0 is heading in a better direction for WYSIWYG editors.
Overall, the SEO process is certainly part human know-how and engagement, part software-based, but when tools actually block the user from doing what is right regarding, not just SEO but good web design and programming principle, then you have to just throw your arms up in horror!
Anyhow, back to the original question, in a battle between iWeb and RapidWeaver, I would take RapidWeaver, every single time.
