Empowermom wrote:
First and foremost, the quality of help in forums is failing. I have seen a particular statement in various forms and flavors in far more posts than I care to mention over an embarrassingly long period of time now. I have to admit, when I saw it again today, it just POPPED MY CORK!
Our team is looking closely at this post, and it is being shared with our moderators. We do hear you, and strive to do the best job that we can. If you have particular examples where we didn't do a good enough job, please feel free to email them to us using the contact form. That goes directly to me and other members of the team.
PRODUCT DISCONTINUATIONS:
You didn't warn long standing (PAID) members templates for G4 have all but been discontinued except for occasional updates (unless you want to chance it that the one you use will be around a while).
This has been our ongoing method since Gantry was first introduced. When we created the original Gantry we stopped making non-Gantry templates. We stopped making new templates with previous versions of Gantry the moment Gantry 4 was introduced. Now, with Gantry 5, we focused on building great new templates with a great new framework.
Gantry 4 didn't go away, we just aren't making new templates on a framework that is built on an older set of technologies. If we were to release Gantry 4 and Gantry 5 versions of each new template, development would take twice as long as it does now and the percentage of people using Gantry 4 wouldn't justify that time.
We can either make 5-6 templates per year or 11-13.
You didn't warn us that extensions would be phased out for Gantry 5. Now that's a BIGGIE for most of us.
As far as I know we are still actively supporting extensions. Our Gantry 5 themes continue to work with existing extensions. Where we did phase things out as far as Gantry 5 in particular is concerned is RokNavMenu which was integrated into Gantry 5 and expanded on considerably.
To my knowledge, you have not warned your members how a flat file system varies from the core Joomla system and how if affects/effects your site or whether certain items are searchable. That's a very important thing to know and, upon digging into this, I learned some rather disturbing things about SEO in relation to Gantry 5. Don't you think we should be informed of this?
Also, please let us know what SEO things you've heard. Because we are actively using flat-file systems on the Gantry website, exclusively. Our website here, RocketTheme, has flat-file documentation and has used it for nearly three years.
As far as SEO is concerned, the flat-file elements of Gantry 5 should not appear on the front end. Content is rendered just as it would if you were using a database. I could be totally wrong, and hope you can shed light on the issues you've found. So far we hear "bad things" without actual examples we can work from.
You also didn't tell us just how RAW this system was or that you were using us as your guinea pigs. Whether intentional or not, it happened and it just doesn't compute on any rational scale for any template club!
On the contrary, we've been using flat-file systems internally for years. We started with our documentation. This proof of concept enabled us to move forward in creating Grav, which is currently nominated in three categories in the CMS awards and went head-to-head with Joomla last year.
It wasn't until we deployed these techniques on our own sites and tested them thoroughally that we took them to alpha and then beta with Gantry 5. Gantry 5 was in beta for a considerably long time, and we are not the only template company using it.
With the current RT Matrix, mix and match themes are now extinct due to G5's varied layouts and limitations!
We hear you and are working on ways to improve your experience.
With or without an RT Template, the extensions were invaluable to many.
Extensions aren't going anywhere. We still support them and you can still use them for RocketTheme templates and themes, or any other template or theme. They're universal.
PARTICLES: NOT useable for Gantry 4 and NOT uniform across themes
Right! Because Gantry 4 does not support the massive amounts of additional code required to add it AND maintain backwards compatibility. Particles are a Gantry 5 thing made possible because of Gantry 5's integrated support for Twig templating and YAML configuration.
If we added it to Gantry 4, Gantry 4 would become a bogged-down monster. It was already getting some critique because it had been carrying over so much backward compatibility weight as it was.
The current particle system seriously limits our display choices on a per template basis! I find a template I love and I'm stuck with the particles for that template only.
We are working on this. 100% agree. We are working on this and will have something to share on this soon. We have to have something to show you.
And then, there's the insult of "limited resources" to handle all this. I will remind you that you made a unilateral decision without any input from your members to "limit your resources and reassign them to other projects" but neglected to warn your paying customers this was going to happen.
I'm going to disagree with you whole-heartedly there. We talked about Gantry 5 for over a year before we released the first alpha for it. We tested with the community, openly, on GitHub. We have fielded and acted on over
1,400 requests
from the community. That's 1,400 times someone has submitted an idea and we acted on it. We continue to do so, every day.
We started posting information about Gantry 5 on our blog in 2014. This was over a year before we released Callisto, the first Gantry 5 theme.
Additionally, just about every client I had over the last few years is now a member here and it's downright embarrassing to ME when I see one of their posts met with that rude statement when I have RAVED over your support for years.
That's unacceptable. Please email us on our contact form or mention me directly. You can tweet us, or email me at my first name at rockettheme.com and I will personally make sure that any matter of rudeness is addressed.
We take any report of rudeness or apathy on the part of our team members very seriously.
Gantry 5 is not well documented enough for the MASSES. It's poorly constructed, confusing and often, does not address your need. When you look for help here or elsewhere, you get redirected to a not so helpful documentation site.
I write the documentation for Gantry 5 and RocketTheme's themes myself. I will be happy to address any problems you find and expand on any topic you feel isn't covered well enough. You can submit an issue on GitHub or tell our moderators here to pass it along to me and they will submit the ticket on your behalf.
For what it's worth: I sincerely apologize if it doesn't meet your needs. We are working on it every day, and new things get added on a constant basis. Feedback is the lifeblood of good documentation. If you have specific feedback and ideas on what it needs to be better, we want to hear them.
It's even more riDICulous when you stop and think you had a product that worked.
It worked and continues to work. We did have a lot of long rant posts like yours about Gantry 4, begging us to build something new. They listed a ton of important features they wanted on the new framework. We listened and responded.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to make everyone happy. But we are working to make things better every day, and will take your feedback to heart.
It's Sunday night, and my in-laws are waiting for me to drive over to their house for dinner. I wanted to make sure I answered at least most of your questions before I did. Our team is reading this post and will probably add their own responses in the next couple days.
I promise you we are listening and are working tirelessly to address this. We are a small company, and every member of our team is working overtime to make sure that improvement on Gantry 5 and our templates continues to happen.
The following users have thanked you: Kat05