It is time for me to forge a new path

Elixir & Forum Updates
32

I think you are being overly optimistic about Stacks Pro. As I understand it … from Isaiah’s own writing … that stacks will need a “tweek” to run in Stacks Pro. So it won’t be a viable option for Foundry owners. (Also Foundry only runs with the Foundry theme … so if themes are a no-go then that’s another issue.)

RW Classic has been due updates for a year or more. It will likely continue for awhile … you just want to avoid the auto-upgrade process after 1 year of usage. It’s not a great scene, but probably Foudry can make it for 2-4 years more with RW Classic.

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33

I wonder if the themes issue is the primary holdup.

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I don’t think so, but I honestly don’t know for sure. Developers would understand the issue a lot more than me! Last that I heard was there will be an “easy” tweak for developers to make, but at the same time developers don’t know what that tweak is! Kinda crazy-making if you are a developer.

35

There may have been a misunderstanding there. This is not the case. You are absolutely right when it comes to the themes. Stacks Pro will not support the import or migration of themes. A new theme will need to be created for Stacks Pro. I’m not familiar with the Foundry theme, but I believe making it compatible with Stacks Pro shouldn’t be too difficult. Hopefully someone could step up to the plate when the time comes and help make this happen.

Since this is my first time commenting on this thread, I should add that I touched base with Adam the moment that I saw this announcement. While I did post this in other places I should say it here as well…

Adam, you have been a gem in the community since the beginning. You are one of the most talented designers that I have ever had the privilege to work with. You will be missed. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors and I hope that our paths cross again someday. :pray:

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36

I wish you all the best for the future, for yourself and your family. They always come first. Thank for your great products.

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37

First, let me say thank you for everyone’s well wishes. It means a lot! Probably more than you realize. I’d hoped to be doing this for quite a while to come, but I can’t control the actions of others, even when they directly affect my own livelihood.

Let me touch on some of the things you all have asked above. I’ll be as straightforward and frank as possible.

It is an app that has been in development by YourHead Software for quite some time now, and is meant to compete with RapidWeaver. It is born out of a dispute between YourHead Software and Realmac Software when Realmac decided to create an app that would replace Stacks. The Stacks Pro app is meant to take the Stacks plugin and turn it into its own standalone app.

The beta I’ve had access to was not very usable and Foundry did not work properly within it. I asked questions about making Foundry work within it, as well as for any updated beta I could get for testing and helping Foundry work within it earlier this year. We’ve still not seen a second beta, and I’ve not heard back from Isaiah at YourHead Software since late May of this year.

I am working doing something that is quite different from Elixir and isn’t related to web design at all, so I’m not sure it would be relevant. You can hit me up with a direct message if you’re realllly interested and I’ll be glad to share.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ll be honest, the chance of that would be very low, unfortunately. I hung in there waiting for Stacks Pro as long as I could. I wouldn’t have made this decision if I wasn’t at a point where I needed to walk away.

It will be there for a while, but not forever. I can’t make promises on how long, but I assume most of you will want to move on soon so that you can acclimate to whatever product you switch to. There are a lot of web design tools out there nowadays.

Very tough. It literally kept me awake at night quite often.

Yes, the store closes on November 15, 2024 as well. Unless you have your heart set on something though I wouldn’t buy anything.

The websites will remain for the documentation, but as I said above they will not live on forever. They will go away at some point. Go explore new apps and online web building tools. Maybe someone could start a new thread here on the forum listing some and we can all chip in ideas of where you all might look for new apps and tools in the coming months.

Personally I waited for as long as I could because I wanted and, like many in the 3rd-party developer community, needed it to succeed. I think there is potential there in the promised feature set on the developer side of things for sure. I think maybe some of that could have be left for later additions to the app so that it could ship sooner, but I understand YourHead Software wanting to make the app robust to compete, but I think there’s a tradeoff that needs to be assessed, IMHO. The beta I have isn’t useable, and Foundry doesn’t work within it properly. So I do agree with @mitchellm’s assessment that not every Stacks addon you use now will “just work” within Stacks Pro. At least that is my experience. If you’re reading this don’t agree feel free to DM me, but that is my experience thus far.

As I mentioned above I’ve not heard from Isaiah since May of this year. That makes me uneasy from my point of view, as if I were to have continued forward I don’t know if I would have been able to get the support needed to make the transition.

I’m not out to rag on Isaiah or the app he’s working on. His app is a much better choice over Realmac Software’s app as at least Isaiah is trying to foster a good community of developers, which is the antithesis of Realmac’s approach. But I do wish YourHead Software’s communication was better.

The thing is Foundry did gain traction. It has a huge user base. Enough so that Realmac decided they didn’t just want a piece of that pie, but instead wanted the whole thing for themselves. Instead of fostering a healthy community of 3rd-party developers for their upcoming app, which would in turn create a healthy ecosystem in the long run, they decided to focus on the short term and incorporate tools like Foundry into their base app. This will help them in the short term for sure, but developers won’t be able to compete with that sort of inbuilt functionality so they will go elsewhere, and all you’ll be left with is one flavor of ice cream in Elements – the Realmac flavor.

Are you referring to what he’s done to developers and the community? If so I think he does. It was purposeful.

If you mean they don’t know what they’re getting into… I don’t think they know how much work is going to go into supporting just their framework, let alone the app as well. I’ve seen the number of posts on their forum increase exponentially recently after they released their paid beta of Elements.

I’m not sure how that would be done. That said, the documentation will remain on the site for a while. I’m sure it’ll be there long enough for people to transition to other platforms.

Not at this time.

This is correct. Foundry does not work in Stacks Pro as-is. Maybe this is a bug in the beta I received, or something that needs to be changed in Foundry, but either way, it does not work properly at this time. I could not tell from Isaiah’s responses to me directly after the beta launched whether it was my fault or a bug in the app. I am still unclear. And yes, a theme for Foundry would be needed for Foundry to work in Stacks Pro.

Just so we’re 100% clear: I would not authorize someone to continue my products without written permission after I have closed up shop. I would have a serious issue with this.

If you have more questions, please post them. I will reply when I get a chance.

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38

I’ve sat in the background and thought how best to comment on this situation and although I understand the situation and the ongoing situations I am also sat feeling uneasy about the fact I feel slightly cheated to have bought into an update on a framework I love using and to have invested that money and would have continued to have done so for now it to be discontinued after a relatively short period of time…

Had I foreseen it I would have invested in learning to use foundation and make the transition it appears we are all going to have to now make being that I already owned this and still decided to proceed with F3.

A very sad announcement indeed.

39

@ablx – I’m sorry you fell cheated. Foundry has been around for years though, and Foundry 3 was released in February of 2023.

I’d have loved to have kept going with Elixir. I love Foundry. But being driven out of business is a rough pill to swallow. PayPal won’t let me refund purchases over 60 days. If you purchased within that 60 day window then send me an email with your receipt and I’ll refund you.

If you’re mad at me, then I apologize. But it isn’t me who you should be upset with in all honesty. I’d love to have kept making a living doing this. But I can’t put food on the table with Elixir any longer due to the litany of things I’ve mentioned in this thread – and more.

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40

You haven’t been cheated; you’re getting educated. When Foundation 6 came out, I bit the bullet and bought it. F6 is probably a good product, but I’ve never been able to build anything with it because I don’t understand it.

I bought Foundry3 just so I could understand the concept of how frameworks work.

I didn’t buy Foundry, but I did buy Foundry 2, but I never tried to use it because I didn’t take the time to spend the time learning how to use it.

When I bought Foundation6, I spent hours and hours and hours watching Joe’s “tutorial” F6 videos — because each one is hours and hours and hours long — or so it seems. They are tedious because so much of the content is full of JW fans showering compliments about things I still don’t understand.

Throughout the tedium though, I learned that Joe Workman is actually a pretty good guy, and he’s a nice guy — even if I can’t understand Foundation 6. Joe’s really trying to help us out.

Before Foundry 3, I was still building sites with themes, typically Nick Cates’s themes and Elixir themes. One day I was building a spec site for a potential client with one of Adam’s themes, Ruby I think, and he’d built-in maybe 10-12 color palettes, and it just made everything so much easier, and the site was a spec site, and Adam was again making me look like I knew what I was doing — so I started looking at Foundry 3.

And then I watched a few of Adam’s F3 tutorial videos. They’re short, to the point, actually instructive. I started watching all of them — hoping to then learn Foundation 6 — but then I thought, why not just get Foundry 3. It’s so much simpler. What’s not to understand?

Then suddenly there was a Black Friday sale. Boom, I pulled the F3 trigger. Wow. This Foundry3 is awesome, and it’s going to be awesome for a while yet.

You haven’t been cheated. Foundry 3 is worth every penny. If you don’t believe me, just wait until November 16th.

The truth is tomorrow is guaranteed to no one — unless you put your hope and faith in SomeOne beyond manmade software.

Beyond his incredibly thoughtful coding skills, Adam is an extremely gifted, extremely talented graphic designer. After Elixir, we’ll probably see his name in the credits of Pixar movies.

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41

I’ve decided to look into Blocs now. I’ll spend the winter transitioning my site over because I can still use F3 for a few months to keep things ticking along.

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42

Completely understand. Isaiah has been amazingly pathetic. The core of any good business is communication. And, as a communicator, Isaiah gets a big F-. I didn’t think anything lower than an F was possible, but Isaiah has outdone himself. I don’t particularly care about the coding, but keeping people in the loop every couple of weeks … that would be 5 minutes of time. Too f***king lazy and stupid for me to invest further money into him.

Blocs may also be in my future, although I’ll probably consider a couple other options. I figure/guess that I probably have a couple more years left with Foundry + RW Classic.

… but not responding to Adam since May? Criminal. I’m just too old to support proven a-holes doused with way too much idiocy.

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43

Thank you. I appreciate this… :smile:

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45

I have to say I hadn’t really looked at Blocs yet however I have just had a look over and it has the same feel that Foundry gives so this may be an option for me too… I’m tired of false promises now and pending release dates with little updates on progress…

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46

It’s really sad to hear about Elixir closing down, but given the circumstances, it’s understandable and not entirely surprising. It’s clear that Adam put lot of passion and effort into building his products and this community, and it’s unfortunate to see it affected by such external factors. The decision must have been tough, but I respect Adam’s thoughtful approach and transparency. I’m sure most folks in this community will also appreciate how though it was to make this decision. I wish Adam nothing but success, joy and fulfillment on his new path. All the best!

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47

Hey Adam

I am sad to hear and I completely understand how you were forced to this decision.

When Elements was announced, I expected this would be the outcome for many developers. Very sad and a poor business decision by realmac.

I have purchased all versions of Foundry and Alloy and with Classic I expect they will meet my needs for sometime to come. I only have personal sites I am responsible for these days.

I wish you the best on the next adventure and THANK YOU for all the creativity and support through the years.

Blessing,
—Mark

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48

I haven’t posted much on this forum, but wanted to add my voice to those who have expressed great admiration for—and gratitude to—Adam for his work over the years, and dismay at the state of things in the RapidWeaver ecosystem that has led to his totally understandable decision.

I started using RapidWeaver in 2008, and Adam’s themes, plugins and icon sets were among the first add-ons I purchased. His unique, characteristically elegant style was evident from the start—it was part of what made using RapidWeaver a real joy. I tried Foundry and Foundation when they were first released, and as many here have expressed, Foundry was just simpler to use, and became my go-to framework for the sites I built. Needless to say, moving each them to another framework is going to be quite a challenge.

Adam—first off: THANK YOU for your work over the years. The attention to detail you poured into every product you built, every tutorial video you made, and every support query you responded to is unmatched, in my experience. Your work and products are so dependable that I naïvely allowed myself to believe that they would always be there, getting better and better. Would you consider continuing development (albeit at a reduced scale of your choosing) if your customers agreed to a subscription model? Personally, I would be willing to spend recurring amounts to continue to get access to your considerable talent, and the tools that you mentioned already having in development, etc.

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49

Dear Adam

You’ll do just fine with whatever you are about to undertake.

Waiting for that thing called ELEMENT to materialise for far too long, i gave up. I also am not renewing my subscription to Rapidweaver, latest version being 9.2.1. I’ll stick to that, and all of the stacks and themes that I purchased from you over the years (almost all of them).

Even though you will close this support forum, I hope you can keep elixirgraphic website up and running, because I always go back for tutorials for Foundry stacks. If not, how can I download all of those videos so I can use them as future reference?

To the future.

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50

As I mentioned in a previous post, this was a real bombshell and sad day when I woke up to the news of the closure of Adam’s Elixir, I completely see the reasons and sympathise entirely with Adam and do not attribute any blame and resentment towards him for the desicion he was forced in to, the opposite actually. I had moved from a different framework to Adam’s Foundry 3 and Alloy combination. Over the last 12 months I have converted all the websites I look after to F3, a very time-consumming exercise. Foundry however kept me going through the RW debacle waiting for Stacks Pro. Continuing to use RW 8.9.3, every OS update made me nervious that the core RW app will stop functioning properly and it would be a case of I can’t get to any of my sites to maintain. But perservered waiting for the transition to Stacks Pro. Now though I find, I have to make a tough desicion and swap platform completely. I know F3 will not work in Stacks Pro as there will be no working base template, and still I have no idea when Stacks Pro will be released, it will be ready when it’s ready isn’t really I way I can work. I can’t risk RW not being compatible with the next OS. 18 months ago I thought it may be six months time, I need some kind of clue, even if it is a rough estimate.

It really pains me to say that I’m going to have to leave the Stacks community, I have loved the Stacks eco-system, I have bought nearly of 1LD stacks, probably 60% of Joe’s and loads of others. Basically have been well invested in the community.

So… for Foundry users, if you are feeling stuck now, this is what is working for me. I downloaded the demo of Blocs Tuesay morning. Have been putting it through it’s paces. It is different, but that is mainly interface, however I’m finding it very similar to Foundry and the modular Bootstrap way of working. Blocs is Bootstrap the same as Foundry. I have to say I’m impressed, there are a few things that are done differently but the forum helps adjust, but on reflection they are an interesting and well thought out way of doing things. If you can use Stacks/F3 it doesn’t take much to adjust. I rely on Alloy so am going to adopt Blocs and Volt CMS I today.

Please don’t misconstrue this post as RW or Stacks thing. If Foundry/Alloy wasn’t ceasing I would still be continuing with Stacks, although nervous of OS updates and RW 8.9.3. This is intended as a bit of my own experience that may be of some help to Foundry users that are facing a “what do I do now situation?” and are having a bit of a panic. This works for me, but we all work and think differently.

Some of the template devs may find Blocs interesting and a market to work in, especially when you can but don’t have to produce full templates. It looks to me as though Brics are the stacks/tools and Blocs (that can be made and sold) are combinations of these to make modular content similar to Adam’s add on packs. It would be great to see more of that content available for Blocs.

Again though, really sad to be leaving the Stacks eco-system, I’ve really wanted to support Stacks as I think it has a unique community and a positive supportive body of devs, I just can’t wait another, 3, 6 or 12 months of being in the dark and not knowing what is going to happen. Elements just isn’t an option, zero trust in that camp.

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51

Echoes my thoughts. I am going to move away from RW/mythical stacks app completely now because I have lost faith that stack app will ever be released. Also think that when RW stops working it will happen suddenly and leave me hung out to dry.
I also predict that Stack App will need to be developed by another larger ‘character’ to ever see fruition and continued development.

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52

My Two Cents

This announcement was inevitable, knowing Adam as a friend, I was expecting it. I have been testing Foundry since 2016 before the initial release of F1. In that time I have become friends with Adam and his wife, having met and chatted over lunch a couple of years ago while on vacation in their previous city of residence. To say I am saddened by this is an understatement. Having private chats with him about this going back to March of 2022 when Realmac decided to pivot and start ripping everyone off and disenfranchising its devs, we have discussed endless what ifs about the future of Foundry and Elixir.

I am also angry at both Realmac and YourHead for such ineptitude and disregard of others by their petty argument. Mostly, it is from Realmac wanting the whole pie instead of sharing. This is my opinion, but from what I have observed is that elements is only a big revenue stream for them, which is all well and good, but at the expense of a community that has been built of almost twenty years. Elements elements will be monetized to the hilt. Mark my word, anything beyond the basic functionality of the app will be a paid upgrade of the usage of a particular cool component, you will need to pay for that functionality. The lack of communication from both Realmac and YourHead has been horridness.

As Adam has stated, YourHead has been silent on whether or not F3 could have a viable option for porting it to StacksPro. IMHO, seemingly another prominent dev has Isaiahs ear and is sailing along just fine with his framework and being able to request certain features for himself. Thus squeezing out all other competition from the marketplace when and if StacksPro launches at some murky, future date. That dev is rewriting all of his current stacks to work with StacksPro and will undoubtably charge for the new functionality. This indicates to me he has access to the most current StacksPro build available.

I know this will cause some peoples feathers to be ruffled, but at this point after seeing my friend agonize over the stupidity and short sightedness of two squabbling adults, I really don’t give a shit what they think of me.

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