Adam suggested that someone could open another thread to discuss the alternatives that are available to us today. I think that the shock has prevented us from doing so until now, I won’t hide from you that I am writing this post with great sadness (with a lump in my throat, that’s an understatement) because I already miss Adam and I think that’s the case for many.
In the Stacks universe, we obviously have to wait for Stackspro. I supported by buying all the possible products of the Foundry, Foundation and Source frameworks (and a few others) in order to give their authors something to wait. For Adam, that wasn’t enough and I understand him perfectly. What I have observed since I joined our communities a few months ago is a base of enthusiasts and people who have invested so much that they are “prisoners” of these investments. It is obvious that this does not allow authors to live off their products. They need to diversify to stay in the waiting for Stackspro. The communication of its designer, how to say… “hallucinating” (this is a psychologist who tells you) is not going to help or reassure the few who can still afford to wait indefinitely. In fact, I fear that on the hypothetical day of the commercial release there will only be a few people left (as for me, I am the age of someone who risks not remembering his own name very well when the said product is released if it continues on the current trend, so reminding me that the product is finally coming out… a little humor is good… I know mine is strange)
That said, in the Mac and no-code universe, the alternatives are few:
Source project or Foundation in the Stacks ecosystem
Blocsapp (investment of around $400 for a set similar to Foundry and Alloy)
Wordpress (there the investment can very quickly exceed $300 per year for a site because the plugins are on subscription and cost an arm and a leg, or even both, which is not easy to continue working if you don’t like voice dictation)
ConcreteCMS (lighter in cost than Wordpress)
Xway, which is scheduled for release this month (I owe my knowledge of these last two to a talented developer, but as I don’t know if he would accept that I mention it, I abstain). It’s a very good surprise, $39 but very few addons to start, without snippets and iframe, so no-code is not absolute. However, it’s really worth considering for small sites (including those with presentation galleries).
There you go, it’s done, the thread is open, if others have the heart and/or the desire, sharing in these moments generally does good. Please, stay “polite” the situation does not call for anger and resentment but the friendship that we all show to Adam.
Blocs is a very solid app. I bought it a couple years ago when Stacks and Realmac first split. I currently use Foundation, the community over there is amazing.
I like the presentation of UIKit and would love to give it a test, we will see. Currently I am building the first business site with Source. source is fast but lacks in the details we are used from Foundry. Regarding WP you can look at Brix, which is quite extensive.
I have UIKit but never gave it a fair shake, the thought of learning a new framework makes me want to vomit…lol. I’ve built a couple sites with Source, its a great framework but your right, it’s nothing like Foundry. None of the Frameworks are like Foundry, so it’s going to be something you will have to adjust too, trust me, I used Foundry for many years, but recently made the switch to Foundation because I wanted more freedom. One thing you really need to consider when looking at frameworks is the community surrounding the framework, that’s one of the reasons I chose Foundation as well.
Source seems like a good option because it’s reasonably priced and has good documentation. The developer is including the Source Workbook (£25) for purchases made in October.
@arlenj , you have used Blocs. Where there specific reasons why you didn‘t stick with it?
I am currently trying Blocs and Foundation. Both have a good community but lacking things I am used to have in Foundry - but also offering other features.
When this first blew up it coincided with my decision to retire from building websites for an actual living. I did, however, want to carry on building them for mates and for even the occasional commercial project if it was interesting.
After years of dissing it, I plumped for WordPress - more specifically, I bought the lifetime Oxygen Builder license, which at the time was about $200. I used it to build one site for money and it paid for itself and then some.
Since then I’ve used it to build a couple more sites and the beauty is that when they’re finished, I just ‘hand the keys over’ to the client and from then on it’s up to them. If they need help, there are a gazillion WP types who can step in (when I tried finding RW people in my area - Brighton where RealMac is based) I got no response.
Since then I’ve used the free Kadence theme and free blocks to build a site. So far it hasn’t cost a penny in plugins or themes or blocks or anything else. And for the time being, that’s the way forward for me.
It’s a great shame about Foundry. I loved it and latterly used it to build all my RW sites.
I’ve been looking at Source as an option. However seeing the latest update posted on Stack4all about stackspro I’m uncertain my future lies with Stacks based web builders at all. If RW stopped working tomorrow then every stack based option would be scuppered. The price is compelling however and at £100 for every stack and source it could fill a gap while I play about with Blocs.
@WeaverPixel , I’ve been taking another look at Blocs myself lately. I bought it a while back and made a few websites with it, but it was missing some stuff I really needed. So, I went back to RapidWeaver. But Blocs has come a long way since then, and now it has a lot of the things I was looking for. Elder from Blocs Master has done an amazing job with the pre-made sections, they’ve really changed the game for a lot of people. If I did decide to make the transition, I’m sure it would be a huge adjustment, and I would miss everyone in the RW communities, but the community over at Blocs is great as well.
@Nigelp , I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling this way. I appreciate Isaiah finally giving a status update after being silent for so long, but his post to me was a little discouraging. I think it’s going to be a while before Stacks Pro starts selling it’s official release.
Aside from the calendar/booking form you could do all that with Kadence I reckon - and if those come from external services you could bring them in. But since it’s free, you can just try yourself. And if you use something like Local (https://localwp.com/) you can try it out without having to set up hosting.
Let’s ask naively: Is it not possible to implement Foundry as a standalone application? Since it currently requires stack, but consists of bootstrap … I’m sorry, I really have no idea. I am naive! But there are so many website builders out there, why no FOUNDRY? With the help of Adam of course, as a parting gift to us With profit sharing, of course.
I’ve known RW for 16 years, besides the excellent work of Will and other good people, Foundry is a ‘masterpiece’. Especially for me, who otherwise has little idea about programming …, that’s why I use RW.
Sorry to post this nonsensical idea here, but I dream of a FOUNDRY website builder.
With profit sharing, of course.