Web Designer Premium, you have to upgrade?

[Hunter-MX]

I have Web Designer Premium. I have not used the software for a few months to create a new website, but when updating older sites I receive notifications to upgrade to the yearly service. I was not interested in the yearly fee system. Now I find when going to create a new website, that I no longer have access to any of the content that I did before. No templates, no components, nothing. Is this accurate or am I missing something? When I purchased or rather upgraded to Premium, I don't remember being told access to all this material would be limited at a future date. The software is virtually worthless without it.

[Acorn]

I have Web Designer Premium. I have not used the software for a few months to create a new website, but when updating older sites I receive notifications to upgrade to the yearly service. I was not interested in the yearly fee system. Now I find when going to create a new website, that I no longer have access to any of the content that I did before. No templates, no components, nothing. Is this accurate or am I missing something? When I purchased or rather upgraded to Premium, I don't remember being told access to all this material would be limited at a future date. The software is virtually worthless without it.

If you accessed any of the on-line content then it will be still there in the Local Designs gallery.

The situation you have found yourself in in is a long-running commentary back to Xara.
Xara in its Ts&Cs does explain (in legalese) that all on-line access ends.
Your Update Service Questions Answered

* WHAT HAPPENS AFTER 365 DAYS?

If you don't upgrade again the Update Service expires. Any online services will cease, or fall back to a basic service. For current 365 products this means:

• Web Designer: The free hosting will continue, but you will no longer have guaranteed access to Online Designer and the Online Content Catalog will no longer be accessible†
• Web Designer Premium: The M hosting falls back to the free hosting offer, but you will no longer have guaranteed access to Online Designer and the Online Content Catalog will no longer be accessible†
• Designer Pro: The M hosting falls back to the free hosting offer, but you will no longer have guaranteed access to Online Designer and the Online Content Catalog will no longer be accessible†
• Photo & Graphic Designer: You will no longer have guaranteed access to Online Designer (included with Photo & Graphic Designer since the June 2017 update), and the Online Content Catalog will no longer be accessible†

In addition you will no longer receive feature or content updates. The copy(s) that you have installed at the time of expiry will continue to run indefinitely, BUT if you re-install on a new machine after the Update Service has expired then the new installation will fall back to the version you last purchased.

† HOW DOES THE NEW ONLINE CONTENT CATALOG / LOCAL DESIGNS GALLERY WORK?


In Designer Pro, Web Designer and Photo & Graphic Designer 365 the Designs Gallery only shows content that you have used, whereas the Online Content Catalog contains the full set of designs. When you select any design from the Content Catalog it's downloaded and installed on your computer, and will appear in the Local Designs Gallery, where you can access it in future, even offline. So if you know you're going to want to access a specific category of designs regularly and want offline access, right click on the folder name (nb you must have downloaded at least one design for this folder to appear) in the Local Designs Gallery and select 'Download All'. Or of course you can add a back-up DVD to your order. The DVD includes the full set of templates at the time we launched the 365 version in 2016.

If you have XWDP11, this still links to the On-Line Content Catalogue.
You could ask Xara if you could purchase the Content DVD.

The product is not unusable as you can still access and re-use your prior designs.

Acorn

[Hunter-MX]

Thanks for the reply Acorn. This is what I suspected. It seems fair that if you upgraded to the 365 version you would loose access to the newer content, but of course it isn't fair to lose access to contant you already paid for. As far as usabilty, it is debateable to call a product usable if you can only work with sites you already created but not create new designs.

[iamtheblues]

The situation in which you find yourself is wrong, indefensibly and morally wrong on Magix-Xara's part. Legally? Who can say? But your situation is not unique and certainly you have every right to feel aggrieved. I would imagine that even though Magix-Xara have not thought through the progression of their product particularly well, you can bet your ass that the legal aspect regarding this change to the annual updating system is as well thought out as possible, but that is not to say that that it cannot (or should not) be challenged. This way of conducting business is outrageous and toxic.

[dutchim]

So I made a backup of my Content Catalog back in July. Now I have Designer Pro but I'm thinking the Content Catalog would be about the same for both products.
I can post the link to the ZIP file I uploaded to DropBox... But not sure if I can get in trouble for doing so.

The file is 2.22Gb and contains around 25,000 Files.

What do the moderators think?

[Acorn]

So I made a backup of my Content Catalog back in July. Now I have Designer Pro but I'm thinking the Content Catalog would be about the same for both products.
I can post the link to the ZIP file I uploaded to DropBox... But not sure if I can get in trouble for doing so.
The file is 2.22Gb and contains around 25,000 Files.
What do the moderators think?

I would steer well clear. A time back I suggested if I designed something in XDPX and posted my XAR file to TG and another TGer downloaded it into XWDP and the asset was not in XWDP Content Catalogue then that should be all right; Xara got a bit sniffy. It seemed a bit like me writing a document in MS word, spell-checking it and a user, who only had Notepad, could not be allowed access to my IP.

25,000 files might lead to a bit of a storm.

Acorn