dan:

Importantly, the AI features we introduce will be optional. If you prefer to use Elements without AI, that will remain completely possible. The goal is to enhance the experience for those who want these capabilities, without getting in the way of anyone who doesn’t.

It will be good to have that option. I am doing my utmost to have absolutely nothing to do with AI.

This is not me but it is my local drive through and I have had similar thoughts - masked-woman-tells-bk-hire-humans

Obviously I have seen way too many movies ……………

differentdan:

Changes you are making to the site aren’t visible on your live site after you’ve published

Changes I make to the site aren’t visible on the live site after publishing. At the bottom of the screen at https://biz-bots.ai you should see XXX after “Click the Agent icon to give it a try… “ but that changed or any other does not publish.

Do you mean publishing is not working at all, or just the changes you are making to the site aren’t visible on your live site after you’ve published?

If you could provide more details that would be helpful, including any screenshots of error messages you are seeing if the former.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Could you share the project via Elements Cloud so we can take a look? Let me know exactly where to look, and what button is miss-behaving. Hopefully we can figure it out for you

Gallery Pro might not work with remote images as it needs to generate thumbnails.

I’d recommend dropping the images into you Elements Project locally for best results.

Hope that helps.

Apparently I am doing something wrong. Suggestions?

Thanks

I’m bouncing around every month trying different AI

Can’t decide what I like best…

Tending to go to Gemini for Veo more than anything else…

As another poster said here, I understand the credits aspect. I’ve had to incorporate this for other apps I’ve written that rely on AI and are targeted at casual users. But for the relative power-user aspect of Elements users, I think you need to offer us to use our own API keys. Both is the real answer: credits for easy “just works” and API keys for those of us already very immersed in this quickly evolving world.

Did the page that you are making the edit on change its filename from index.html to index.php perhaps (or vice-versa)? That’s usually a big reason people report they aren’t seeing changes made, because the server is still serving the old page and not the new page…

I’ve been working with RapidWeaver since around 2012, so about 14 years now, and I’m quite familiar with how things normally behave. That’s also why this stood out to me. When certain buttons start sending visitors to the homepage instead of the page they are linked to, it becomes a bit worrying on a site of this size.

Said with a bit of humour and a small smile — but also quite seriously — broken links in a 129-page project are not really something you want to discover after launch.

So I’m trying to understand what could be causing this behaviour.

Thanks again for taking a look.

@dan

Jeg leder efter danske Elements brugere. Giv lyd fra dig, hvis du findes. Nogle gange er det lidt nemmere, hvis vi kan tale dansk sammen.

hilsen Tina

Nice work!

But I still feel it would be helpful to have a more in-depth workflow description.

I have managed to figure out how to use the tools, but it has taken a lot of trial and error to do that, and I needed to do it from within one of your samples. I could never get things set up correctly from scratch.

So far, I have managed to port two of my smaller components to this new workflow, and I have to say, once it is set up and working correctly, it is a lot of fun. The whole global control mechanism and the way the hooks and properties files work are great. It took a lot of poring through the core components to figure some of the stuff out, but that was a great learning experience in itself.

Bottom line is, I get the target audience for these build tools and the motivation for creating them. But I still feel the documentation could do a better job of slowly walking one through the process.

Now that I’m past the honeymoon phase with Elements it has become a lot easier for me to use Elements and not have to overly rethink what I’m building.

In the future I’d like to see a Mega Menu where we can build out more complex navigation with drop zones. A cookie pop up where customers can opt in or out (which could control loading of info fed from outside sources).

Keep up the great work guys!

It’s worth noting that the build tools are really aimed at experienced developers (no offence meant). They’re designed for people who are already comfortable working with development tooling, build processes, and project structures. Because of that, they can feel quite overwhelming if you’re approaching them for the first time.

They’re definitely not intended to be an “easy mode” workflow, and they’re probably not something most users will ever need to touch. In many ways they sit closer to traditional developer tooling than typical Elements workflows.

The goal of providing them is to give power users and developers the flexibility to build more advanced components and automate parts of the development process. But that does mean there’s a big learning curve involved.

That said, the feedback about clearer step-by-step documentation is very helpful, and I’ll keep that in mind as we move things forward

Could you possibly do it like you’re explaining it to a 7 year old ?

Including why you’re doing the things you’re doing

… or a colour for that matter

Can anyone help ? … I’m prolly being daft again

Jol

I am just going to share my thoughts with you on where I am going next with my web development process in the hope it will prove useful.

As a long time user of Rapidweaver 8, Foundation 6 and numerous stacks plus Total CMS1, I am currently trying to figure out a road map of where to go next. The majority of my clients (I currently have 77 TCMS1 licences) can use a on-site Admin page to maintain the text content of the various pages and most of them also have at least one blog in operation, some have multiple blogs being used for different things such as staff lists, recipes, events etc. Setting up a similar new site has until now been pretty straightforward and I bake in the one time < $100 cost of a TCMS licence as part of my charges.

With the arrival of TCMS3 I accept that a) developers like me may be no longer have any availability to purchase new TCMS1 licences and b) The version of php required to run it may eventually no longer be supported.

I have just spent a couple of weeks evaluating what I can get out of TCMS3 for $159 (which is the cost of the standard licence - the ‘equivalent of TCMS1’). I can only contemplate purchasing a TCMS3 Pro licence ($359) in very extreme circumstances. Normally a pretty standard blog with user admin pages for the blog and the text content on other pages is perfectly sufficient for my clients. For the projects I undertake I may never even need the full functionality available to Pro TCMS3 users.

I have Elements and I have experimented with it. I asked for lazy loading of images many months ago and was glad to see that enhancement installed and by using that and self hosted fonts I managed to get the performance scores in page speed insights for my modified version of the Fitness project close to being perfect! This was initially a huge positive in my view when considering using Elements.

I am aware that it is possible to have text and a blog controlled by the Elements CMS - but as yet I have seen very little progress on the ability of a client to be able to have a custom designed Admin page or pages on their site with which to maintain this content and add new blog posts. I am pleased to see that you have now listed the CMS as one of the core priorities because that is very much the deciding factor for me as to whether Elements is a usable tool for me. I know these things take ages to develop so I am not expecting results any time soon but I just wanted to share my thoughts with you about where I’m at and what my priorities are.

Best Wishes.

Martin Waring

I’m trying to say how much I am a fan of RealMac, and while I am a 67 year old “child” while working in the app, I have (with absolutely no skill set for this) managed to upgrade and improve my site in very satisfactory ways. Stuff like CSS, CMS…. Ya, I have no clue.

Thank you-endlessly-for following your dream and your vision. I am proud to share my site with my audience.

Very best wishes to you and your team

The App
At this point there’s nothing really wrong with Elements itself. The primary thing that I notice is that the on-boarding process is keeping users away. In other words, “getting started” and documentation are the two sticklers here. Since the goal is to grow the Elements user base, these two things are incredibly important.

The CMS
Introducing CMS 2.0 may cause an issue for us. Those who’ve deployed CMS 1.0 need to know that CMS 2.0 will carry over the 1.0 work we’ve already done. While all that work is in Markdown and obviously cut-and-pastable, that’s work we don’t want to have to re-do. The longer the delay between my deploying CMS 1.0 sites and the appearance of CMS 2.0, the more work it looks like I may have to do, given the way you described it.

The Store
Yes, opening to free components as soon as possible would be highly welcome. That would also help developers build reputations with small bits, for when the for-sale stuff eventually appears.

AI
While I’m a strong believer (and user) of AI, I’m not sure that you shouldn’t follow Apple’s path and move cautiously. Also, look at what Adobe is doing with AI in Photoshop (the latest beta adds essentially an “automatic builder” that does things step-by-step so the user can see it as it progresses and a history is left behind, or a “show me how” version of the same thing, which doesn’t do the actual work but takes you through the steps. Elements could certainly use that, but that brings us to a point: Elements needs a History function. That would allow us to go back to an earlier point in the site design and check or fix something. Like Photoshop, this would be tricky for Elements, as a simple change impacts a lot downstream.

If Elements had a History function, I could also see AI using that to help you troubleshoot something. As in “Can you go back to when I created this Container and explain anything I did afterwards that impacted how and where this Container works?” If the AI then spotted an issue, you could then “Please start at the point in the History where [the issue] first occurred, fix [the issue], and then rebuild the rest of the History steps that followed.”

However, I have an App which is very user friendly, I have managed to do and integrate into my websites custom components - so perhaps I have developed development skills I never had? I have done this with the help of AI and more importantly the great people in this community.

I have supported you from the start and also have Elements Cloud thanks to the great @differentdan help and support. I will continue to support you going forward as I invest more time and effort into getting what I want out of this app.

To @dan @ben and team I don’t know how you do it but the development from the Beta I used to now is phenomenal and can only THANK YOU and the team for their efforts.

But as I said I am user, who like most probably on here rely on you and third parties and the development of the App to do what we want and if we can’t then we need to buy add ons. IMO I feel that this is the weakness of Elements at the moment - yes I understand your business model totally - I have managed my own business since 2004 and have grown it to be the success it is today. I have also worked in Medical Startups and helped make them a successful with my unique, niche skills in Operating Departments.

So from a user perspective I see your business model clearly from your update - An External CMS module - which you have spoken about for a year - not a criticism but eagerly awaited by all. Integration of AI - I hope @elementsbot won’t be too upset A credit based system to have or not as required which is the model most companies seem to be going along, e.g. Affinity (Canva) lately and once again I understand.

However, my biggest disappoint so far as a user is the Elements Store - once again I understand what you are saying - but from a user this lack of support to buy other third party integrated content is leading to a structure that is inflationary to users who want to purchase this content. From a business point of due I can not claim my VAT back on purchases currently.

I am generally pleased that I have done things I never thought possible and continue to do so more each day and I can only THANK YOU and your team for making this possible but IMO the most important thing as a USER is get the store sorted and lets get our wonderful developer community more on board. This will ensure that ELEMENTS will fly even more!

Thank you for never settling and always pushing to make the app better, we as users really appreciate it.

You know more than anyone that you will never please everyone all of the time. Thats said you are doing great.

Your YT followers has been gaining momentum to so I think you should try and continue with the amount of content you release on the YT channel which will help the community regardless on where they are from a skillset point of view. I have found the content really useful. Many learn way more easily seeing something rather than docs on a site.

I’ve already been testing the water with custom code generated by AI which I’m sure will be widespread by a large proportion of users. I’m curious as to how you will integrate AI into Elements because of it changing every 5 mins.

Could you include some kind of AI preview tool in the UI instead of trying to always view in the browser to speed things up? A small window or page to see the cust code in realtime so you can make quicker decisions?

On the whole keep doing what you are doing Dan Elements is going in the right direction.

Just like the look of the screen grabs and demos on the Essential page update:-)

I want to spend a little time talking about where we are and where we’re heading with Elements. What I’m outlining below reflects our current thinking. This is a high-level view of where we are today and the direction we believe Elements is heading.

Before we dive in, it’s important to remember that plans can and do evolve. Nothing here is set in stone or guaranteed.

When we first introduced Elements, people doubted whether certain things would ever be possible. Release by release, we’ve kept proving that wrong. Today we genuinely believe Elements is the most modern and capable website builder available on the Mac.

However, the software landscape is now moving faster than ever. The rise of large language models is already reshaping how software is built and used, and we intend to meet that head-on. More on that below.

Elements App

Our goal from day one has been to make Elements both the best app it can be and a sustainably successful product, one that generates enough revenue to support the team, fund continued development, and build a buffer that allows the business to navigate future challenges.

It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come. Since going public, we’ve shipped nearly 100 builds, introduced almost 50 built-in components, and built an online platform that securely stores and backs up projects alongside any add-ons purchased through the Store. This progress is something the whole team is proud of.

The business side is moving in the right direction too. Revenue is growing month on month, and we’re consistently gaining more subscribers than we lose. We’re not where we want to be yet, but the direction is clear, and we’ve actively been investing in advertising to try and keep the user base growing.

All of this shapes how we make decisions. Being a small team means we have to be deliberate about where we focus, and we try to prioritise the work we believe will have the greatest long-term impact.

The three main priorities, besides the core app are, CMS, Store, and AI. I’ll do my best to share my thoughts on each below.

Elements CMS

Last year we introduced Elements CMS as part of the core product. At the time we knew it was more technical than we ideally wanted for many users, but there was clear demand for a CMS that could integrate directly into an Elements site. In order to ship something useful quickly, we made a few compromises.

Since then, we’ve been thinking hard about where the CMS should go next.

We want to finish and ship the current online CMS, something that is usable while we work on what comes next. We’ll then turn our attention to Elements CMS 2.0. The direction we’re exploring for this is an online-first system, with local components inside Elements connecting to an API to pull and display content. The goal is something easier to use and far more robust.

We haven’t finalised everything yet, but that’s the vision we’re working towards. I’ll keep you posted if anything dramatically changes.

Elements Store

The Elements Store is something we’re genuinely proud of. It gives users a seamless way to discover, install, update, and manage components directly inside Elements and because everything is tied to your Cloud Account, you’ll never lose access to something you own.

That account-linked model is also one of the reasons why we don’t currently allow components to be distributed outside the store. Keeping everything within one ecosystem lets us avoid the fragmentation and support problems that have plagued us (and other systems) in the past.

We know third-party developers are keen to get access, and so are we. Earlier this year we hit a hurdle around EU VAT and tax compliance for digital goods. We’re making steady progress on that, and once it’s resolved we hope to move forward with opening the store more broadly.

In the meantime we want to build in support for sharing of free components. We think this will help meaningfully grow the Elements user base and give everyone access to a much wider range of building blocks.

On a related note, as AI tools continue to improve, the long-term economics of selling components are genuinely uncertain. You can already ask an AI to build something in Tailwind and Alpine JS and paste it straight into Elements. It works remarkably well. Not every user will do that, but the direction of travel is clear. We’re thinking carefully about what this means for the future of the store, and for the ecosystem more broadly.

Elements AI

AI is enabling some remarkable advancements for both technical and non-technical users, and we believe it should play a role in the future of Elements. That said, we want to approach it thoughtfully.

Rather than simply adding a generic AI chatbot into the app, our aim is to integrate AI in ways that are genuinely useful and aligned with how Elements works.

Over the past year we’ve spent a lot of time discussing how AI could enhance the platform. Each conversation has focused on one key question, how can we make this truly helpful for our users building sites with Elements?

Importantly, the AI features we introduce will be optional. If you prefer to use Elements without AI, that will remain completely possible. The goal is to enhance the experience for those who want these capabilities, without getting in the way of anyone who doesn’t.

Later this year we plan to begin rolling out some of the first AI-powered features. Initially these will be smaller helper tools that lay the groundwork for more ambitious capabilities over time.

We plan to use state-of-the-art frontier models, with an allocation of monthly credits included so these capabilities will be usable by everyone with an active Elements subscription. We’re excited about the possibilities here, and believe the features we’re already building will take Elements to the next level.

We’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts on all the ideas we’ve expressed above. With the help of this community, we know Elements can become something truly remarkable.

Thanks,

Dan & Team Elements

The Essentials pack also comes with a sample project that has a fully functioning blog built with the CMS.

Hope that helps!

Don’t get wrong I’m really happy with Elements just the blog thing is niggling me. I totally understand the bigger picture but like any user we all are at different stages of skill level and want things right away. Thats why the essentials pack I think is really good to get users started.

I would guess, that’s because of Elements CMS is still in an early phase of development, most probably we see more in this field in the future. We need to give them time.

Yes I know you can with yours I had an email with you a few weeks ago.

I don’t understand though why Elements haven’t got this type of component/project already in there to make it way easier for people to get started and port their existing blogs over. I get the ability to have a base to work from but users who want to get started out of the box (pretty much how the rest of Elements is designed) a pre designed ‘blog’ template liek yours would benefit them hugely.

I might have to do look at your more seriously now.

you can change the text color by clicking on the input field and then change the text colors here.

MarcL:

What I can don’t under stand is that in the CMS pack I see the ‘collections’ but when I see the live previews on the product webpage they are completely different. What I ideally want is what s on the product page so I can just fill in the blog details and away I go.

Hi @MarcL
the reason is, that in the “CMS pack” there is “only” the design prepared, with the proper Twig commands. You need an underlying CMS additionally. That is what you have to do for yourself.

You can see how this is done with the Microblog project, what is available for free in the Elements store. Or you are purchasing Maximilian (that was the advertising part ) which has a complete blog already implemented. You immediately can start to port over your blogs.

flamerz:

I noticed while the site is loading from mobile phone, the menu remains opened until the page is completely loaded.

Hey @flamerz, thanks for your comment. I haven’t seen this “feature” also and I can’t replicate it on my iPhones. What phone are you using?

Andrea has chosen an Italian hairdresser, so the hair color fits well to the theme, unfortunately Andreas has chosen a cheep German one

Clicked it - disappeared

Republished and now it works…

Did not help…

I know it’s extreme - but going to try and delete whole folder from the server

Load the fresh 5000 file version…

TrumpetStudio.com

For some reason it’s not working live…