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John Montgomery A monthly release cycle seems like huge overkill, imho. I feel a quarterly release cycle seems to be a sensible balance, with security fixes/bug fixes as warranted. I really don’t think a vast number of users are clamoring for frequent updates (though I do understand the perspective of the post here about Gutenberg being out of sync). And when you add plugin updates into the mix it becomes a non-stop update management time waste. It seems to me that a large percentage of users break down into two groups. The first being those that read this site — developers and the like. From my perspective as a dev and a business owner, I wish to keep my sites stable and working and don’t need more frequent updates. I need stable updates with enhancements…but I’m not itching to add the next “shiny feature”. Robustness and keeping the revenue coming in is what is important to me. I don’t want to spend more time chasing updates (though I understand I can ignore them, as I have with 5.0 at this point). The second being the more casual and less web-dev savvy end user. I manage several sites for people or artists who are business owners and not web programmers. They do appreciate new functionality, but are often confused by updates and have had experiences where installing updates does break compatibility with plugins, etc. They don’t seem to be clamoring for more frequent updates either In my experience, these users also want a stable experience and don’t need more “admin” tasks to deal with. (lets not argue about whether these people make good or bad admins — the fact is there are thousands of these types of end users out there using WordPress). I know this is anecdotal, but I don’t see either of these groups clamoring for more frequent releases. The idea of more frequent updates seems like a solution in search of a problem to me. For WordPress, the customer/client is the end user — not the developers — and that’s what and for whom decisions should be based upon. The three main benefits listed in this article don’t really change things or improve things all that much for an end user.
John Montgomery
A monthly release cycle seems like huge overkill, imho. I feel a quarterly release cycle seems to be a sensible balance, with security fixes/bug fixes as warranted. I really don’t think a vast number of users are clamoring for frequent updates (though I do understand the perspective of the post here about Gutenberg being out of sync). And when you add plugin updates into the mix it becomes a non-stop update management time waste.
It seems to me that a large percentage of users break down into two groups.
The first being those that read this site — developers and the like. From my perspective as a dev and a business owner, I wish to keep my sites stable and working and don’t need more frequent updates. I need stable updates with enhancements…but I’m not itching to add the next “shiny feature”. Robustness and keeping the revenue coming in is what is important to me. I don’t want to spend more time chasing updates (though I understand I can ignore them, as I have with 5.0 at this point).
The second being the more casual and less web-dev savvy end user. I manage several sites for people or artists who are business owners and not web programmers. They do appreciate new functionality, but are often confused by updates and have had experiences where installing updates does break compatibility with plugins, etc. They don’t seem to be clamoring for more frequent updates either In my experience, these users also want a stable experience and don’t need more “admin” tasks to deal with. (lets not argue about whether these people make good or bad admins — the fact is there are thousands of these types of end users out there using WordPress).
I know this is anecdotal, but I don’t see either of these groups clamoring for more frequent releases. The idea of more frequent updates seems like a solution in search of a problem to me. For WordPress, the customer/client is the end user — not the developers — and that’s what and for whom decisions should be based upon. The three main benefits listed in this article don’t really change things or improve things all that much for an end user.
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