Yes, this is sad. But now we have to decide what to do today, tomorrow and over the next year and more. Here are some of my thoughts on charting a path forward. Feel free to join in, and enlighten me where I may be wrong, etc. 1. Muse isn't EOL/EOS for another year. Even after that, it's likely (though no assurances) that we can eek out another year of some level of service. Since I am on Windows, I have far less concern about the OS or its upgrades causing conflicts (however, Win 10 has been a headache, so who knows.) Those on a Mac have more reason to be concerned about an OS update conflict, which Adobe will not address after next year. 2. The other compatibility concern is about web browsers evolving. This can cause issues with Muse sites (again, which Adobe will stop addressing ), as well as third-party tools that may not see continued development (though to their never-ending credit, the Muse-Themes team has said they shall continue dev, support and even releasing new tools--bravo!). There is also the issue of general vulnerability to hackers and viruses (I did have one Muse site hacked a while back). Adobe's support for correcting these things, even over the next year, may not live up to our needs. It's a lot of crap-shooting here. 3. I'll add one more concern that I only see briefly mentioned in the threads: The Typekit fonts are dependent on Creative Cloud. According to Preran, that will not change. But that is a problem for many reasons. First we can't be sure just what WILL change and what won't. We know that. We also don't know if Muse site's integration with the hosted Typekit system will face any issues that can only be corrected by an update to Muse (this has happened a number of times). Perhaps Adobe will address it, perhaps not. Moreover, even if your sites are published and posted and you don't even use Muse any longer, I assume you will need to keep some level of Creative Cloud membership to keep your existing sites connected to the type service. And if so, what level of membership will be required? (This isn't an issue for those keeping CC for other applications. But one gets the idea many here are looking elsewhere for things.) 4. With all of that in mind: The options for moving forward are not great for MOST of us. I have seen those with lesser needs are gravitating to more of the online site builders. Great. And those with more traditional web backgrounds and coding abilities are moving back up the developer food chain. More power to them! (Though some of them telling artists/designers to learn to program is much like telling someone in a wheelchair to get up and walk. It is unrealistic and just plain thoughtless.) 5. This leaves what I think represents most Muse users who are in the middle. We are running a business, so we depend on being able to produce sites that look great (hey, designers!), work well (web isn't like print, the tech needs to work), and bring it in at a competitive price (if I needed to code, I would never be competitive). I have followed up on all of the options I have seen listed in the forums (and done this in the distant past as well) and there SIMPLY IS NO REPLACEMENT FOR MUSE. PERIOD. 6. What I have found are a lot of promising directions for the future. It feels like it did during those dark years between Flash's death, and the rise of Muse. Something will rise to fill in the gap. And I have a feeling it won't take as long this time. Muse-Themes makes note that they have had over 110,000 member/customers. Given that, I have to think that we could very roughly estimate that only 1 in 10 Muse users was a MT customer. That would put the Muse user base over 1 million. Not hard to imagine with Adobe's reach. While Adobe may be big enough to walk away from that, this has got to be a market lots of developers want to cater to. I would be shocked if the various options out there aren't scaling up their teams now, hoping to be first to market. (I'll look back at this post in a year and see how wrong I was). 7. BOTTOM LINE. Here is what I plan to do: a. I plan to explore the most viable options, for me (yours may be very different). I have installed Wordpress on my server and am exploring that, the various add-ons that make it easier to use, and a few other things. But I am going to be in no rush to move over to something new just yet. A year goes fast, but it is also a long time to start exploring and learning. b. I am going to bite the bullet and continue making the sites I need to make in Muse for at least the next few, maybe 6 months. I am going to hope that during that time one of a few things becomes apparent. That I start a warm and fuzzy relationship with one of the options I have been exploring. Or that one of the options starts to really come out with compelling tools for a designer oriented solution. c. Basically, I am going to make the bet that in the next year between external forces (software offerings) and internal forces (my own expanded knowledge), we will have a significantly different landscape. It's not a great bet. But it's on par with any other paths that I see. d. FINALLY, I'm going to hope that whichever platform I finally end up on, is going to offer me the ability to create a responsive site without the hair-pulling Muse put most of us through. This will allow me to begin migrating older/existing sites over towards the end of this year (And hopefully not procrastinate and wait until the sites start breaking with no Adobe to fix things.) That is my 2 cents. For now. -Lance
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