When my school started the rather ill-fated webpage-for-every-teacher drive a few years ago, I found myself with some webspace..but no MySQL support. Which meant that there was no way I’d be able to put up a site like this blog, much less a course management system like Moodle.

Teachers were advised to export HTML pages from Microsoft Word, but I found it simply too clunky. And I didn’t really want to go through the hassle of editing HTML code every time I edited my website. So I looked around and came across the then-uniquely-easy-to-use RapidWeaver. And as its namesake claims, it really did weave a nice-looking website most rapidly.

Fast-forward almost 2 years. RapidWeaver has gained some very nice features but it’s no longer the only game in town. About a week ago Karelia Software (makers of the Watson software…which was prominent till Apple bundled similar functionality for free into OS X) finally unveiled their SandVox (still in beta by the way).
And then this week Apple unleashed iWeb via iLife 06.

iLife 06 is, as everyone knows, free with every new Mac so just about everyone can very easily create very nice-looking websites.

But does this spell a Watson-like fate for RapidWeaver and Sandvox? I certainly hope not. There should be demand for different capabilities at different price points. I’ll post more on iWeb and Sandvox when I get around to trying them out (hopefully soon!)