The other paths to stay in no-code area on Mac

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I don’t think RW Classic is going to stop working anytime soon. It just isn’t in Realmac’s interests and it wouldn’t look good especially before the release of their Elements App.

I imagine RW Classic & Elements will exist alongside each other for some time. Sure, the future will be Elements but they’ll want people to move over.

I share your concern about how long the Stacks App is taking. My fear is that if it takes too long more people will get cold feet and move to alternative website builders instead.

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Unless they release a version that runs elements only? They don’t need to supports stacks once elements is out. Makes no sense as a business model because they’ll want everyone to use elements and not something that is a competitor.

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As of right now the only way to build decent websites is to use Rapidweaver + Stacks and that’s not going to change overnight.

Things may change if Elements is released and is a success and similarly if Stacks Pro is released and is a success but until those things happen it’s a lot of “ifs”.

Let’s face it neither have release dates we’re all in the dark. I don’t think it’s in either Realmacs or Yourheads interests to cripple their existing products & revenue streams which rely on each other.

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When the Foundry Community goes, I presume we will still be able to access Foundry users via the RW Community Site.

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Hi @Phloque yes for those who are still active there. I have to say that I don’t participate much anymore (everything revolves around Elements now; three months ago, many questions were still appearing about RapidWeaver 8/Classic, but now it’s very rare. This is why I don’t share the optimism of those who say that there are still many of us…). However, I will check daily if there are any questions about Elixirgraphics products. If I can help, it will be with pleasure.

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Also https://stacks4all.com/

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I suggest to use @joeworkman s new Foundry Chat Space:

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My suggestion would be to look outside of the RapidWeaver / Stacks ecosystem. If you absolutely need an app-based solution check out the Blocs app.

If you’d like something that is computer agnostic give Wix, Wordpress or SquareSpace a tray. As @Rob points out there are several builder plugins for Wordpress that make life easy.

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Thank you for your suggestions, very much appreciated! :pray:

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I think that anyone that has stayed in for this long would be making a horrible mistake by leaving for a different platform now.

  • A usable Stacks Pro beta should available this year. We are close.
  • You already know how to use Stacks. You are going to have to spend a lot of time and heartache learning something new.
  • You have invested a lot of money in your stacks toolbox. All of the existing stacks (including Foundry) that you own will continue to work in Stacks Pro. You will be throwing all of that in the garbage if you choose to leave.
  • Building websites with Stacks is more fun and enjoyable than anything else out there.

I could make more money building products for other larger eco-systems. But that means that I would have to use them. And they all suck… Stacks is where it’s at. Once Stacks Pro ships, I will work harder than I ever have to make Stacks Pro one of the big boys in the industry. It will be hard to find anything out there that will match Stacks Pro

  • Great software that is fun to use and builds websites that are fast and have clean code. A lot of software doesn’t care about those things.
  • Great online communities
  • Free weekly Live Streams (mostly, I miss sometimes)
  • Free weekly hangouts on Friday (every week for almost 10 years!)
  • Yearly online virtual summit
  • Some of the best support in any industry (I may be biased)
  • More free updates than any software in the world. (I average update every 1.4 days for 13+ years)

I am just confident that we have a good thing here. I am excited about the future and look forward to making it even bigger and better. I hope that this answers your questions and concerns. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like clarification on. I am happy to help out.

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And before the conspiracy folks jump on this statement, let me clarify… I am in no way officially affiliated with YourHead. We are 2 completely different entities. However, as the saying goes… A rising tide raises all boats. Therefore, I have a shared interest with all other stacks developers in making the Stacks Pro community grow.

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One concern I have is what if the key individual behind the software or framework is no longer there—whether for financial reasons, retirement, health issues, burnout, etc. We’ve seen the result here with Adam. Which of these alternatives can survive that? Stacks/Yourhead? Foundation? Blocs? Xway?

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Adam.

This is a really helpful suggestion, thank you. If anyone has the time to provide a bit of a guidance as to what features we will lose as Foundry 3 / Alloy users if we move to Blocs, so we can consider how to prepare to reconstruct our sites in that platform.

I’ve read a number of posts here from people saying it’s come along and can offer most of what Foundry does - the question that would be helpful to answer (for non-coders looking for a platform to move our existing sites to) would be “to what extent will we be losing things we may have to workaround?”

Anyone with more insights into Blocs, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

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This is the whole problem of freelancing when it does not only concern its own production sold to an end customer but sales to resellers. All intermediaries are in fact dependent on its products. All the examples you cite are in this case (except perhaps Xway which I did not understand if Jeremy is alone or not in developing). This is why it is always good not to keep all your eggs in one basket. Considering the current state of the sector and living from it implies the need to be present both with a solution on your computer and at least one other in CMS as Adam reminded us in one of his recent articles. Staying only with Stackspro will present the same risk.
The most important aspect to consider does not seem to me to be this, it is AI and all its possibilities which seem to be left aside. This is obviously a mistake. I will cite my case since I know it well. 10 months ago I was still using Chatgpt for some help with a lot of corrections on what it gave me. I started talking with a developer from the community who was totally in line with all the perspectives and implications of AI. This made me want to get into it frankly and not just with the “gadget” side of these technologies. The results are quite surprising. Two real examples that I am currently using. With the help of Chatgpt, Perplexity and cursor, I have set up a system like what Buffer offers to post on social networks automatically. The individual scripts for each platform are driven by a centralized script, I use this on my server with a programming of posts. The savings are $450 per year compared to what I would have had to pay Buffer (I also learned how to use the APIs of the networks that interest me). Second example (this is not to please Elements in Beta at Realmac nor Stackspro for Yourhead unfortunately): I create pieces of code on the fly to integrate the features exactly as I want in my web pages. Yes, you need to know a little bit of html and css, know that PHP is on the server and Java on the computer… absolute no-code does not exist since the phase to learn how to use RW/Stacks then a framework, if you do it seriously, represents at least 30 hours. Tinkering with AI that allows you to learn at the same time as you try (trial-error-correction) is the present. My third example is in progress: forms. I have seen a lot of questions in recent days on this subject. So I started to build a Machform-type solution with AI. I started this as an amateur the day before yesterday, today I have a contact form with Turnstile integrated on my test site, which works with my sql database. The protection against injections has been integrated without me having to ask the AI ​​(which was not the case 4 months ago for htaccess).
This is a very long article but I really believe that wanting to live today from website design requires moving towards this immediately. It is already there, in operation, and you will note that Relume-figma-webflow are not part of my article whereas they would have been in first place three months ago (the improvement of the possibilities of AI is extremely fast). Why would I pay for these services that offer me to be captive (like Elements and Stackspro if we think about it a little) when I can easily do without them? If you are a developer with an “old school” approach to code, then the future is yours because I am just a passionate tinkerer, not a professional with your skills. Looking at a professional website online from the console is a good first step, doing it by asking AI for feedback is a very good second step, using the architecture for security, optimization… is the third step. Until the time when it will be more about data analysis than design, I fear that this is already here too: have you ever tried asking Perplexity what you want and seeing what it offers you? How long will we continue to “surf” through pages hoping to eventually find something that suits us?

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Bruno, I’ve actually been integrating forms with Turnstile and databases like MySQL using an F6 Form for over a year now. It’s surprising how many people don’t realize just how powerful Stacks-based sites can be.

Connecting a form to save data to SQLite or MySQL is straightforward, and there have been ready-made stacks for doing this for years. I’ve done this to create a whole dashboard for my customer to manage their leads all on their site. After the form is completed, that can change the status of their lead right on their site dashboard

Regarding your point about feeling “captive” with Stacks, I have to disagree. I build many large websites using Stacks, and I’ve never felt restricted by it. In fact, every other tool I’ve explored has had its own limitations or “gotchas” that made it less appealing.

Do what works best for you. However, I think many would agree that the Stacks community offers something unique that you don’t find elsewhere.

Plus, not everyone wants to code. Even with AI, manually coding isn’t the solution many people are looking for.

Personally, I’ve tackled numerous large and complex projects, and I’ve yet to encounter one that I couldn’t build using Stacks.

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Yes, with Stacks you can do a lot of great things and it is an extremely pleasant tool to use: I really enjoy it and that is why I have a very large collection of stacks. I like building my sites with it despite the fact that I can do the same and much faster with other tools. I understand that my comments are not in the interest of those who make a living from it, but I was answering a question that asked for an opinion. I am not putting myself in a competition of “I am the one who is right because I have the best tool.” So I gave mine on the future prospects. Whether we like it or not, change has begun and continues to accelerate. The no-code you’re talking about exists in version 2. hmm 3. hmm as it’s moving very quickly we might as well not number it, this no-code exists with AI, anyone can build an operational site with Divi in ​​a few hours, for Relume-figma-webflow it’s even faster but there is a learning phase (as for RW/Stacks/framework). This triptych as I indicated is no longer even in phase with what can be done without going through them. When I talk about captivity, I’m not talking about the potential of the tools, I’m talking about the need to have to go through them and therefore to be embarrassed when one of them disappears. The question of whether there is a market for Stackspro will only be decided when it is commercially released, I hope so with all my heart and I am already a customer. However, this does not prevent us from being objective and seeing the reality that is not limited to Stackspro, it is better than anything.
Once again, I understand that we should not saw off the branch we are sitting on and that it is very hard every day for those who live from building websites, but freedom of thought is pretty much the only one we really have, what’s the point if we can’t express it?

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It’s been a while since I’ve actively tried/used Blocs. I’ve checked in when they’ve had new releases but havent worked with the last couple of versions. You do seem to need to get in the habit of using / customizing classes to get things to look how you want - this was a new way of working for me back when I tried, less so now that I’ve used Foundry3/blacksmith.

I think the big thing that is missing (or was missing) is CMS/blogging. Between Alloy, Easy/Total CMS, Quick Editor Admin, and probably a few others I am missing, there’s some good options for updating sites outside of RW (which might be a big deal if you make sites for others.

Blocs has only one option, I think - Volt CMS (which might be a Stacks Pro option too eventually) and that came after I had tried out Blocs so I can’t vouch one way or the other for it.

Blocs does have a good/growing market for add-ons (though still not at RW’s level) so I think you can probably do pretty much whatever you had in Foundry and the UI is nicely done in Blocs. I cant say how it works as an Alloy replacement though.

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Thanks for the feedback @jabostick - that’s helpful. Alloy is so simple to use, it’s just great.

Appreciate the options and guidance.

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After last Tuesday’s announcement I downloaded a trial of Blocs, played around with the demo for three days to try it out, liked it, did feel there were a number of things missing at first. But trial and error, questions in forum found that what I’m after could be done it, I think it is a case that Adam packaged up a number of Bootstrap elements and tricks in an inventive and creative way to provide ready to go tools in Foundry. Registered it at the weekend and have almost completed a largish website I look after recreated in Blocs as my learning method. Blocs is really well thought out, there are a number of things that have made me think “wow, that’s rreally good” such as breakpoint editing, asset manager, implementation of class manager and SEO Metadata stuff. Also the header and footer is on every page unless you specify it not to be on a page, this just updates in real time with no fuss on all pages instantly, that’s really good.

Bought Volt also as a replacement to Alloy and that is absouletly knock out. You have the blog feature like Alloy, you can even have multiple blogs, also you can add editable areas to your website that yourself or assigned users (up to five people in total with different logins) can edit. It really isn’t as complicated as it sounds, just the opposite I found it really easy to setup and use.

Downside, I have to to get more inventive with my Blocs and Brics constructruction to mimic some of Adam’s tools for some of the things I’m used to. Although there are a ton of ready made available, I do miss equal height tool trying figure that one out. Other downside I don’t have the extensive library of the more advanced, unique, niche stacks created by stacks Devs (obviously) such as 1LD, Joe, Stacks4Stacks, BWD etc that I have built up.

If Adam hadn’t made the announcement I would have stayed in the Stacks eco system, have been on 8.9.3 for past couple of years, hoping it won’t break on new OS updates. Not knowing what is happening is a key thing, I can wait for something if I know it is happening, but I need to see tangible evidence or regular news updates as I personally have quite a lot at stake with time, longevity with website and the start of new projects. After that I realised too many points in the chain that can leave me high and dry. Volt is coming for stacks I know, but I need it now. I use Alloy and need a replacement before any potential PHP updates. I can’t use a CMS that relies on a third party server to authorise, likewise websites I create are the middle ground price range, I can’t add an extra £100 to the price on an already narrow margin for each customer.

Summary, Blocs is very similar to Foundry in a lot of ways, the Bootstrap framework is intuitively familiar. There are some crucial, nifty and better ways Blocs handles things compared to the RW shell. It appears to update with new features often so a very progressive app. I’m with Blocs for all future builds from now on, will be keeping an eye on Stacks to see if it is something I will use again in the future, probaly most likely for some projects that will require certain features provided by 3rd party stacks, unless of course I become more invested with Blocs or certain new features implemented, or 3rd party stacks developers end up creating their products for it. Will have to see what happens. Being in the dark for the last couple of years has been tough though, every new project has made me nervous that I’m creating another website that will come back and bite me when a customer asks for an update and can’t do it as some element in the chain of RW/Stacks/Foundry is deprecated. This aspect of being in the dark with progress has been really tough, I’ve just needed some updates on a regular basis.

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Thanks @Tophat a solid review of Blocs and echoes my thoughts about stacks and number of ‘components’ that can go wrong.

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