I recently saw a post on the forums "sign up to our newsletter and receive a free stack". I'm a glutton for punishment, so that's exactly what I did! And I'm sure many, many more did to, because – Hey! It's free!

Dual Shard Designs. We have no idea who they are as their website gives us no information whatsoever (it's almost empty). Judging by their logo, they could be based in Mettmann in the not-so-idyllic North Rhine-Westphalia; we may never know…
… what we do know is that they are going to "provide the community with tools to build charming and attractive websites" and that their launch is being promoted with a free stack.

Floating Notice is a neat little notice that floats up and down over your important message, so that no-one will miss it! Strangely enough, I spotted a couple of messages on the forums "doesn't work!!". A very useful message, because it informs the developer exactly what is going on.

I've had no such 'luck' (I love it when stacks don't work, or when I can break them), I tested the stack with Foundation and RW8 and it works perfectly for me. I even tried a couple of different stack combinations – just to make sure.

So how does Floating Notice work? Quite simply drop Floating Notice into a Stacks page and drag the stack that you wish to highlight into it. At the bottom of Floating Notice, you'll notice a text container — this is where you place your message.

Now you just need to adjust the animation and such things as padding and you're all set. You might need to add a margin to encompass the movement, but that's all.
Unless, of course, you're not happy with a simple text message. Should this be the case, you can go wild and begin adding stacks to Floating Notice. The stacks will then jump, or float, up and down to catch a visitor's attention – depending on the animation speed you chose.

Stack settings
Colour – Font, Background
Align – Left, Centre, Right
Border Radius
Show Shadow
Animation Speed
Animation Distance
Top Position
Use Stacks Content

With a floating (or bouncing) message above your Special Offer, Book Now, or Learn More, no-one is going to miss your CTA.
And all Floating Notice is going to cost you is a subscription to the news letter, where you'll learn more about the site launch and about even more free stacks.

What are you waiting for? There's sure to be an 'Unsubscribe' button!

You just purchased Intrinsic from S4S and are going to build a killer layout!
But wait, that looks a lot more complicated than you thought it would!

I assure you it isn’t; Here’s a layout that I put together quickly to demonstrate how Intrinsic works…

We’re building for the modern web – right? So what did we learn just last week?
Mobile First!

Let’s build a project together…
Drag an Intrinsic stack into your stacks page and begin filling it with content.

In my project, I have a header stack — an image with a title and a menu bar. I added the image as a background image to a Sections Pro stack and the title in a Sections Box. The menu is below the sections box and I dropped the lot into an Intrinsic Grid Item. Problem number one!
 The Intrinsic stack already has a background colour defined. Two backgrounds won’t work. If you wish to see your Section, you’ll need to deactivate Intrinsic’s BG in the main stack!

Once that’s done, you’ll notice that Intrinsic also has 0.75rem padding on all sides. We want our banner image to be full width, so the padding will have to go!

Next up, in a Grid Item that I’ve given the ID h1, I’ve added a Grummage stack with a Header stack, and a 2 column Grummage containing paragraph stacks.
The Grummage stack reduces our Intrinsic content to the site width defined in the Foundation setup.

I’ve then added the following Grid Items and filled them : for paragraphs one to four with the IDs p1 — p4. For images i1 — i4. In the I Grid items I’ve added a text stack for the caption — set to align at the bottom of the Item and I’ve added a background image via the Fill Style dropdown.

Now comes the Grid Item for your footer.

The preview will still look chaotic because we haven’t added a layout yet!

Our content is all in place, so all we need to do now is add a layout description for screens larger than 640px or 768 px (up to you). 
We want the images spaced around the header ‘p4’, so In suggest you grab a piece of paper and draw the following:

And now you've come this far, you can define a layout for a third breakpoint.
Quickly sketch out on paper just how you'd like it! Have fun!

BTW – If you visit this page with what you’ve just learned, you’ll find a few more helpful tips.
I know, if you suffer from code phobia like me, it looks scary, but I assure you — after the work you just did, it isn’t!

There are a couple of stacks available that will filter RapidWeaver content; some more, some less complicated. One Little Designer has just released what is probably the least complicated filter stack available today.

Filter grid does exactly what it says on the tin. A grid of content that is filterable. Drag Filter Grid into a Stacks page and your first row of content is almost finished. All that's missing is your content. Drag any combination of content into a Filter Grid Column, add comma separated tags and you're ready to fly!
The possibilities are endless: Portfolios, travel catalogues, product catalogues, if it needs to be filtered, Filter grid is the simplest solution!

Filter grid is child's play to set up, does not require PHP and is very effective. See it on a site near you soon!

The 'experts' currently agree unanimously that CSS Grids are the future of web design. In a couple of years time, those same experts will most likely come up with a different description of where the web is heading, but currently CSS Grids is IT!
But how are we supposed to take advantage of CSS Grids in RapidWeaver?

At the end of last year, Will Woodgate began work on a stack named Intrinsic. Today, the final version of Intrinsic has been released and it's going to alter your concept of page layout.

During the 90s, if we wanted to build a more complicated layout, we were forced to use tables. Then CSS came along and seemingly solved all our layout problems, we discovered, however, that CSS wasn't up to the task of positioning those more complicated elements. Flexbox is great, but only for one dimensional layouts, it doesn't really help with those 2D layouts, so now we've moved on to CSS Grids.
Intrinsic from Stacks4Stacks will build the most intricate CSS Grids for you!

Intrinsic is a little more complicated than your average stack. It can assist you in building complete responsive pages, but you'll need to study the way that it works. There's new terminology that you may need to learn, but once you get to grips with Intrinsic's layout, you'll find that it's actually quite straightforward.

Here's an extremely simple example:


And here are the settings that were necessary:

In the example above, I have defined a two-column layout. Column one is 600px wide; column two is set to 'auto'. I have named the Grid Items (the stack containers shown in red) 'one, two, three, side and footer'.
The Grid Template Areas is set to 'one side', 'two side' 'three side' 'footer footer'. The resulting layout displays the Grid Items one, two and three below each other, with the 'side' Item to the right of them. the 'footer' fills the two last columns.

The Grid Template Areas describe your layout. Intrinsic supports up to twelve columns and unlimited rows. When you drag a new Intrinsic stack into your page, the Grid Template Areas contains the description for a twelve column layout.

Each Grid Item must have a unique alphanumeric ID. Either letter/number combinations or short words. Numbers must be combined with at least one letter.
'A B' 'C B' 'D B' 'E E', for example, or 'one side' 'two side' 'three side' 'footer footer' would both result in the layout shown above (I personally prefer the short names, because they help identify the Grid Items more easily).

You'll notice in the screenshot above that the breakpoint is set to 'Screens > 0px Wide'. Each time you add a Grid Breakpoints Child Stack, you can redefine your layout above the breakpoint that you set in the stack settings.

MUCH more complicated designs than the example above can be built with Intrinsic. Just take a look here at one of Will's demo pages. The page is fully responsive, as is the example on the S4S Intrinsic page.

Intrinsic Grid Items can contain any stack that you want to throw at them.
Spend a little time to discover how Intrinsic works and you'll completely rethink the way that your pages can be played out!

NOTE: to view the Intrinsic demo file, you'll need to download the demo version of the Themeflood RWSkinz theme.

Several ThemeFlood themes have a rather special navigation bar which several users have requested be ported-over to Stacks for use in other themes such as Foundry and Foundation. Will Woodgate has complied with this request and released Gator.

Themes all have their own navigation menus built-in, but blank themes typically do not include a flexible menu. There are a number alternative navigation stacks available, but they all have their pros and cons.

A website's navigation system is possibly the most important aspect of any site design. If end users are faced with a navigation menu that's difficult to use, they will often navigate away to another website. A menu should look and feel as if it were an integral part of a completed web design; rather than giving an impression of something that was added as an afterthought!

Gator is derived from the same menu code that ThemeFlood themes have been using in for over 10 years, so you can be sure that it is tried and tested. This stack is expertly developed and includes a number of features never seen in other navigation stacks before. Particular emphasis has been placed on ease of setup, durability, user accessibility, responsive behaviour and flexible styling.


Gator can take the navigation links most RapidWeaver themes generate. Alternatively you can use our HTML markup as a template for custom-building your own menu structure. Menu types like tabs, nav bars, vertical blocks and even a simple multi-column mega menu are all achievable using Gator.

Common navigation problems Gator can provide a solution for include:

• Support for multiple levels of subpages.
• Configure the mobile / desktop breakpoint to avoid display issues.
• Essential accessibility features for website users with disabilities.
• Ability to hide the menu in print and PDF output.
• Subtle mouseover animation effects for a more professional feel.
• Quickly add additional content before or after the parent links.
• Toggle between a horizontal or vertical navigation menu on desktop.
• Restyle the menu to match existing theme styling or branding.
• No irritation of having to click parent pages to reveal subpages.
• Change link alignment within a few clicks.
• Safe incorporation of optional Font Awesome icons, next to link text.
• The hamburger mobile menu button is clearly marked 'Menu'.
• Modern markup and intelligent layout with CSS Flexbox.
• Easily handles long subpage links that span multiple lines.

Settings for Gator are split into 6 groups, ordered conveniently for experts working from a mobile-first principle:
1. General settings
2. Accessibility settings
3. Mobile menu settings
4. Desktop nav bar settings
5. Drop-down menu settings
6. Additional content

If you've tried other stacks but are looking for something different then take a look at Gator. This is a navigator stack that won't disappoint. A fully functioning free demo version is available for download. This free demo will help you experiment with all that Gator can do.

Beyond the standard set of style options provided in Gator, much can be accomplished by placing Gator inside other stacks such as 'sticky' bars and help is available for simple CSS modifications you want to make.

Gator is also available as a free variant for use in premium ThemeFlood themes, such as RWSkinz.