Hi,
I was wondering what happened to the Shutter stack? I don’t see it on the website anymore.
Is there a replacement?
Thanks,
Paul
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It has been retired, at least for the time being.
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I was just about to ask the same question because I have already done several projects with this great stack.
Why was this retired and what happens to it now?
The version you have will continue to work as it always has. It’s just not on sale any longer.
That’s nice to hear but I would like to know if I can - and should - still use a new product for further projects, which I bought only a short time ago and which was withdrawn from circulation without giving any reasons.
As a long-time customer of Elixir, I’m not used to these short-tempered answers. I’m sure you understand that.
Apologies if you misinterpreted my response as “short-tempered”. I just didn’t think there was any more to say.
Clearly, whether you continue to use a tool, or not, is a personal decision based on your own circumstances, and it wasn’t clear that you were seeking that kind of advice.
I don’t want to step on anyone’s feet with my objection.
Of course it is my personal decision whether I use a tool or not. But this decision is, among other things, of course also dependent on what the developer has planned for the tool. I have already done some things with it and am again working on a larger project. I like to work with tools like Foundry, which have a certain continuity over the years and are further developed.
The Shutter stack hasn’t been around for long as far as I know, and as I mentioned before, I only bought it a few months ago. If I remember correctly, the stack was also touted as THE tool for photographers’ sites, for which I also use it. The more I’m surprised why he was now suddenly pulled out of circulation and it also makes me a little uncertain whether I’m on the right track.
Not at all. 
The trouble with any text-based conversation is that it doesn’t convey tone & style, and we’re all from different parts of the World, so some things often get lost in translation.
Only Elixir can say what his plans are for Shutter. Obviously it’s 4th July in the States, so I wouldn’t expect a response from him today.
FWIW, as a Photographer, I love Shutter, although I haven’t yet used it to replace my existing site setup which uses another solution currently - whilst that does allow warehousing, I have to create thumbnails manually.
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Morning @dogbone –
I’ll start by saying I think it is great that yourself and others like Shutter so much. I designed it to allow a great deal of flexibility in how users could work with their images, as well as cut out the repetitive task of creating thumbnails for each image in a gallery, whether you’re batch processing your images or manually dragging and dropping them into the Shutter tool.
I felt the process was pretty easy, especially if users followed the tutorial videos that I created to walk them through the process of setting things up. This didn’t end up being the case though. Shutter currently generates the second most support tickets out of everything I produce. The thumbnail generation and batch processing that makes life easier for users has lead to complex support tickets as a result of users not following the steps necessary to use the tool. Pair that with problems users experience due to their PHP setup and what their hosts enable or disable in the PHP setting by default on their servers and you end up with a massive amount of support.
So for now I’ve decided to stop selling Shutter as it stands. I already planned on continuing to support those that bought and are using Shutter for their sites, and if any major bugs arise offer support for those as well. But I don’t want to keep selling it as it stands. Perhaps I can eventually rework things to overcome the hurdles users seem to come up against in setting up their Shutter galleries. I suspect though if I could have thought of a path to prevent users from getting hung up using the tool, as well as work around server setup conflicts, I’d have come up with it by now, but who knows. Maybe there’s another solution to be had that doesn’t involve batch processing or thumbnail generation.
If I gave a “short tempered answer” previously, I am unaware of having done so. My only other response on this topic is above. I don’t normally expound on my decisions about what I do or don’t sell because I don’t expect many people care, and they’re really my decisions that I have to make, so I didn’t think much more was really needed when asked about it to be honest. I’m happy to explain, as I did above, but I didn’t realize I’d done anything to provoke anyone’s ire. If I did, I apologize for that.
As I said though, you can continue using Shutter as you currently are. Nothing changes there. If you run into problems I’ll be here to support it.
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Adam, first I want to say you are doing great work for us and I am still excited about your products (and have some of them 
).
I was quite surprised that Shutter was discontinued, at least for the time being, for the reasons already mentioned. That’s why I asked, because I’m really interested. I didn’t mean to say anything against your decisions, but of course respect them.
Thank you for the detailed answer and for sharing your thoughts with us. I understand how the problem is for you and I am of course glad to know that we can continue to count on your support for the shutter stack. This thing is great and I will now dedicate myself to solving my hopefully small problem with it in the other thread.
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Hey Adam, would you be prepared to sell me Shutter offline and I will ask for zero support?
I am more than comfortable in sorting out any setup/use issues I come across.
Also I am an Elixir products addict and try to keep my sites exclusively Elixir based… Foundry 3 is the base for all my sites.
Thanks, Lance
Hi there @lance.harris –
This is one of those things where if I do it for one person I have to do it for everyone, and then I’m back in the spot I already was. Even if you wouldn’t expect support, I would feel obliged to help out.