I am terribly sorry to hear your news although completely understand what has driven your decision. You have obviously been a very important part of RW’s success and I can’t say I’m impressed by Realmac’s operations with regard to you and others who have worked their socks off for RW. Very good wishes for the future.
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@elixirgraphics this sucks, but I can’t imagine how much more it sucks for you and your family.
This makes me anxious that we all may be right behind you if StacksPro will be unable to perform/produce as has been hoped.
Question. Will your YouTube channel remain in place?
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The Elixir, Foundry and Alloy sites will stay up for a time. I can’t promise right now how long. But they will not come down on Nov 15th.
It would all be lumped in together.
@elixirgraphics thanks for letting me know, but I am so depressed right now at hearing your news. Question, and I’m asking this question because I trust you, and I trust your opnion. What do you think will happen with StacksPro? Asking for a friend.
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Sad day Adam - Elixir is one of the originals! I have stacks & themes of yours going back quite a few years and they’re still my go to products because they continue to work great! Clients who won’t upgrade their website because the theme has stood the test of time and still looks great 7-8 years down the line. That’s great design.
All the very best in whatever the next phase is. Completely understand why you’re off - no need for you to feel bad.
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Stacks Pro is looking good - cleaner and leaner without all the RW baggage (which served its purpose a long time ago but cant be ditched). It’s a way off but a lot has been done and it has a few useful new features. All existing stacks will work. I don’t think RW themes will be supported but that won’t be a big obstacle. Meanwhile RW Classic isn’t going anywhere - indeed it is due some updates - so everything is as safe as it can be.
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Can’t say I’m surprised by this news but as a Foundry 3 user it’s depressing.
When Stacks Pro was announced I knew it wasn’t something that was going to appear in a year but I thought it would be (in some workable form) 2 years later.
This hasn’t happened and that is not a dig at the creator who has had by all accounts significant health challenges in that period.
Not looking forward to rebuilding my site. The way that Adam designed Foundry 3 made it logical for me to use. His videos were also excellent.
Talk of “swatches” & Foundation 6 are just confusing to someone like me. I don’t understand code. The 1 hour live streams that may or may not answer questions compounded this.
I’ve bought plenty of Joe Workman’s stacks over the years (he’s a very good developer) but Foundation 6 has never appealed to me.
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Very sad to hear. I worked on some software for years with a partner that I had to let go of. It’s not an easy thing to put so much effort into a thing of beauty, and have it not gain traction. You have my sympathy.
I’m not surprised. When I finally grasped what Elements was about, it was obviously an attempt to box out Stacks. I knew nothing of the backroom conflicts, but I also thought that without Stacks and independent developers, the eco system would collapse. It was fun having lots of people working on quirky needs for amateur coders. A stack for any purpose. Rapidweaver has in effect fired lots of no cost developers and put it all on his own shoulders. I don’t think Rapidweaver has a clue what he has done. I doubt he will succeed. His pricing makes no sense, either. There are lots of turnkey websites out there with already built tools, users, deeper pockets, and more vision.
The beauty of Foundry was a blank page, just like the beauty of BlueBall Design was in an earlier day for Rapidweaver. I’m wondering how Elements will affect Joe Workman. He seems to have a larger base of users, but he has the same vulnerability of competing with his supplier. I’m assuming Isiah is making Stacks Pro as an alternative to Rapidweaver? That a long row to hoe, too. The synergy worked from the division of labor. We now have people not working in their strengths. It’s a big loss for everyone. More weird since as Mac users we have seen this play out multiple times with OS changes and the mothballing of lots of excellent software. He should have known better, but ego is what it is.
Can I make a request that you put all your support documentation in a folder that we can all download and access locally? I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be making websites at this rate. It was just a side thing, but I liked having the ability. Your product is VERY excellent.
I wish you the very best in whatever comes next. Will you be taking work in website design? I have an idea that I think is too big for me to do, but I’d love to send you the work if I could, or to refer you to others.
-Steve
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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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I wonder if the themes issue is the primary holdup.
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.
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. 
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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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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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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.
@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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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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