"Duplicate app" turned off on Classic apps

Can anyone shed any light on this pls?
Glide appears to have switched this off in the last few days with no warning?
This means I cannot back up my classic app and any tweaks have to be done to the live version. Could there not have been some forewarning to allow a managed exit.
This is very worrying for me, what next? Any further restrictions will destroy my application and severely affect my business?

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Glide has permanently removed the ability to create new Classic apps, including via duplication. If you have a classic app it will continue to work, but as of November 17th you can no longer create new ones.

thanks Jeff. Do you know where this was announced please?
Not even an email to warn me :frowning_face:
(I need to find out what else is happening that could affect me).
Thx

There was no formal announcement that I’m aware of. As far as I’m aware, there is no immediate plans to remove Classic Apps altogether, and if there was, I’m pretty sure there would be a heads up because that would affect a lot of people.

I would consider moving forward with rebuilding any existing Classic Apps as New Apps. There has been talk about a conversion tool at some point, but I haven’t heard any news on that recently. Even if they did have a conversion tool, I would still expect a lot of manual work would be needed. I’m slowly rebuilding one of my classic apps at the moment, and it’s a good time to rethink the design and flow.

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WOW! That “unannounced” move just upended our entire app business! As a “Grandfathered” user for years with a single Event Focused Classic app that we “Duplicate” and re-brand for our clients, the single decision to NOT allow us to duplicate or back-up our Classic app does not rest well with us, especially since the promised migration tool to the new “Apps” old “Pages” has not been delivered.

@david how could you let this happen without notice? Your comments up to this point have been that changes would affect “New” users of the Glide tool set but those “Grandfathered” would be able to continue with existing development in Classic uninterrupted.

Perhaps a bit of notice would have allowed us to plan for this abrupt change in the Classic model? We would like to hear from you directly on this decision. Thanks @Jeff_Hager for your continued Glide Expert response but I imagine that this decision will impact even those Experts that have built multiple apps in Classic that have NOT been converted to the new platform unless “Experts” retain that feature while “Grandfathered” Glide client do not. I hope that is not the case.

This affects all users, including experts. The writing on the wall has been apparent for the past year. I think many of us anticipated Classic Apps going away at some point and have been focusing solely on New Apps. I also think many of us expected some kind of change to happen by the end of this year, so this isn’t entirely unexpected to me.

I’m hopeful for a conversion tool, but I’ve never been confident that it would be a good one, so even if they do come out with a tool, I don’t think it’s going to create a perfect one-to-one conversion. There would still need to be some manual work to get the new app to have a UI and UX that you are happy with. At that point I’d rather just start over and reimagine my app from the ground up. There are just too many UI differences between Classic and New apps for me to think that a reliable conversation could be done.

While it’s unfortunate that I’ll no longer be able to create backups of my current classic app, I’m also in the process of rebuilding it as a new app and haven’t created a classic app from scratch in a very long time. Glide dropped official support for Classic Apps almost a year ago. It’s apparent that Glide wants to move away from Classic apps so they can focus on maintaining one single product. This happens to be one of the baby steps towards that goal.

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Again I appreciate you Jeff and have for a long time but you know this move occurring on a Friday before the weekend with NO NOTICE is NOT what a paying client would expect from a great software company like GLIDE.

We have also already attempted the complete recreation of our Event App in the New Apps interface and as you stated, it’s just not there in the UI or UX department to be am valid solution for our needs.

A simple warning that this was going to occur would have at least allowed us to make a back-up of our existing Classic apps in our Pro account. The “Forced” move away from GLIDE or to the New Apps does not give us great confidence that things like this won’t happen again if we rebuild our entire solution on the new platform. Life has no guarantees but as investors you generally are provided with some safety measures. Unfortunately actions such as this begin to tarnish support of those who had fully embraced the platform, Past, Present & Future.

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