Another opinion of not much weight, but for me too it will be goodbye to RW and hello Stacks app.
I’ve used RW since 2009, bought every upgrade and always been hopefully with every version, and “new great but secret things” types of announcements in the new versions…that never materialised, that RW would innovate in someway that made it a great tool to start with. It just continued to add few new features and keep having issues with it’s existing features.
@dancounsell I have said to you in the past that RW really needs to innovate to keep up with the competition and looks like you are with RW9 but essentially sacrificing everything else for the sake of your own survival.
The more of the behind the scenes info comes out the more distasteful Realmac’s approach becomes. It’s a great shame that couldn’t find a better way to work with Stacks, especially as it has been the main thing keeping RW going for some time. If there was no Stacks, I think RW would have gone the way of iWeb a long time ago.
I used to recommend RW but that has been very hard to do in the last few years as to do anything half decent in it required Stacks and stacks. Indeed even your own site is built with RW but actually needs Stacks and Foundry (you have Foundry in the tiny print at the bottom but notably no mention of the Stacks plugin) to achieve it.
I looked at other options, and they were significantly better than RW on it’s own, but the thing that has kept me with RW was Stacks and what it could enable. RW had become a very expensive jumping point to access Stacks and stacks.
@isaiah I’m looking forward to this new chapter for Stacks. I’ve always found you to be one of the good guys, so I hope that you succeed and deliver a great new platform.
Dan, I don’t wish you ill, good luck in your new direction. I just hope that for your remaining customers the hype of elements does deliver something of use to them and not vapourware.
Now this reply actually makes sense and rings sincere. I hope we’ll continue this path. Do you think you and Isaiah can bury the hatchets? You both hold pieces of something potentially wonderful. Of course you can each do it on your own, I don’t doubt your skills. But together you’ll get there faster. Will it be easier? Maybe, but only if you get your values aligned, you know the stuff we hold dear that drives motivation.
Relevant part of this comment:
You can also get good info/updates on his Twitter account.
Non-relevant part of this comment not meant to derail anything :
I swear I already followed Isaiah but apparently I hadn’t. And when I clicked on his profile to follow, it turns out he’s also followed by… Barack Obama! Lol. You should share that story some day.
LOL. No, not really. It’s a lot less interesting than you’re imagining.
I think President Obama’s twitter account follows back any account that follows him, or it did at one time.
It’s mostly apolitical, but very progressive account now that tweets a lot about about his charity work in Chicago for underprivileged kids – something that’s pretty important to me.
I don’t think I follow it any longer, but it’s worthwhile follow. Recommended. 👍
This is not merely a disagreement about terms or worry over competition.
After working with Dan for 17 years he seems to be trying to end my company and co-opt the community of stack developers as his own – and all seemingly for little more than personal gain.
I’m certain he has his own noble reasons for these things, but the end result is the same: I’m forced to pivot to completely to new app to save my career and feed my kids.
However there’s much more:
It seems to me that the techniques for achieving RW9’s new features were less than ethical. I’m choosing to keep this mostly private for now, in just the developer slack/discord. If I’m lying or embellishing, I hope the stack developers hold me to account.
While Dan claims that the changes to the RW API were done only to improve RW. To me, many changes seemed targeted specifically to frustrate me and make more work for me. I said as much in private developer forums on Feb 24th SIX DAYS BEFORE DAN ANNOUNCED ELEMENTS TO ANYONE:
Feb 24, 1:15pm -- Isaiah Carew:
if i manage to make the transition to RW9 it will take a herculean effort
and there's absolutely zero guarantee that they won't change again a
day later. it's an untenable situation.
Little did I know that they would announce a competing product six days later. But I was at the end of my wits trying to work around all the little roadblocks that have been installed. No matter what Dan says, it strains credulity that this was anything but purposeful.
And lastly, they fein offers of assistance in public if I were only to send them my code. However in light of them building a Stacks API “on the fly transpiler”, it strains belief that their intentions were benevolent or honorable as they were building a competing product when they asked for my code.
I try hard to maintain a professional demeanor, focus on the great potential for the Stacks 5 app, and let all this BS pass around me. But please don’t mistake this for a lack care about these things. I do care a great deal. In private I’m apoplectic with anger, so deeply sad about the community that he’s shattering I can’t begin to enunciate it, and frustrated beyond belief at his unwillingness to take responsibility for what he’s doing.
Every time you see me make a polite response, please keep in mind there are a dozen of these that come along with it.
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Someday we will perhaps be able to look back and forgive, but it’s early yet, the wound is still bleeding.
Perhaps rather than burying the hatchet today, I think the best thing now is to move forward and focus on building a new app and a new community so we can keep working together for a long time to come.
I bought RW in 2014 and have bought each upgrade. Each upgrade never really upgraded anything very much. I also remember one of the upgrades I bought on release took ages to sort out because it was so full of bugs effecting my workflow (until I reverted back to the older version). “The automatic save” function after every change was ridiculous and not grounded by someone who used the program everyday. That was rolled back after a whole barrage of complaints.
I use nothing of the RW options other than the basic site info you need to input and the CSS box. All the rest I regard as baggage.
I’ve invested too much money and time in buying developer stacks and if some of them aren’t onboard for RW9 then I’m out.
Roll on the Stacks app and let me use all my existing stacks with confidence.
@dancounsell I think you’ve shot yourself in the foot mate.
@isaiah I’m 100% with you. It’s a sorry state of affairs for sure and I’m not going to go over old ground but I really do feel for you. Stay strong and try not to let all this get you down.
You know that you have a highly supportive group of users and developers that will continue to support you through this crazy period.
I heard a good suggestion the other day. I appreciate that the Stacks app is a little way off but I’m sure that there are users who would want to support you by buying in to any early Beta release and then having that fee deducted from the full price when the Stacks app is ready for the public release.
You might not want to go down that route as it might generate more support requests than you would want, but something to think about and a source of income while you are working on the app.
I’ve been using RW since v4 and Stacks since v2 and I’ll be with those first in the queue for the Stacks app. However, RW9 is not on my shopping list!
Thanks for keeping us updated and try to stay positive.
I’m pretty inconsequential to some of the folk commenting here.
@dancounsell I want you to succeed. You have a great product that has been fun to use and produce great results. You have a great British business and god knows, we need that.
I have no stake in the game. I just want a product that works well and makes we design easier.
This is being discussed all over social media as well as here. You’re not coming out of this looking good, in fact I’m struggling to think of anyone coming out on your side.
I truly hope you know what you’re doing: with Blocsapp firing on all cylinders, more and more Wordpress editors cropping up, I fear this could finish you.
In past years, RapidWeaver forums were “upgraded” few times for the sole purpose of getting rid of too many negative posts and unwillingness to address them in a direct way.
This last “upgrade” (which, BTW, is a downgrade, if you ask me), has been concocted for the sole purpose of getting a propaganda tool to new users. In my rough estimate, 90% of people who are active on the new forum, never used the previous one.
The Counsells knew long ago that they will lose old users on the announcement of leaving Stacks in the dump. They knew they would have to get a lot of new ignorant users to survive this shady maneuver.
Personally, I am not surprised by this latest shenanigan. Since the very first time I had to deal with the RM years ago, it’s been a distasteful experience for me. Only the relationship with 3rd party developers made me keep using RW. Frankly, I can’t care less whether or not RW will survive.
I am so relieved that Isaiah decided to make the Stacks app!
@Isaiah, I wish you maximum health and enthusiasm. You are our hope! If you have a PayPal account, give us a link where we could directly contribute to give you at least some sense of financial stability in the time needed for the development of Stacks 5 app.
Just to be clear- I am not looking for a discount. I’m looking for a way to support and encourage the development of a product that has made a huge difference in my life. And, I imagine, other’s too. I’ve had a very successful career as a full-time employee of a huge integrated medical system in part because Stacks made designing and editing websites so easy. After starting out with iWeb & PageMill, I graduated to Dreamweaver. And, I hated it. I then found Rw, which was so much better (i.e., easy and fun to use), but not good enough. Then, Stacks came along and I settled in— quite happily. If you were to open a Kickstarter, I’d be in for sure.
I agree Crowd Funding would give a financial boost and I believe, you would be surprised by the results. Plus allow you to work without the constant worry of keeping food on the table.
A +1 for supporting Stacks. No discount required!
I don’t want to jump in any discussion, I do have my opinion though (but I’m already married to my wife, not going to marry any software developer right now! ;) ).
Even if I know I’ll be happy to check RW9 (might be interesting, Im always curious), one thing is sure… I won’t ever stop using stacks if @isaiah keep it up! In this case it’s not a question of curiosity as with RW9, it’s a fact.
I will support Stacks as soon as Isaiah give us the possibility.
Adam at Elixir/Foundry has stated that he will support both, Stacks App and RapidWeaver 9. As far as I know he currently is the only one going that route…
I don’t see how any developer can say at this point that they would be in favour of Elements. Stuart (ShakingTheHabitual) was to first I believe, to say he wouldn’t support Elements and he carefully and tactfully expressed his reasons.
So much is up in the air, but as Isaiah pointed out that Dan, after 18 months of inactivity, announced a totally changed API, so how can any developer have confidence that there will be no further show stopping changes to the API. That trust has been broken and at best will take time to recover to the point where any developer would have the level of trust to invest time in RW.
Also, I just don’t see how any new RW user would buy into RW9 Elements when Blocs is such a polished product. Blocs has about 6 years of uninterrupted development and it really shows. That boat has sailed years ago.
I won’t even mention the 1996 style Internet Explore “e” Elements logo.