Posts by TheOldDesigner

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!

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.

I am sorry to read this but hardly surprised. It has been obvious that whatever is being said the devs have moved on to other probably more lucrative areas of income. I have (had) used Perch for many years but made a decision a while ago that it was just not going to be a viable option going forward and was falling way behind other options available and support was almost totally reliant on a few community members who could just disappear at any time.

Honestly I would prefer Perch was either completely open sourced or just given up on, falling between the two stools inevitably leads to decay, and more importantly increasing issues for clients and developers alike who struggle to live with old code and feature sets.

It gives me no pleasure to finally kiss Perch goodbye but client interests must come first, despite historic attachments and good memories.

Late to the party I know usually just a lurker..

I have been using Perch since V1, lone developer/designer servicing small businesses in a niche market, in some ways probably the persona Perch was initially conceived for.

Over the years I have accumulated a fair few Perch licenses, and I am certainly guilty of reusing them, I never assign licenses to the client, they remain mine, their sites hosted on my server, the client has the rights to them as long as they remain a client or can choose to pay for it if they go elsewhere (which rarely happens).

Recently however I have moved away from using Perch, for a few reasons, some of which may be down to my personal idiosyncrasies, some maybe not, but anyway for any new licensing model possibly relevent.

1. Perceived lack of development. Already dealt with by plenty of others, it is a major concern, given that Perch now seems to be no more than a side project.

2. Updating. I regularly update Statamic, Craft and ExpressionEngine sites by a simple one click process in the control panel, with Perch I need to maintain a git repo and use a deployment service, otherwise maintaining many sites I will be in for hours of work, and even if paid for is costly for me in terms of time required. This in 2020 seems archaic.

3. Control panel look/feel again this may be personal but it feels dated, and honestly has done for a few years.

4. Perch shop: This seems beyond crazy and a major mistake that this is not a paid add on. My guess is the support it requires has been a large factor in creating the current situation, anybody requiring e-commerce really should be prepared to pay for it, and pay well.

OK this all sounds negative, I do like Perch and would love to continue using it for certain clients, but any new licensing model which inevitably will be more expensive (and I appreciate DEV's have to live) has to come with some benefits for the end user in terms of a vibrant development regime, full time or otherwise.