pre-purchase questions of RSD #2 -...

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Hi All,
I am considering the purchase of Responsive Site Designer but have not downloaded the Trial yet. Thus far I have read a bit in this helpful forum and a few of the Help-documents provided. Here's a few questions which came up. Thanks for all comments!

Design-updates:
I have seen a few video tutorials but I didn't gain a proper understanding on dealing with somewhat larger projects yet.
Say I've created a template with one section called WORK to showcase a dozen or more projects with text and image sliders in the same overall layout. How are global design changes (fonts, breakpoint-changes repeating elements etc.) handled in this case? Does one edit something comparable to a master-page in page layout programs or would one change classes or components one by one? How are local overrides (on page level) handled?

Dual language websites:
Is there an elegant way to create dual language websites with RSD or does one effectively build two separate websites
which later get wired together? I would like Design-changes to affect all pages in every language version – is that possible?

Menus:
Looking at the template section I don't discover a design (yet) which comes with a Menu-appearance which has become ubiquitous these days. A sticky (non scrolling away) Top-Menu on Desktop and a Hamburger which triggers a display filling mobile Menu. I see that 2.5 offers a Hamburger Style menu component – is its appearance easily customizable?

Image Slider:
I see that Coffeecup has a separate product called Responsive Content Slider. Are all its features built into RSD as well?
Inside the samples section I did not find an image slider which supports swipe events. Is that just by chance or is browsing through fullscreen images via swiping indeed unsupported?

Is RSD generally understood as the flagship program which combines features of the specialized applications? Does RSD therefore also have the Newsletter capabilities of Responsive Email Designer? If not: Is there a feature comparison chart of all Coffeecup software?

Blog:
My guess is that there's no inbuilt means for blogging in the Wordpress sense. But likely it's possible to create pages, which look similar to database driven Blog pages with RSD. I have also seen "Stream"mentioned but don't know about the present status of that tool. Did anyone build a Blog with RSD and also implemented commenting? Not talking about hosted 3rd party services as Disqus here but a comment-engine which is under full user control.

SEO:
I see that CoffeeCup offers two standalone tools for SEO. I wonder if there's inbuilt SEO optimization tools as well? Stuff like indicators that Meta-Descriptions aren't set, duplicate warnings and flags for thin content...

I'm happy for all input! Vudiemphuongchi
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Senior Advisor
14,447 posts

Hi,
I don't think I will be able to answer all your questions, but here goes:

If you buy 'RSD' now, what you get will be the latest update/upgrade, the Site Designer 3.5 It comes with support for the frameworks Bootstrap, Foundation, Materialize and CSS Grid, and in addition the 'up-to-you' framework Vanilla.

As to a 'master page': there is no such thing premade, but it can easily be created by yourself if you style a page like e.g. 'work' and save it as a template. Then you can use it as many times as you like. You can also save chunks of code, like e.g. a menu, a footer, as components for later use. There is also a feature called a 'symbol'. It works more or less as if you would have a php include; you update the include and all instances of it will be affected.

I don't know of any 'elegant' ways of creating dual or more languages pages. I could do with that myself.

SD version 3.5, which is the most recent, does not come with built-in themes or components. There has recently been a 'packet' released for the framework Materialize, with a theme, and it has a number of pages with ideas for components and instructions on how to build and tweak them. It is quite easy to pick the actual components directly off the pages and save them. We are hoping for something similar for the other frameworks, but until then, I have made up some bits and bobs to help out, and you should be able to find a menu or ten there. ;) You find them in my sharing folder, see url in my signature. Other 'forum regulars' have done the same.

Sliders... I think the use of the Content slider might be dropping off, as both Bootstrap, Foundation and Materialize come with their own sliders. Again, see my sharing folder.

I think it will not be possible to integrate RED (Email desinger) with SD. The way of coding for mail clients is different from coding for browsers.

I don't know about a blog, but there is one guy among us here who can do wonders with the Form builder. He might be able to fix that, or at least give you a proper reply. Eric is his name.

Those tools for SEO don't optimize anything, but they tell you what you need to do and where to go to find out more.

I hope this gives you some ideas...
Ha en riktig god dag!
Inger, Norway

My work in progress:
Components for Site Designer and the HTML Editor: https://mock-up.coffeecup.com



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