Tell us about yourself. Who are you and what you do?
My name is Josh Lockhart. I am 23 years old and have recently graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States. I work full time for New Media Campaigns where my team and I provide custom web design, development, and marketing. I also run my own company, JoshLockhart.com, during my free time where I provide professional RapidWeaver themes. I am also a big fan of PHP, Ruby on Rails, and all things Apple.
Tell us a little about the Josh Lockhart website...
The JoshLockhart.com website has been my playground for testing new technologies and fun ideas! I officially launched JoshLockhart.com in 2003 when I first began offering web development services. My website has seen many past iterations, including Flash, PHP, and Ruby on Rails implementations, however recently I have re-launched my JoshLockhart.com website using RapidWeaver 4 and my updated RapidWeaver theme "Silk 4".
How did you come to develop themes for RapidWeaver?
A friend introduced me to RapidWeaver shortly after it launched as a commercial product. By that time, I was already hand coding dynamic web applications with PHP and MySQL. So it was an easy transition and a great opportunity for me to explore an alternative market. And I haven't looked back ever since. Developing themes for RapidWeaver has been a great experience, and it has allowed me to meet and interact with new people from around the world.
Are you using any third-party themes or plugins?
Actually, I do not use any third party themes or plugins. My website is built using RapidWeaver 4 and my Silk theme. Nothing more.
What's the best feature in RapidWeaver?
The best feature in RapidWeaver besides its ease of use and developer API, is the HTML page type. I know, it sounds too simple and maybe a bit strange. But RapidWeaver HTML pages allow me to create and publish pages of any type - be it HTML, PHP, or even XML. And of course, I love the one-click publishing. It's simple, and it works.
Josh Lockhart provides stylish RapidWeaver Themes
Have you customised your site with any third-party solutions?
I have not used any particular Javascript or PHP library for my website like Mootools or Scriptaculous. I am a big fan of jQuery, but such libraries are unnecessary for my website. My goal with JoshLockhart.com is to keep it simple, light-weight, and easy to manage. RapidWeaver alone allows me to do this. However, I did need to create RSS feeds for my products and tutorials. I hand-coded custom PHP to handle incoming requests for my RSS feeds, and in turn parse a local XML file (created with a RapidWeaver HTML page type) to return a valid and formatted RSS 2.0 feed.
Any other comments you'd like to add?
I believe RapidWeaver is a great product on its own. It's simple. It's intuitive. And it works. But it is made even better by the community that surrounds it: the great folks over at Realmac, the theme developers, and everyone on the support forums who takes the time to lend a helping hand to a fellow RapidWeaver user. This community makes RapidWeaver by far the best consumer web creation and publishing application on the market. And needless to say, I look forward to developing more RapidWeaver themes well into the future.
Useful Links
RapidWeaver 4.2 is available for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
RapidWeaver 3.6 is available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger