Thread: classipress vs vantage

The Vantage theme itself is something that has only been mentioned on the AppThemes homepage for roughly 3 months, prior to that it simply didn't exist at all. The development team had every hope of releasing it at the end of September, but obviously it just isn't ready, hence the delay... No-one is happy about letting anyone down, but we simply can't release it if it's not up to scratch. Realistically, for anyone to absolutely rely on "soft" dates for their projects would be a mistake.

We of course wanted to let people know of new themes that we are working on, and appreciate that people are keen on these to be released. It would have been just as easy not to mention them at all until they were physically available, and then there would be no cause for annoyance at any delays, but this would not be fair on those who perhaps were thinking of hiring a developer to customize ClassiPress to do what we were already working on.

The AppThemes blog does not require you have access to the forum, and as I said, this is where official announcements by the development team are made first. We are expecting an announcement regarding the Vantage theme very soon (i.e. the next day or so)...

Ultimately as I said before, yes we agree there is room for improvement when it comes to communicating and providing set dates, and this is something we are working on. I assure you though, I am in direct contact with the development team, and any information I get, I pass on those who are asking the questions.

Hi,

I realize it is very difficult to predict actual release dates. Sometimes, what appears to be minor functions or bugs can take weeks or even months longer to resolve than initially thought.

However, feedback to current or potential buyers can be very helpful. Right now, I am totally in the dark so I have to make a decision whether to move on or to wait a bit longer. I will probably make a hard decision date for myself so as to not find my self in a permanent waiting mode.

What I would suggest is some consistent feedback regarding progress. For example, Appthemes can release the feature list when it has been frozen. This can be followed by a series of milestones when they are accomplished, e.g. first Alpha test, Beta testing, screen shots of upcoming final release, etc. This would help in the decision making process.

I know that this is not always possible. I once hired a local developer to do work for me and then he decided to re-locate without telling me. Once he was out of my sight I could not tell where he was with the development and the project was over eight months late and there was nothing I could do about it since he kept telling me that it was almost done.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful.

Rich

Thanks for your feedback Rich, yes I agree the features list would at least give everyone more information about the product, and I have just this minute reminded the development team we are waiting for this blog entry which I was advised would be posted.

As I have mentioned already, the whole area of communicating this kind of information, including release dates is something we are working on improving. We have already started making some changes within the forums with regards to community feature requests, and there are already plans in place once these new themes and updates are released, which will hopefully allow us to set dates and provide confirmation of features for releases in future..

The other mods and myself are all actual AppThemes customers ourselves who actively use one or more of the themes, and so we understand this perspective of wanting to know what's happening. In turn, I also make sure I keep the development team informed of customer feedback, good or bad, so they have an understanding of any frustrations expressed in the forums.

Hi pepsi,

Thanks for the response. I am glad to hear that changes are in the works and that the development team is getting customer feedback.

During the last couple of weeks, while awaiting new releases from Appthemes, have visited many other sites that are selling classified ad software (or similar). The pre-sales support on this forum is the best I have seen and the user group the most active that I have encountered. This usually bodes well for long term success. I hope that the development team has a business model that will support continued high quality apps (for example, often app developers run out of money and the product dies).

Thanks again for your excellent support.

Rich

Thanks again :) It's really great to see you asking lots of questions, and generally doing your homework on what is available out there. This is something I would recommend to anyone considering purchasing one of our themes, or anyone elses' for that matter.