About ThemeFlood
ThemeFlood (started and operated independently by Will Woodgate) is a small UK business producing themes for the award winning web design application RapidWeaver developed by UK-based Realmac Software. Will has been involved with RapidWeaver theme development for approximately three years, but has been using RapidWeaver for considerably longer.

What is RapidWeaver?
RapidWeaver is a website development tool similar in functionality to Wordpress, except it is primarily a desktop-based publishing solution exclusively for Mac users. Like Wordpress, RapidWeaver is template-driven, enabling users to quickly create pages and automatically apply aspects of styling for a consistent, modern and professional appearance. Templates in RapidWeaver are commonly referred to as 'themes' because they integrate very tightly within the application from a software perspective. For example, themes can utilise a 'Page Inspector' interface (pictured right) enabling users to easily change elements and colours simply by ticking boxes. This makes it possible for people to customise a theme without ever having to edit code.

What are themes?
In a nutshell, each theme is basically a collection of different files including CSS (Cascade Style Sheets), graphics, HTML files and XML Preference lists for RapidWeaver integration. It is commonplace for a theme to contain many dozens of CSS files enabling users to 'pick and choose' the best styling for their website from any given options available. Once a theme has been selected and content added, RapidWeaver pulls together the required style sheets and inserts all content like text or pictures into the theme automatically. RapidWeaver's easy approach to web development has made it a popular application with tens of thousands of users worldwide, publishing many thousands of personal and commercial websites.

Theme's are relatively complex items to build and most theme development is restricted to professional web designers and software developers. As well having to incorporate full RapidWeaver compatibility, themes also have to go through intense testing to ensure they work properly on web browsers and are fully optimised for the internet. Even the most basic, minimalist looking themes require a large amount of coding.

Alongside the development of 'off-the-shelf' themes, since October 2008 ThemeFlood has been involved in the development of bespoke themes for individual clients.

© Will Woodgate 2010