Over the years, being a rather impulsive fellow, I’ve spent a lot of money on stacks, only to find that many do similar things to what I’ve already got, or are not really suited to my style of website presentation. Which through my trial and error has led me to limit the number of stacks that I use regularly to my favourites. It has also meant that I am much more careful/prudent/discerning over what ‘new’ stacks to buy and equally from which app developers.
Whether there is a need for demo stacks, themes, etc from ALL developers cannot possibly be questionable. It’s not about the risk to developers. but the risk to customers. Once bitten, twice shy! My solution to any lack of free trial is to challenge my impulsive nature and instead consider much more carefully whether to risk buying from that developer or indeed depending upon how I feel I’ve been treated both as regards support and whether the stack lives up to the developer’s hype whether to cross that particularly developer off my ‘approved supplier’ list.
For a demo, disabling a stack after 60 seconds wouldn’t suit me at all and frankly I’d think it a con to limit the trial to a minute. When I trial a stack, I want to see what it looks like on a published site, not merely on a preview. It can take more than 60 seconds to upload my sites.
I dislike too the trial for x days approach to software selling. Frequently I don’t have the time to trial the software within the x period and often I don’t get round to trying it out. For me (as indeed others, so I’ve read elsewhere) it makes more sense for place a limit to a number of hours usage over any period rather than impose an artificial date limit from download. It also reflects an app developer with more confidence in their product and sustainability of their business model.
I see the announcement for the new Filter stack by Yabdab on the community board.
Well, I fell for this. I’ve posted elsewhere that Stacks4Stacks (Will Woodgate) do a Filter stack and because I had the the original 2012 version Yabdab’s stack wouldn’t install. The problem since resolved for my use (albeit no satisfactory explanation at least to me why Y chose the same name for their stack.) As for whether worth getting, that’s a matter of taste. Personally, quite apart from the waste of my time, I think I’ve wasted money. For all intent and purpose, S4S Filter stack does the same thing and at a lower price Also Will understands the meaning of support/customer service.
One futher thing I would say is that a fully functional demo version allows users to try out a stack without needing to ask questions to the stack developer and to make a quick decision about buying the stack. Waiting for a response to the question “will this stack work with X” can often force you to seek an alternative solution.
At the other end of the scale are the devs who operate a check compatibility with the theme developer + no refund policy. All I would say is that is a mistake you only make once.
“At the other end of the scale are the devs who operate a check compatibility with the theme developer + no refund policy. All I would say is that is a mistake you only make once.”
I don’t understand why the onus should be put on buyers to check compatibility. As I see it, RW is the basic framework software and Stacks an add-on ups that takes that basic framework to the next level, any third-party theme, stack, etc should automatically work with one another, surely?
All leading software developers tend to attract third-party developers that latch on to the basic offering. Jumping on the bandwagon of other people’s ideas/creations is par for the course. Always room for improvement, etc. When a third-party latch-on is successful, in many instances, the next version of the basic software might incorporate the same features/benefits, and many software companies are known to buy the third-party developers.
RW is a successful and popular website application which has attracted a number of third-party developers, some of whom are complementary to the RW ethos. It’s the others one needs to watch out for!
I can’t speak for other developers, but certainly in the demo versions of my stacks, if you toggle between edit / preview or refresh the page in your web browser after 60 seconds, that will re-arm the demo version again. There are no time constraints on how long you can install or use a demo version for. The only limitation is that in some stacks (not all) the stack will fade out of view after 60 seconds, until the page is reloaded again. 60 seconds should be ample time to see what something looks like within a webpage and experiment with different settings. Lots of people do already publish my demo stacks online to live websites, to test advanced functionality and to demonstrate layouts or ideas to clients they may be working on behalf of.
It you have any pre-sales questions or require a demo version with less visible restrictions, then I can be contacted direct and I’m happy to help.
As I’ve said in another thread, this latest system of stack demo’s is still under review currently. I might revise some aspects to make the demo limitations less visible. Based on the feedback I’ve received, nearly everyone seems happy with the current setup.
Yes this is an unfortunate situation. Mike did contact me after realising his mistake in the naming of his new stack and asked me what the current status of my Filter stack was. I explained that it was still actively developed and provided him with a copy to take a look at, to make sure there would not be any conflicts between the two. I did suggest perhaps renaming it to ‘FilterSnap’ or similar. But I think it was too late by then, in that he’d already done a lot of advertising and marketing of it.
I don’t own any trademarks or rights to the name ‘Filter’ so I accept that I am not in a position to tell other developers what they can and cannot name their stacks. It is certainly not the first time two or more stacks have been announced by different developers that have shared the same name!
Addons are quite a lot more complicated, than they might appear on the surface. There are billions of combinations that addons can be used in. Addon developers simply do not have the time or money to exhaustively test their wares in thousands of different combinations. And that’s before you take into account the release of new addons or future updates - which might undo something that was previously working okay.
The modern internet is forever changing. RapidWeaver is no different to many other web publishing platforms in this respect, like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, concrete5 etc. In any modular setup you are always going to have things that don’t work together. It’s not so much a case of addon developers being too lazy to test their stuff; more so the fact it is impossible to do so. The biggest test of any addon is its release into public. Gradually developers will hear of incompatibilities and may be in a position to offer fixes or workaround solutions.