Posts by ex-jedi

Perch Runway's site is down, looks like the SSL has expired. Is it likely to be back up soon?

Here's some info about rewrite rules if you need it. https://docs.grabaperch.com/ad…xamples/clean-urls-perch/

Thanks Drew for responding. Any ideas about what the future Path for Perch is? Have you come to any decisions about the licencing model? And what can the community to to help?

Quote from hus_hmd

Success is subjective. The product is stable enough even without frequent updates. That's a success. I'm still purchasing licenses. That's a success. I still get Perch development contract work on new projects from agencies (hopefully they are buying licenses and not reusing old ones). That's a success. You and me among others willingly paid for the registered developer program. That's a success.

Perhaps It's been a slow 1-2 years for Perch in terms of development. Some may consider this the worst year for Perch, yet many are still eager to keep using it (and they are). That's a success.

So yeah I'm still calling their 10 years run successful (not perfect).

I agree. Every product or service needs a course correction from time to time. I'm positive that a change to the pricing model and more communication will save the day!

Quote from Tobe

Absolutely, if the ratio of Perch-to-Runway is currently skewed towards Runway then this doesn't make much financial sense.

You make a good point about the tagline too – I think this probably does more harm than good.

Locking the licenses after a year is essentially the same as paying for updates after a year though isn't it? Or are you purely referring to how domain assignment should work? I wouldn't mind this, although I can think of some edge cases where a business wants/needs to change their domain; but I guess on those occasions we could reach out to Perch and request a license migration?

Some good discussion here but it's all irrelevant if the communication, support, and update frequency doesn't improve.

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I was suggesting that even if you pay for updates after the initial period that a licence is locked, so yes just domain reassignments. Good point though about businesses changing their domains though, I didn't think of that. I agree that reaching out to Perch would probably do the trick.

Quote from Tobe

Regarding the subject of monthly/annual subscription – by switching to a standard subscription model, I could see this being the final nail in the coffin for Perch. However, using the approach where you only pay to get updates à la Sketch and Craft, is a much better compromise I think.

Agreed. hus_hmd had some good ideas about pricing models. Though I forgot though that there already is a subscription offer for multiple licences.

Quote from Tobe

I also think they should consolidate Perch and Runway.

Not sure about this though. I still like regular Perch and it is quite powerful despite the 'really little content management system' tagline. There's a lot of information we're not privy too so we don't know how popular regular Perch is compared to runway. But I agree that £50 is too little.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I think stand alone licences should be locked after a year so they can't be reused. I imagine licence reuse is a sizable chunk of lost revenue. But maybe that would work differently for subscriptions?

Quote from hus_hmd

Despite of how negative I may sound, I'm actually sticking with Perch for the time being. I'm being overly critical because I think the feedback is reasonable and valuable.

I think as a product, Perch still has its place in the market. And just like Fathom Analytics went from almost being shut down to tripling their monthly recurring revenue with the launch of v2, I believe Perch v4 can breathe a new life into the product (and the business).

I am still excited about the direction of v4:

• Improved control panel UI
• Dark mode
• Cloud backups for regular Perch
• New add-ons directory (to which registered developers can publish their own add-ons)
• Open-source docs (it is already on GitHub)

And based on what we've seen on the forum:

• Drew posted a poll and when questioned about it his response indicated the he was working on improving the way add-ons are developed
• potentially a better way to manage routes
• possibly better indexing for Collection items
• a better more developer-friendly way to manage Collections
• perhaps some changes to revisions  
• built-in paired tag parser for template handlers

Plenty of work for a small team, but we know they are capable. Plus this is a major upgrade and the workload and the changes reflect that. Many on Slack shared their doubts on how good and modern the new control panel UI will be, so I hope it will exceed our expectations there.

The disappointing thing has been the prolonged radio silences from the Perch team, but I think this can change. Though we have to be mindful of how many customers they have so we cannot expect them to respond to everything and still invest a lot of time in developing the product. Besides, a lot of the site building questions can be answered by the community.

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I agree 100%. Perch is one of my favorite products to work with and I'm hopeful that v4 will be a breath of fresh air. I also agree that the lack of communication is very frustrating.

Yes it should be in your account just here...

Quote from nilsmielke

1. More communication = less uncertainty
I love working with Perch and would love it to evolve and prosper. I don’t care too much, when v4 will land, but to keep selling Perch to my clients, the occational sign of life would be helpful. With every quote I write, I am pondering whether or not to propose Perch and whether or not to quote for an ongoing maintenance fee. It could be considered easy money, if there is only one update a year, but that makes you wonder, where Perch is headed and might lead to unpleasant discussion with clients. (Also, an approximately bi-monthly update cycle, gave us a good “excuse” to be in closer touch with clients.)

I heartily agree, the radio silence is a bit of a worry. I'd also like to see some more input here on the forum from Perch HQ. I understand the desire to have the community play an active role in support but if feels like somewhat of a vacuum has been created.

Quote from seoMatt

ellimondo I should have been more clear that I may be in the minority considering I've only been using Perch for 3 years. Feels like most users have been using the product longer than I have. I went and compared Perch to Craft and most of the other decent CMS systems available including many free options. I could not find a product that gave better value than Perch.

My main point was after research, I hitched my wagon to Perch 3 years ago and I would hate to have to change now.

I agree, I think Perch is the best CMS in town. I don't have that many Perch licences in the grand scheme of things. I'd like to have more but it can be a tough sell to clients sometimes. But whenever I have a choice I choose Perch!

As someone who has benefitted from re-using licences, I've even been given a few old and unused ones, it seems way to generous. I'd accept licences being permanently locked after a year. A new project should mean a new licence.

That sounds reasonable to me. And perhaps a licence should only be available for reassignment for 12 months. That would allow plenty of time for mid-project changes or if you assign a licence to the wrong domain by mistake.

Hi Lester.

Did you manage to shed any more light on this?

Nice work.

Hi, yes it's pretty vexing isn't it. We'll have to see what v4 brings I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Quote from Clive Walker

I've seen something similar. I think it might be a bug.

Yes indeed, seems like a few have had this issue.

Repeater items not deleting in Perch 3.1.5 and Blog 5.6.1

Can't delete the last item of a repeater

Repeater items not deleting in Perch 3.1.5 and Blog 5.6.1

Good idea, I'll look into that. It'll probably be fine generally to delete manually, but when legal docs are published the clients will want assets taken down swiftly.

Cheers Byron

Thanks Byron. The asset isn't being used on a Page or in a region. The client has uploaded it and just posted the link. So would it be omitted from the regular clean up protocols?

One of my clients sometimes uploads PDF's and makes them available using the URL only. But when they're deleted from the assets panel the link remains. I recall reading elsewhere that asset cleanup routines are only run when new content is added, so the assets won't go away unless new content is added to replace them. Does this mean that assets used without being associated with a page or region have to be removed manually?

Okay. Thanks Drew.