What is going on with Pulse CMS? Am I just unlucky?

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#1

At the start of this week I renewed my Pulse CMS subscription, and am having a third attempt at trying to use this product.

I've download Pulse CMS 5.3.10, which I've started to white label. If anyone is interested, I've created a substantial document on how to do this, as I ran into so many problems! It's a lot more complex than the three lines of text, under the heading "Rebranding Pulse" in the Intermediate Section of the wafer-thin user guide, suggests.

Although I'm doing the majority of the development on my Mac running MAMP, you can see where I am with everything at this test site.

The first thing to point out is that there are no items in the menu bar. I've been to the Navigation section in the Admin Control Panel, checked, double-checked, and checked again that the menu items are active, but still no menu bar appears.

I've accidentally added a new page, but now can't delete this. The delete icon, which is shown in screen dumps in the Pulse CMS user guide, aren't in the Pages panel of my Admin Control Panel.

I've tried adding code into blocks. For example, in the footer, I wanted line breaks between the three sections of information. In the Admin Control Panel I went to Blocks > Copyright > HTML and added a couple of break tags, and then saved the changes. Initially it looked like this had worked. However, as soon as I signed out of the Admin Control Panel, the new formatting was lost.

On the home page, I've tried to make edits to the text directly on-screen, but for some reason this makes my customs icons disappear. I then can't find a way to relink the image files again.

And finally, when I create links to other website pages, they never work, I always seem to get server errors. Links to external sites are fine. But I want to get the default Pulse CMS site up and running first, and be confident with that, before I start to customise it any further.

I so want this product to work, but each time I try to use it, I end up being very frustrated. Am I just unlucky? Or is this product incapable of doing what its developers promise us that it can do?

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#2

Hi Derek, I find Pulse is often unpredicatable and each new release brings bugs. But I still like it and I want it to work, the essense of it is so good, and its so light. I hope it continues to be developed.
It sounds to me that you may have permission problems somewhere and the edits are not getting saved. As for menu, I had that once and what I did was to go into the menu and then click Save - even if you have not made a change, it may work and bring it onto the page.
Best of luck.

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#3

Hi Derek, I find Pulse is often unpredicatable and each new release brings bugs. But I still like it and I want it to work, the essense of it is so good, and its so light. I hope it continues to be developed.

Yep, same feeling.
I've been using Pulse for a long time. mainly testing in the first years but now i start using it for real projects and its bad when you're finishing a project and have to go back to a client telling them that something isn't working as mentioned and they have to use a work around.

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#4

Thanks for the reply @jdloudon. With the demise of Adobe Business Catalyst, which I've used for years, I had hoped that Pulse CMS would be the perfect substitute for that. The ability to have multiple blogs also appeals, as in essence, that's what I have on my existing site for my News feed and my Blog posts. I'm going to persevere with this product, so will explore your suggestion of permission problems. I also hope that the developers of Pulse CMS wander onto this Forum sometime, and start to provide a bit of more online support for its customers.

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#5

Providing work arounds for clients is never great position to be in, is it @Arties? I want a simple, robust CMS that my clients can use to amend their sites - regardless of their level of experience. I'm going to keep plugging away with this product, to see if I can get it to work.

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#6

I'm going to try and keep this post open, in the hope that the @Pulsecms development team will have the decency to respond to me, and let me know what is going on with their product.

#7

Well I dont know whatthe Pulse team are up to. They keep taking our money though. Be nice to have somebody drop by here occasionly.

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#8

I know right? I thought @palej was supposed to be the new "support person" for the "improved" support team... He did fine for about a month and has largely disappeared since...

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#9

I'm trying to use Pulse with Blocsapp and having similar issues. Never know what to expect. I have not renewed or paid for another year yet. Was waiting for some good news.

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#10

@kbclovett Well if you have any issues with Blocsapp & Pulse, let me know. I have several sites up using this combination, and might be able to help with any questions you may have.

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#11

Thanks, I think you have been helpful on issues in the past. Most recent project I did, I used Wordpress ,because of some special needs. I'm looking at Volt CMS which is new to the blocsapp store.

#12

Volt looks good - I did a little beta testing for Janis at @instacks before it was released. A really nice product, just waiting for the blog functionality, which would make it pretty awesome! Janis has a great track record, I used his Pulse integration for Rapidweaver for years, as well as a few of his other Rapidweaver stacks. I did a little comparison post here on the Blocs forum comparing Pulse to Volt.

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#13

@everyone

Hi Guys!

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well.

I’m sorry for not being active for some time. I know that any reason is not an excuse but there are just some unavoidable circumstances on my end which has since been resolved.

On behalf of the Pulse CMS team, I apologise for not meeting your expectations but I assure you that we hear all of your concerns as users of Pulse CMS and as part of this amazing community. Thank you for keeping the forums alive especially in these unprecedented times with these reports.

The development of the 5.3.11 version is on-going and will hopefully be able to include most, if not all of the issues you’ve raised over the past few weeks.

@DerekDigital

We apologise for the unpleasant experience you’ve had since you’ve renewed your plan with us. For us to be able to better address this issue, we just have a few details we’d like to ask:

Can you provide us the site logs of your site? I can be extracted from Admin > Logs. If you could export those it would be very helpful to help with testing.

Your white label guide would be excellent and happy to promote this as we are in the process of bringing our manual into short tutorial videos in our YouTube channel!

With regards to the Navigation, I doubt that you’ll miss this but just to confirm- did you go and save the navigation and settings after making the changes?

For editing the Code in Blocks have you got the WYSIWYG editor switched on in the Admin settings? Did you also add code in the Code Editor view or in the WYSIWYG view?

Can you describe how you are adding links to Pages? Are you using the Link part of the WYSIWYG editor or adding them manually? You can also use the Link Tag:
{{link:page/animal/hippo}} {{link:blog/1}}

We can fix the errors that we’ll be able to replicate in the upcoming Pulse v5.3.11

Thanks for bringing these issues to our attention.
We’ll certainly look forward to your response!

#14

Hi @palej

I connected to my test site using the FTP software I use, but can't find Admin > Logs. Where is it?

I can forward you a Word doc of how I've been white labelling Pulse CMS. Your software developers might find it an interesting read.

With regards to Navigation, all I have done is a basic install of Pulse CMS 5.3.10 and then white labelled it. Are you telling me that I have to make changes to the settings for them to work? I don't understand what you're asking me here!

To confirm, I added code in the Code Editor view. Saved changes, but then my changes disappeared.

I creating links to external pages using both WYSIWYG editor and the the Link Tag. That's not the issue. The problem is that links from one page to another, in the Pulse CMS default site, don't appear to work.

Does that assist you?

#15

I'm also looking at Volt CMS, now that I know that @instacks is developing a blog feature. What I need for my clients is an elegant and simple-to-use CMS, that I can incorporate smoothly into the sites that I develop in Blocs app, without all the unnecessary headaches.

#16

It should be in Account > Debug info then Debug info Download.
The Word doc would be of great help as well. With that, we should be able to replicate the issue exactly how you came across with the issue and work out a solution ASAP, or hopefully include the fix in the upcoming 5.3.11.

#17

Okay @palej I have found and downloaded the Debug info. Which I've made into a .zip file. Can you DM me an email address where I can forward this file and the Word doc re: white labelling to you please?

#19

Hi Derek, checking in- did you get your issues solved? Let me know.

#20
#21

Hi @simionis.

I gave up with Pulse CMS, I'm afraid. I've now invested in Volt CMS, which has been specifically designed by @instacks to work with sites created using Blocs app. It's the CMS that I've spent two years looking for. Easy to install, easy for my clients to use, looks great, and works straight of the box.

I read that Pulse CMS now has new owners. I wish you every success with the development of your product.

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