Who’s going to be upgrading to Rapidweaver Classic?

RapidWeaver Classic
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I’ve expressed my views in depth on the new RW business model on another topic page. With me going back and forth with the moderator. Bottom line for me: I think this Classic deal is an out and out obvious yearly subscription.

But the good folks at RW keep insisting it’s not a subscription and “you can buy it once and use it forever.” That’s what bothers me. That they keep saying that. Well technically I guess that’s true. But in reality it’s absolutely false and misleading!

Because after a year, if you don’t drop down more money for the yearly update, you will be using software that undoubtedly isn’t the best version of that software that it can be, with bugs/faults/other problems that aren’t fixed!

So I guess yeah, I own the software, but let’s get real RealMac, if I don’t cough up more money, I’m using a flawed version of that software!!!

P.S.
I just noticed one good meaning post here that said this yearly deal is a “maintenance” fee, not a “subscription.” So it’s okay. Let’s put semantics aside. Whatever you want to call this yearly deal, you end up paying every year if you want the best of that version, even after you’ve already paid outright for that version. And I call that a kind of subscription. Period. End of story.

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It’s a subscription, it’s not a subscription,… who cares.
Buy it once a year or don’t buy it once a year. Your choice. You can even still use it if you chose not to.
You want updates then pay the bill. Its not a charity. Massive amounts of companies do this already.
Illustrator costs me £20 per month, it’s a subscription - don’t pay the bill they turn it off. It earns me my living, so its worth it.
Websites make me a reasonable amount every year, £50 to keep it updated, is nothing in real terms.
One flat white at Costa is £3.15 - that’s 16 heavily sugared coffees ! and all you’ll get from that is being fat and a caffeine habit. Guess what though, if you don’t pay costa, you cant have more coffee. No, really you can’t.
Businesses aren’t charities, they have to get profits. It’s shocking to some I know.
Someone above says use a hacked version! For 50 squid that’s quite tight on any small business tbh, It’ll probably be out of date anyway.
Its £50.00 not £500.
“Yea but its the principal” Sadly principals don’t feed the family - but good software does.
Anyway that’s pissed off most of the community - I’ll now leave the forum and rejoin under a new name.

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Why Blocs and not Wordpress? It will allow you far more creativity and you won’t be so limited by the software. I don’t understand how downgrading would be a good thing.

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An Evaluator - what’s that?

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As a casual user since V3, I make money from having a RW website but not directly by using RW.
The new “not a subscription” price model will probably motivate me to skip upgrades. Unless they start using the Adobe-esque rule of not allowing an upgrade more than one version back.
I will be interested to to see Elements.

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Of course not, you can upgrade from ANY version of RW, we have users that have gone from RW5 to RWClassic.

You will also be able to renew your license at any time. For example, Buy Classic now with a one-year license, continue to use it for a few years and then decide to renew your license, the choice is yours.

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69

I’ve upgraded since the combo RapidWeaver+Stacks+Foundry is the best I can think of for small-scale web development. (Just as PaoloT)

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Wonderful to hear, we think it’s pretty rockin’ too!

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No, I think skip this version.
I did not see any compelling reasons to update.
The cost for RW Classic seems too high for one year of support & bug fixes.

In 2018 a full version of RW8 cost around 84.99 with almost four years of support. so I am guessing that RW Classic should be priced around 22.00 USD.

Like many, I am waiting for EW Elements.

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Just read all of the 69 posts on this thread to date. Quite amusing.
Let me ask people: do you eat food? If so my guess is that you need to buy it on a regular basis. We are all ok with that. Software developers also need money to buy food. Another question: do you have a job that pays wages? Or do you think your employer should say, “Hey, I had paid you a month’s salary when you joined so now just keep working without further pay!” Duh! So why do people expect app developers to both fix and develop features for ever for free???

I think we are in a privileged place that allows us to keep using a s/w package for ever without extra cost, which is great, however for updates that require many, many hours of work, it is only fair to pay for. And as already stated, the subscription model means that if you stop paying, the product stops working, whereas the Maintenance model means that you pay (annually?) for additional effort from the developers, but if you stop paying then you stay with the latest paid up version of the software. Makes perfect sense to me.

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We at Connecting Media are not upgrading to Classic yet. The update plan with yearly payments (subscription) is not the right direction for us. What we miss out in all info that is spread is what all 3rd party devs will do… support Classic, Elements or the YourHead version? , or all 3? We invested a lot of money past years on plugins, stacks and templates from several devs… would be a sad moment in finding out that one dev supports Elements while another Dev moves to Yourhead. I asked before already on this forum if there will be a list available with all devs and what they will support in the future so we users can make better choices.

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I cannot speak for the developers directly. However, since these are all indie developers I think it is fair to say, “they don’t know.”

First we will need to see how this plays out. Do all 3 win? Which if not?

Second, Follow the money. Some of these developers made their livelihoods on RW and the community. That is most likely not true anymore, or just barely if it is. So…they need to take care of themselves and their families.

Third, no one knows what if any of the apps can or cannot do. Classic is out but is buggy and writes a new file format that might be a security block to stop Stacks App from importing existing RW projects into the Stacks App when it ships.

I’m only guessing. Bottom line. Stayed tuned!

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I agree with your 3 points. We are depending a lot on the awesome stuff from @joeworkman . Total CMS, Foundation, Email are our base set with Stacks. We also have stuff from other devs of course. To support them all we buy regularly. But we have decided where Joe goes, we go… just to maintain our workflow.

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I have some good news for you!

RapidWeaver Classic is more stable than RapidWeaver 8 :v:

The Classic file format has only had minor additions to enable it to save new data. The format HAS NOT changed. We could have encrypted it, but we didn’t, it’s as open as it ever was. We’re not looking to block anyone, we want everyone to win here.

As far as we’re aware, RapidWeaver Projects, Plugins, and Themes will not be compatible with Stacks.app when it launches. It will also lack a lot of the features found in RapidWeaver.

We think most RapidWeaver users (ourselves included) would prefer to see some updates to Stacks 4, and then Stacks 5 released for RapidWeaver Classic. Why try and replicate what RW can already do in a new app?!

Building Stacks 5 for RapidWeaver Classic is the only sensible move.

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77

Why did you compare Apple business strategy with Realmac business strategy? I will give you my (not asked) opinion about your misinterpretation about this topic. Realmac is a software company. A very good and stable company with products that always surpassed the big brothers options. I supported Realmac apps always and admire the UX/UI design as well. One thing Realmac doesn’t provide: Service. What Realmac do great are the apps. Great apps. Understand I’m taking about Ember, Typed, Courier, Squash, I mean all of them. Great tools.

You charge monthly for services, not tools. I know that is a way known debate on social media but paying monthly for the privilege of using an app is an insult. Imagine paying monthly Home Depot for a hammer. It doesn’t matter how you want to justify the subscription it only works for big corporations and big agencies.

When I was working for Blizzard back in the good old days, Adobe CC was a great asset for the company, Adobe was paying itself after taxes so business wise was great. When I went the freelancer route, Adobe was a nightmare, it was becoming a big chunk of money to pay every year and in reality all those apps included with the subscription we’re collecting dust in my Applications folder. I found great alternatives to avoid monthly payments.

Affinity Photo / Photoshop
Afffinity Designer / Illustrator
Affinity Publisher / InDesign
Rapidweaver / Dreamweaver
Sketch / Adobe XD (yes, you can have Sketch without subscription)
Hype4 / Adobe Flash / (now Animate)
Final Cut / Premiere
Logic / Protools
Apple Motion / After FX

I was able to own my tools without paying any monthly fees. Better yet none of my clients ever noticed about that either. I still send PSD and all files they need with my new apps.

Do I pay monthly for services? The answer is ‘Yes’.
I pay for services that boost productivity and enhance the costumer experience as well as services for web development such as Envato and others. I do believe in monthly payments for services.

If Realmac want to be an option for big corporations (that sold their souls for Wordpress already) you will see how it will be more difficult for you to keep using their apps until paying for that tool became impossible as an option.

Some uneducated people will impulsively shout: “If you can’t afford paying a monthly fee for one app you aren’t doing your business right!!” Or any arguments related to that.

Argument I will ignore because obviously doesn’t know how a one man business work at all. These type of comment simply doesn’t have at least a minimal idea of how it works. At all.

What I’m trying to say, is that Apple sell products and Realmac sell software and if you can work with an Apple product from 2012 (like my server) You don’t need to do or buy anything to keep the business running, But if you want to buy a software to create something, You better put your money on a tool you can rely on, always.

Apple provide new hardware in case you need them. Realmac provide great apps to be used when you need them. Two different business models. You want people’s money every month? Offer a service. I will pay a subscription for Rapidweaver if I will be getting any elements for free when I need them. Or better yet, if they offer a Rapidweaver Client Portal where you can show your clients the website progress in a very unique way like Superokay do with their platform! There’s hundred of options Realmac can offer for a monthly fee. Just don’t ask for money for updates and bug fixes, that’s is lame. Every developer including myself need to provide the updates and bug fixes as part of the app. Ethics.

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There are many things in the world that I dislike. But I tend not to hang around ALL the forums about those things constantly telling everyone. Because my guess is that’d be a waste of my time and in the end make me look rather petty and like a man with far to much spare time that would be better spent doing something constructive.

There’s a lesson there for some.

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79

I already upgraded to RWC. Initially, I had some issues with the key activation but RWC is now activated. I went into my current website built on RW8 and saved it to RWC. I do like the preview button. This is an added bonus.

But I found a huge issue.
I am currently using Mac OS 12.4. When I checked to see if all the images transferred over to RWC, I found that “site images” are showing a place card for the image instead of the actual image. Not sure what is going on. The regular image stack displays the image just fine. I have hundreds of “site images” and this will take a lot of time to change to the image stack. I checked my resources and tried dragging the image to the site image stack and it still only displayed the placeholder image. I also dragged the image from the original file on my hard drive and the same thing happened. It wasn’t until I deleted the site image stack and dragged the image stack and also the image that the image was displayed correctly. I checked for updates on the site image stack and it was up-to-date. This is going to need to be fixed. Anyone else having this problem?

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This sounds like something you’ll want to report to @isaiah as site images are a part of Stacks.

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Thank you! I will reach out to Isaiah.

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This is most peculiar. I just ran a quick test and created a new project in RW8 and then opened it in RWC and the “Site Images” in Stacks all displayed just fine… so it has me scratching my head a little bit as to what is going on…

Any idea on this issue @isaiah?

Might be worth sharing your RW8 project with Isaiah (and us), so we can take a look. Maybe make a copy of the project with just one or two pages that display the issue (delete the rest, that way we can keep it small).