COMING VERY SOON: Use Block Smart action to turn any HTML element into a WordPress Block (aka Gutenberg)

Announcements
, , , ,
21

Informing you on Facebook does not really inform other “Pinegrow Wordpress” users however and certainly does not coincide with the promise of openness in 2020 by @matjaz.

If they informed you a few weeks ago and knew they were choosing to lock their products into ACF PRO for Gutenberg Blocks. Then when “Advanced Custom Fields” announced on February 16th that February 24 would be the actual date of the pricing change and they subsequently updated the blog post with that actual date (absent of ACF stating the time of expiration which was added to the blog late on the 23rd to accomodate the timezone debacle). Then the PInegrow team had a clear opportunity to make this announcement directly to “Pinegrow Wordpress” users an entire week earlier and not less then 24 hours before the pricing change for the mandatory ACF based upon their workflow decision in their products for Gutenberg Blocks.

I find that extremely hard to ascertain if they were hinging their products directy upon ACF for this feature. Other people whom use ACF in their products were making users aware of it directly after the February 16th announcement that February 24 would be the date of the pricing switch. I don’t think @Emmanuel is that oblivious to the WP community and would not have known until less than 24hrs.

Its merely a matter of principle and courtesy to the “Pinegrow Wordpress” users. Sadly they again fell short on this opportunity of informing users properly regarding a feature they were already aware of.

22

@Pinegrow_User They didn’t inform me weeks ago. They informed me around two days ago when they first notified everyone because I commented on their Facebook announcement. I was as oblivious of this new feature as you were until that time. But as I said before, I agree that the timing could have been handled better (even though I really think they did what they could in a difficult situation). Stating that they decided to lock in their gutenberg development to ACF is perhaps a little premature though. Maybe they simply did it because it was relatively easy to implement and other gutenberg implementations may follow in a little while (just speculating here) just as post meta fields are not locked into ACF in pinegrow either. It’s merely an option that is also supported.

23

I’m not sure that Matjaz will be able to intervene before Wednesday, so to confirm that we read your feedback carefully, I give you here my own point of view about this situation.

Sometimes the timing just isn’t right. We have been offering features related to the free version of ACF for a long time but for the first integration of a feature intrinsically linked to the paid PRO version, we have been unlucky.

The final decision to implement this functionality was taken very recently (February 17th) and with our nose in the handlebars, we hadn’t anticipated this change in pricing for ACF Pro.

The time needed for the corrections and additions normally planned for the next version + the integration time for this new feature in particular (which we weren’t sure to integrate in the next version) + the testing time and here’s where we are today.

When last Saturday we found out that a price change for ACF Pro was going to take place on February 24th, as our functionality was still not available, we did our best to communicate and inform about the situation.

Everyone will be able to judge according to their own criteria as to the quality of this communication operation and its appropriateness in view of the comments posted from here.

One thing is sure, this emergency communication was not planned, it was carried out with the means available at the time, i.e. social networks and the forum, and we are sincerely sorry for those who did not have the opportunity to read our mention on the change in price and model of ACF Pro.

5 Likes
24

OH well! Nice try, keep up the good work.
2nd Place = 1st Loser :stuck_out_tongue:

In this case, us without the ACF pro or means thereof to own it UNLESS professional or wealthy, so just asking, if and when Us non pro people get to tinker with the ACF things in PG, can we TURN OFF, all the advanced options in the views?
As seeing stuff like that with Reminders to upgrade now, in order to …blah blah

…will drive me nuts and remind me of this unfortunate timing debacle, every time I see boxes I can do nothing with!

ah well, you snooze, you loose.

25

I don’t have much to add to Emmanuel’s post.

The story is quite simple:

We got an idea for implementing a useful and powerful feature and then implemented it in record time of just few days. Meanwhile we noticed the planned ACF price increase. Our target was to release the new version on last Thursday, but couldn’t do it because we were still fixing bugs. Over the weekend we realised it would be good to let people know about the upcoming feature, so that they can take advantage of getting ACF. We used our social channels to do that.

Looking back, it would have been better to email users on Friday. Do and learn…

I think that professional use-cases PG and ACF PRO combo, create much more value than what they cost, even with new ACF pricing.

That said, we aren’t fans of this situation and understand that it puts the block feature out of reach of many users.

Still, using ACF lets us have this feature at all.

But we’re not married to ACF. If we find another approach that lets us support blocks and its implementation & support is feasible with our resources, we can do that.

6 Likes
26

Personally, I very much agree with this part.

1 Like
27

@Emmanuel @matjaz Some quick feedback as a pro user, we don’t honestly use (or care to) anything related to Gutenberg Blocks. Those features are just bypassed with site builds and most of the time, we’re using ACF Pro, CPTs, and custom functions.php modifications to create user interfaces on the back-end. I suppose Gutenberg features are helpful for someone, but I don’t know of any peers or agencies in my circle that use them.

@schpengle My workflow is far more complicated, as it’s a team-based workflow. I’ll outline it here versus the other thread, as that’s really old. We use ClickUp for team ticketing, Asana for client workspaces to coordinate on higher levels with tasks, and Slack is used to communicate with them directly and to have team meetings. We use Zapier to provide notifications across platforms and put them into our company Slack channel to keep updated on comments, repo pushes, etc., and there are several other systems in place to track leads, project time tracking, and related.

When it comes to WordPress and Pinegrow, we’re still integrating it. I’ll be going “all in” on licenses once we have the kinks worked out with training and passing projects back and forth. For us, Pinegrow cuts development time and helps us to control “source code” for a WP custom theme, which is the HTML5 project. For our workflow, we build out a site first using HTML5, Sass, and JS with either Foundation 6 or Bootstrap 4. Then once it’s working, we’ll put it through Pinegrow to assign WP functions, control scripts, insert custom PHP, setup navbars, and all else WordPress to export a theme package. This is far easier (and faster) than using an unnecessary “software app” PHP framework, and it’s faster and cleaner than using code-based starter themes. We won’t even touch multipurpose themes like Divi or Elementor unless the client is already using it, and in that case, we’ll strip out unnecessary functions and bypass most default behaviors. In essence, we use WordPress as a PHP framework because it’s honestly perfect for customizations.

Before we even build, we design the work in-house or get a hand-off from an outside designer and we import those designs to Avocode so that devs can export assets and Sass styles for the elements.

I see Pinegrow gaining in popularity for professional users and teams, but there’s only so far that beginners and hobbyists are willing to go when it comes to costs, investment of time, and the field is overly saturated (not competitive). Things like ACF Pro are just costs of doing business, the same as Pinegrow licenses and other tools.

3 Likes
28

Yeah, you guys are not in charge of or responsible for what the ACF folks do. Most third-party providers are continuing to go up in price, I think it’s just expected. As was stated, the timing is off, not intentional, but things that are beyond our control. However, pro users will pay the cost for ACF regardless, because it’s essential for custom work.

2 Likes
29

Super reply @dcneuts there,as usual, thanks for taking the time to explain and show case that pretty impressive work flow!
Yes, I see how the big boys play now… just epochs apart from my feeble attempts. It’s also interesting to see how you use Wordpress as just a framework, ditch the themes etc and just rip into it and build it out, as one would with any framework, where you just want to leverage its potentials, value added features and time savings.
I say this because WP has become such a monolithic beast, with so much Expansions, Add ons and customisations (at my level) which NEED to be implemented… that its so easy to forget that its just a framework.

…with such massive potential for breakage, if we get it wrong.
SO thanks. This has been an interesting PG development.

31

Thanks for the thoughtful responses @matjaz & @Emmanuel.

1 Like
32

OH well, I did try.

I contacted the ACF dev a couple of times, to see if we could get some sort of last minute deal as we weren’t aware of this increase which, as we know, puts it out of reach of some of us and so will never be able to utilise the latest, greatest PG +WP feature, and unfortunately this is the reply.

Hi Schpengle

Thanks for the reply.

Gee mate, I wish I had better news to share with you, but it won’t be possible to purchase a lifetime license anymore.

Compared to the market, ACF PRO is still extremely good value. But if the subscription nature is a deal breaker for you, that’s understandable.

Wishing you all the best with your projects!

Thanks,
Elliot

So, there we have it.

33

Just need to say, dang it! I wish I knew this before they jackup up their price. Ok now that is off my chest.

1 Like
36

Please don’t post links to unauthorized copies of ACF PRO plugin to the forum.

1 Like
37

Well… an Update here.

SO THAT…is why the ACF Pro plugin lifetime deal suddenly bit the dust…unfortunately just as it got incorporated into a PG ToolChain.

The Development was taken over by Jetbrains… aaaand…

If you ARE an ACF, LTD (Life time Deal) owner… did you get

THE Email?

suspicious activity on the ACF front.

But also, I guess, the priniciples are interesting for our very own PG team who offer lifetime deals.
But…

I’d like to think they hold The Moral High Ground

…well, as long as they can still eat and have sports cars and private jets :wink:

38

It’s actually delicious brains, not Jetbrains (which is a whole different company). And I personaly don’t think the takeover had anything to do with the pricing model change as it happened more than a year before the takeover was even anounced if my memory serves me correctly.

And yes, I did receive the email but I didn’t really think much of it. I took the liberty of advising them (by means of a tweet) to open up a Patreon account for ACF instead where lifetime licence holders (such as myself) can contribute as much as they want, whenever they want, in order to help keep the product afloat. I believe that to be an admirable compromise. It doesn’t force LTD holders to contribute but if they feel like giving something back they still can. And I’m convinced that many will do just that.

39

Thanks @Roel , yes, the Brains! I mixed them up. I thought the right one, wrote the wrong one. grrrr! I’ll leave it in there though, so your comment still makes sense :slight_smile:
And I’m not sure about the timngs, but I know it happened at JUST ABOUT the same time as PG incorporated using the ACF into its workflow. I was distraught to find that we had JUST missed the end of the LTD … which for the likes of myself, meant I would never get the chance to buy n try the legitimate version to play around with… oh well, I wrote to him and asked if he could sort a deal out with PG devs.
Alas he said no.

Maybe because as the topic of the my post and the relevant links seems to show,
That, LTD deals aren’t very appealing to organisations who buy up companies with legacy LTD deals.
So, if you dump them first… your company is more appealing to later buyers and so therefore, more lucrative.

I wonder what will become of ACF pro?
I wonder if it will become pimped with new features and evolve into a new product… or a new,shinier product will supersede it with greater take up and ACF will still get…free, less frequent less shiny updates…

We shall see.

And yes, your funding model makes a lot more sense and seems to be along the lines of what other devs were retorting with.

2 Likes