Clueless

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I'm the biggest moron in the world when it comes to code/html etc but even as a total buffoon I could use the old versions of Concrete5 to quickly and easily throw up a website.

Now sadly I can't even begin to have a hope of using this new version. I've spent 8 hours on my new website and seem to have made very little progress.

Is it (allowing for my non-existent coding ability) possible to change my new website to an old version of C5 so I can just get on with it?

Previously I could create a simple site in about an hour.

I feel I don't have the time or ability to master this new thing.

Really annoyed that the themes I've bought previously will not load on this new version and none of the new themes free or for sale look remotely like what I want the design to look like.

I can't even get the navigation bar to look as I want it.

I'm really hacked off as I detest Wordpress, please don't make me go back there.

Ditso
 
Robmr replied on at Permalink Reply
Clueless,

Your story, is my story. I know next to nothing about coding etc - but even I've built and made a little money from doing business on my C5 sites. I tried Joomla [my head still hurts] - WordPress - [50/50 from my point of view] and a bunch of others.

Finally, I found C5 and it really saved my sanity.

I know over the last couple of days, I down-loaded from "SimpleScripts" a 5.6 generation of C5, so that might be your best bet.

I'm going to download a 5.7 to a test site I've got, so I can slowly "future/idiot proof" myself, for the inevitable time when we've got no-choice but to all go to 5.7.

Thanks for letting me know I'd better get on with it - sounds like's a significant step to take, for non coder types.
mnakalay replied on at Permalink Reply
mnakalay
The 5.6 branch will live on for a while. The marketplace is not going anywhere and the code is pretty solid.

On the other hand don't give up on 5.7, building website is still very doable with no technical skill. It's still a lot of drag and drop and in-context editing. And eventually the marketplace will be as rich as the legacy one
Ditso replied on at Permalink Reply
Ditso
Thank you Robmr & mnakalay for taking the trouble to reply.

Regarding the older versions of C5 I have 20 - 30 websites on various old versions. Will there ever come a day when they simply won't work any more or will they be able to survive in there current state assuming I don't ever upgrade them?
mnakalay replied on at Permalink Best Answer Reply
mnakalay
Here are the risks that you will face eventually:
- Some developers might get tired of maintaining legacy add-ons and retire them.
- Your host will upgrade to a newer version of Concrete5 and/or Mysql that will cause problems with legacy C5

The second problem is the most serious but frankly even that probably is not going to happen for maybe the next 5 years.
Ditso replied on at Permalink Reply
Ditso
I guess if I stick with it I should eventually master it. (hopefully in less than 5 years lol)

Hopefully new themes will become available overtime.
RadiantWeb replied on at Permalink Reply
RadiantWeb
I can promise you most developers with addons containing more than a mere 300 lines of code are not wanting to maintain 2x versions of that software for very long.

To jack around with old code that for intents and purposes is extremely outdated ways of coding all together, compared to C5.7 which is aligned with more modern coding practices and trends, that's just way to much to ask for what little most developers make anyway. A ginormous "not worth it".

My hope is to fully deprecate and remove our 5.6 addons from the marketplace completely within 1 year. It's hard to care about something that is DOA.

Not trying to poo-poo all over someone's opinion here...but the sooner we move anyone and everyone over to C5.7 the better.

ChadStrat
JohntheFish replied on at Permalink Reply
JohntheFish
A while back I speculated about a 5.7 compatibility layer as an addon or core enhancement for 5.6, so that 5.7 addons could be installed and run on a 5.6.x site.

A concept obviously not workable for anything complex, but maybe such a trick could work with the 50%+ of addons that are just straight forward blocks.

Irrespective of that, I currently plan on continuing to provide at least bug-fixing support for all my paid for addons in 5.6 as long as they keep selling in 5.6 versions, be that 1 year or 5 years.
juddc replied on at Permalink Reply
juddc
I finally have a client project I'm producing with 5.7 - I can say building with it is a very different experience from 5.6, and I believe there is a learning curve going between the 2 versions. I think the biggest issue is that there are a lot of things that aren't in the same place they used to be - and that there still are bugs & omissions.

It reminds me of when Illustrator went from v6 to v7 and PageMaker was retired to introduce InDesign. We all had to relearn how to do the same stuff with new interfaces.

Now that I'm getting used to 5.7, I'm rather liking it - even if I don't think it's as easy to use out-of-the-box as 5.6. The new features do make it worthwhile spending the time on it though!
DanK replied on at Permalink Reply
I have to say that after a pretty bad experience with a corrupted block which closely followed a none too impressed look at 5.7, I had a look at the dark side (Wordpress...).

I normally build my own themes but there are some spectacularly flexible, great looking and easy to work with themes available for WP (have a look at the Avada theme for example). I hate to say it as concrete5 has been great for me but I think the above reasons are going to amount to me using c5 a lot less if at all on new projects.
Ditso replied on at Permalink Reply
Ditso
I'm still working on the website and I'm making progress with it. I do feel better about it now I've been forced to persevere with it.