Perch has a new home!

  • Hi there


    Thank you for your continued support and patience as we get up and running with Perch.

    We have been monitoring the online forum and social channels but     I'm sure you will understand it has not been possible to address every question. We will continue to post company updates to the forum and our support team will start to engage in the coming weeks.

    Perch has had a long and successful history under its previous ownership and I believe Drew and Rachel were committed to ensuring its future and with the sale to ourselves to prevent it suffering from its own success.

    I’ve always been honest in saying we have a lot of work to do and appreciate all the feedback we get whether good or not so good. We are working hard behind the scenes to deliver v4 and in the meantime release certain version updates that were promised previously. In this regard I am confident we are making good progress towards an interim release of v3.2 as a demonstration of goodwill to the community.       

    You have my reassurance Perch is a safe, active and viable product for your projects.

    Kind regards and thank you again.


    George

  • Thank you George. This is really all I need, just a bit of reassurance is all. I understand that there must be a lot of work to do but an update every now and then will give the community a bit more confidence in the product I feel.


    One thing I would suggest, which is perhaps more of a long-term task, is to produce a set of video guides for each addon, especially Perch Shop. The documentation is pretty good and I've been able to follow along and get set up with my first project using Perch Shop, but a video guide similar to the set of videos for the Blog would have been super useful.


    Thanks again for the update and I look forward to v3.2 and Perch 4 :)

  • Thank you for the "update", however just a couple of comments.

    1. It would be really nice to know who now owns Perch, the people involved the size of the support and development team mentioned, you ask us to have faith and patience yet we sit here day after day, week after week with nothing of any substance, even the latest post is just vague mentions of things possibly to come. Ultimately people deal with people and service is often the only thing a business has to pull it above its competitors.


    2. What is the situation with the development cycle? Did Drew and Rachel leave it in such a mess that it's taken months to even issue a small update let alone a new version (which were led to believe Drew had already been working on for a while). Somehow knowing the previous team I doubt that was anything like the case, a more likely explanation is Perch is owned by a sole developer/very small team working on myriad other things. Nothing wrong in that just again transparency would be appreciated, as people here are also business owners and need to make decisions. We are not mushrooms, we do not prosper in the dark.


    Every time one of us recommends Perch our reputation is on the line, we are personally accountable to our clients is it wrong to expect the same from you?


    I am sitting on 16 unused and a good few active Perch (v3) licenses, that for a small developer is a substantial investment going to waste and an investment I can at this point not really in all good faith deplete by recommending Perch going forward to clients. I presume I am not alone in this situation and frankly I believe I may just have to write this money off and transition current sites into another CMS which I can have some faith in.

    If it wasn't for the hard work and dedication for a small number of forum contributors here I don't think Perch would even be in the (admittedly perilous) state it is now. I think you owe it to at least these people to give them more than vague platitudes and pronouncements of things which may or may not come.


    Really what does it take for one of your “support team” to dip into the forum once or twice a week with concrete help/support or even to just approve posts held for moderation?


    If you had not already worked it out I am very dissatisfied, not to say disappointed as I have been with Perch since V1.

    Hi there!


    TheOldDesigner and the wider Perch community; from the feedback here we're very happy the desire for knowledge and updates on the product is generating such passionate comments and in some cases that others may interpret negatively. There is clearly an appetite for us to deliver the changes you're expecting from the investment you've made over the years.


    As I said we are monitoring the forum and will drop in from time to time and my support colleagues will be engaging with you to ensure a free flow of communications. It is important as you highlight to keep in touch. We want the forum and the product to blossom under our new helm.


    Most importantly I don't want to promise something I cant deliver and for this you'll appreciate why I've not attached any dates to the roadmap at this time other than to set a target to bring you v4 as our first key achievement.


    Keep in touch


    George.

  • Thank you, George G but this is just more platitudes and vague statements.

    I think we all need some serious clarification from whoever you are so I will repeat my points


    1. Who are the new Perch "Team" what experience do you bring to Perch and what is the (at least) basic Roadmap re future updates/versions and plugins?


    2. What is the current status of the development cycle both of the core code and the plugins many rely on to empower Perch? I fail to believe you can not even have a basic idea on timescales, if you don't I'm afraid that tells us quite a lot.


    3. What are the plans for future support, Slack/Forum/Discord peer support only or the Perch team as well, or maybe even paid support?


    These are all basic questions in my opinion that need answering concisely, honestly and straight away. Of course you may disagree, that as the owner(s) is your right, we have the right to vote with our feet and wallets.


    It's funny that my last post sat in "moderation" for a good few days, posting a screenshot on Twitter got it approved within minutes so maybe that's where we need to call you out!

  • Quote from George G

    As I said we are monitoring the forum and will drop in from time to time and my support colleagues will be engaging with you to ensure a free flow of communications. It is important as you highlight to keep in touch. We want the forum and the product to blossom under our new helm.

    I'm not quite sure you're grasping the concept of support.


    It's getting ridiculous now. Although, it is starting to become entertaining to watch how badly managed this has been. You're certainly setting an example of how not to do things when running a software company.


    Just answer some questions directly, without posting another message that doesn't actually say anything.

  • Quote from TheOldDesigner

    If it wasn't for the hard work and dedication for a small number of forum contributors here I don't think Perch would even be in the (admittedly perilous) state it is now. I think you owe it to at least these people to give them more than vague platitudes and pronouncements of things which may or may not come.


    Really what does it take for one of your “support team” to dip into the forum once or twice a week with concrete help/support or even to just approve posts held for moderation?

    I couldn't agree more!

  • Very well put, as are all the other regular contributor's comments in this thread.


    I'm currently redeveloping an existing Perch site for a client, and rather than using the Runway upgrade licence I have sat idle (bought for this purpose) to expand the possibilities of the site for my client, I have up to this point hard-coded literally everything. I never thought I would be having to leave my options open moving forward, and make a rod for my own back in the process, and yet here we are. However, I cannot risk putting all my egg's in Perch's nest should it prove to be a development dead end and thus leaving me with a nightmare further down the line for both myself and my client.


    I'm reluctant to leave software I have/had faith in, and have enjoyed coding with, but am not unprepared to take a gamble on something new should I feel the willingness to support customers just isn't there. A case in point being ditching Adobe for Affinity after years of lack of support (harking back to the swallowing of Macromedia tbh) and their ever-escalating and inflexible charging model. Thankfully this has proved to be a winning move both from a cost and workflow point of view. I'm willing to sacrifice the ease of use of Perch moving forward if it ensures the longevity of my projects, even if a steep learning curve is involved.


    Belts are tightening across all industries in the current climate, and I'm afraid to say people are liable to be a lot less tolerant when they don't receive at least some basic level of support and communication from the providers of the tools used in their businesses day-to-day. Surely taking an hour or two out as a team to assess the state of play and formulate a reasonable response outlining development plans and a rough timeline would go a long way to restore the faith of your dedicated users (and isn't too much to ask)?


    None of the above looks particularly favourable for someone considering Perch for the first time and browsing the forum to "get a feel for it". I certainly couldn't in good conscience recommend Perch to anyone currently, which frankly saddens me. One of its key selling points to me early on was how quick Drew was to respond to queries, and the communities support for one another via the forums. It would be a shame to lose that for all involved.

  • 3.2 although very welcome, just addresses some urgent issues. I'll reserve judgement until we get eyes on V4 and the roadmap for first-party add-ons, etc.


    Don't get me wrong, I'm very much still a fan and want to see Perch continue (and have started tentatively integrating Perch into the site in progress).

    There's some very good suggestions from the community being put forward in the mega thread for example.

    I'd like to think I'd be in the position come July of thinking "well, I'm glad I stuck with it".