We know many of you are keen to find out about our progress with the feature that will enable you to upgrade your sites from v5 to v6. And some customers have been asking why we're building new v6 features and supporting new sites above existing customers and the upgrade path. We'd like to address both issues.
New v6 sites vs the upgrade feature
We'd like to make it clear that allowing new v6 sites to be built is a necessary piece of work on the path to creating the upgrade feature for existing customers, it is not the primary objective. With new v6 sites being created, we had to finalise the technology and the data format - only once we had done this could we enable the upgrade of v5 sites to match the new v6 data. In essence, we couldn't create the upgrade without a stable upgrade target. So it may look like we’re supporting new customers over old, but actually the reverse is true. Solid v6 features are critical as landing points for the existing v5 features for the upgrade process to work.
We designed v6 to support v5 sites, rather than building a new product that had no upgrade path. Again, this is because we do value our existing customer base and are not focused solely on new customers. Others in our industry have chosen differently.
In building v6 we started with a core set of features to allow basic sites to be built (text and fonts, menus, gallery, Snippet Widget and ShopBuilder), so that you could start using the new tools sooner rather than waiting for all features to be developed. With this core set of features, we can produce the upgrade from v5 to v6. We will continue to work throughout the year to introduce new v6 features, then support the upgrade from v5 to v6 of these features. To reiterate, the stable v6 version is a requirement for the upgrade from v5 to v6 to be successful, not because we are focusing on new sites only.
When will the upgrade first be available?
We expect it before the end of June. This is later than suggested in recent communications, and for this we apologise, but it is coming as quickly as we can develop it. Each new release of v6 highlights new unexpected issues, and as we resolve those it affects our planning. Following the Beta release a few weeks ago, we have ironed out the issues and are now fully running on the upgrade path. We've pulled developers off other projects to support this stream, and will continue to bolster the team with new hires.
We appreciate this will be a disappointment for some customers but we are committed to building robust and quality software along with an upgrade process that is easy to use with the initial (but growing) set of supported features. And as mentioned above, we will continue to add new v6 features and then add them into the upgrade process over the next few months.
We'll keep you updated as things progress. Many thanks.