Hello,
I will try to keep it short, although my head is full of questions.
For 4 months I’ve been busy working on a new, extensive website using the Depth Theme by Nick Cates, unfortunately the work was interrupted by my health issues, and 5 months, everything stood still.
Last week I found out Nick Cates stopped updating his themes, sold his themes and stacks and left no mail address for contacting him.
Regrettable, because for years I loved working with his beautifully designed themes, highly adjustable, and easy for non-tech savvy people, with always an excellent end result.
I don’t know his reasons, but it leaves me confused, with less funds to invest in new themes and add-ons, and whole lot of questions. An informative email from Nick would have been nice, and it woud soften the blow. Anyways …
I am working with RW 8.7 and Stacks 4 on macOS BigSur machine.
Questions :
what kind of issues can I expect if I keep on working with Depth theme, is it at all possible (advisable), and how long before I run into serious problems?
I understand that Joe Workman has taken over NC stacks but is not going to continue developing Depth theme and stacks. Foundations sounds promising but also looks like a long learning curve.
how do I know which Themes developers are reliable, (as to avoid loosing my money and time again by purchasing unsupported new theme)?
-In your opinion - which themes are most versatile, best design and highly adjustable with minimum coding experience, (is there something close to Nick Cates design standards)?
Choosing between Foundation 6 with or without foundationbox.studio templates, and Foundry , some other amazing theme, what would you go for?
This post turned out longer than intended, apologies.
Beforehand I am extremely grateful for each and every advice the members of RW forum are willing to share.
Many thanks
I’ve been a NCD customer for years. I’m still using one of his themes that I bought in 2014. Themes are pretty durable and you can use them for a while, even if they aren’t in active development. If you’re down the road in your project and like Depth, I’d say keep going.
I’ll also add that themes seem to have fallen out of favor. Years ago there’d be new releases every week, but the trend now is blank themes paired with systems a la Foundation or Alloy. Depth is in this same vein. Very open and flexible, but takes quite a bit of time and work to get to your finished product.
I’ll miss Nick, too. He was my fav RW developer for the same reasons you listed. Always a great product that just seemed to click with me.
It’s a hard question to answer. There is already one problem with depth and Parallax not working on the latest release of Safari. You can search the forum and find more information. My take would be if you have a production site using depth or close to launching, I’d be looking to put together a plan to replace it. If you continue to use Depth, you can expect more of these types of problems as browsers are constantly changing and common libraries that a complex product like Depth use need to at least keep up to date.
Foundation 6 is a strong product, It has a lot of flexibility, but with that comes a learning curve. It’s totally different from other frameworks, even the older Foundation 1. It’s a different way to think, relying on “Swatches” for almost all it styling. That might make it harder to learn if you’re used to the conventional way of setting styling in every stack’s internal settings.
If you can figure that out, you should be in another line of work. I think it shocked most folks when Nick left and even more shocked at how he left. All RapidWeaver addon developers are small operations with pretty much one person doing all the work. Who is to say when that individual will lose interest, get a better offer or have something happen to them that makes them leave? Until now, most of the developers who left tuned over their products to another developer who continued to support and even enhance the line.
Without knowing what you are trying to do, that would be impossible to say. I think they both have strong points. It also depends on how you like to learn. Foundry has very complete and well-organized documentation and a strong video library. Foundation 6 has a bunch of videos and live streams, but only has a handful of FAQ’s and no written reference.
As for templates and sample projects, they might be a good starting point for some folks, but I Don’t think you need them and the free ones will work for most people, they’re also available for Foundry.
I switched from traditional themes to Foundry a couple of years ago and it’s been excellent. The slight learning curve is definitely worth it and there are lots of video tutorials to help you.
Thank you kindly, @chet, @teefers, @Jamie1, @robbeattie
I am still undecided on which way to go from here, but it seems wise to stop working with Depth now, before I go even deeper, and run into more trouble down the road.
Next few days I’m going to dive a bit deeper into Foundry, and try find some examples, never heard about Alloy, will check that too, and I really wish there is a one week trial for Foundation 6 before committing,
The videos are very theoretical, I mostly see Joe in picture, and no RW screen actions, so no idea how it actually works, and how long it takes to master it.
Thank you all again. Maybe I’ll come up with more questions in a few days
I also do weekly live streams every Wednesday. Many are focused on Foundation 6. Then on Friday I have open hangouts where weavers from all around the globe join in and ask questions and chat. They are a great time.
I am using Foundry almost exclusively now, mostly because I am using Bootstrap (the underlying Framework of Foundy) for almost all of my commercial web application developments, means I am familiar with the framework and I know what I can expect (and what not).
In general, I would agree with @chet and continue using the existing theme and to finalize your work and get your site live; this buys a couple of months, if not years, to think what do you want to do next.
The existing theme isn’t a traditional theme but more a framework like Foundry or Foundation. It came with a theme and a boatload of stacks. It’s already broken in at least one function and it’s been abandoned by both the original developer (@nickcates) and the new owner (@joeworkman).
I’d say that it’s best to ”cut bait” and move on unless you want to take the risk.
I’ve pretty much moved off themes and use foundation and total CMS, bit of a learning curve but Joe workman has heaps of easy to follow videos. Make the change you won’t regret it
Thank you all. I am ever so grateful for help and advice from participant if this forum
Special thanks to @joeworkman for his support and help .
For now I might go with Depth after all, to buy me some time and get familiar with different framework and way of building the site.
