Did see on the WordPress forums a tool to import concrete5 websites!
And so convert your site to WordPress
I believe this tool is for concrete versions 5x and 6x.

I can advise and recommend the new WordPress version because they always have a stable bug fixed version available.

It seems Concrete5 has stopped supporting the 5.6.xx version and for the 5.7 version there are no add-ons or themes available for now.


.

ProBlog will be ready for C5.7.1 marketplace, as will it's RSS importer tool that is freely available. The importer will only be designed to work with ProBlog.

ChadStrat

BUMP

Download for 5.6.3.2
http://www.concrete5.org/download_file/-/view/70913/8497...

It is clearly stated on the homepage that you cannot upgrade to 5.7 from any other version and is only intended for new installations. I am sure that there may be some consideration for building a migration script but considering all of the changes that were made to the core and how that affects themes, blocks, etc., it sounds like a pretty tall order.

>> It is clearly stated on the homepage that you cannot upgrade to 5.7 from any other version and is only intended for new installations.

Oh boy. When corporate customers who are currently using 5.6.x realise they have been orphaned; expect mass defections to other CMS when an upgrade/update is required.

Nothing like shafting your loyal fan base eh?

I think you're making a suggestion here that really isn't the case.

Corporate clients want web systems with stability, predicability, security, minimal re-training and ultimately ones that will match their needs.

All of the corporate clients we work with don't actually care about the version they are running, they simply want the above to apply. The release of 5.7 doesn't suddenly leave 5.6 broken and out of date.

If a client is more worried about whether or not they are running the latest and greatest, they're worrying more about the tool than the end product - that doesn't sound like a corporate client to me.

Migrating a finished website, with a completely working CMS, to another CMS just because there's a new version out is a ridiculous move that no sensible IT manager would make. You'd only make such a move if there were highly compelling reasons, like critical features that can't be achieved with the current version - as it stands, 5.6 can do everything that 5.7 can do, it's really just the editing controls are different.

So calling it a 'shafting' is unnecessary.

@mesuva

>>Migrating a finished website, with a completely working CMS, to another CMS just because there's a new version out is a ridiculous move that no sensible IT manager would make.

Exactly. However, that's what is being forced upon existing customers since 5.7 *is* a different CMS. There is no "migration". New CMS or stay with an obsoleted one which will not be supported, bug/vulnerability fixed or amended in the future.

There is no issue, however, if you are just a CMS factory churning out new builds to new customers but I think you are going to find that a sizable number of those addons you were relying on in the past are not going to be updated to work with 5.7,

I'm inclined to agree. Corporate marketing departments are VERY conservative. They spend weeks and months picking a system and expect it to be their baseline for at least a year, pretty much untouched aside from security fixes and their own updated content. Generally a corporation goes through months or planning before any major update (and often to coincide with a new release, a new product, or in the worst case for some, a totally new marketing department that wants to put their own stamp on things).

Any time a significant product upgrade is on offer, even if the upgrade is 'free', they know from their perspective that it really isn't. They really do carefully look at the feature set that is available with an eye to "what can it do that I can't do now, and do I really need to do that this minute?" The answers usually are "not all that much, though it might be faster" and "not particularly". Given that answer, combined with "oh, and you're likely to lose 3rd-party feature Y which you really rely on", they are absolutely content to stick to what they have and will reexamine the tools when they next go through a re-branding process for the reasons I mentioned above. This is particularly true for B2B (a VERY conservative genre) or small businesses that don't have the resources to make risky infrastructure changes often.

Uptime and consistency is more important than wizz-bang back-end feature that only matters to us techies who build the sites for them. :)

(context: I work at a marketing automation software department now, and supported the marketing department closely at my last job.)

I think the C5 guys have thought an awful lot before taking this major plunge. I really think they are doing a great job and can imagine it's a huge undertaking with lots of stress for future gains.

Let's give 'em a chance to finish this major upgrade and maybe, when they get a chance to breathe, they'l think of a cunning plan to migrate.

Regardless of whether or not they do, I'm really impressed by this product and the community who work with.

>>Let's give 'em a chance to finish this major upgrade and maybe, when they get a chance to breathe, they'l think of a cunning plan to migrate.

I don't think so. Any software developer knows that upgrade/,migration paths need to be thought about from the outset and coded accordingly. I will lay odds that has been thought about, discussed in depth and finally dismissed.

Thanks James. That's great to hear.

@Phallanx:

Imagine you have a house. You love your house, it fits you very well, and it's very well made for its time. Over the years you've done some remodeling: you've added a back patio, painted thoroughly, upgraded the plumbing and even put on a whole new roof. Some of this you did yourself, and some of it you brought contractors in to do, and you didn't even need to move into a hotel while you did it. It got taken care of around you, and while it might have been a little dusty from the work, you're definitely pleased with the results.

Years go by, and you encounter some growing pains. You'd really love a third bedroom and a second bathroom, but the layout just makes that impossible. Maybe you've got a hankering for a basement. What about that tiny backyard? Wouldn't you love it if it were twice the size and had room for a hot tub by that back patio?

Even worse, it turns out that building codes have changed, and what was perfectly adequate for your house when it was built just isn't cutting it any more. Sure, your house is fine, but if it were built today it wouldn't be much to look at, and many people wouldn't even urge you to move into it.

Maybe it's time to move to a new house. A better house. One that's both nicer to look at and better built. You can't just assemble that better house around the bones of the old one. You have to get your stuff and move it over.

5.7 is that better house. It's ready to go. It's just the moving truck that's taking a little longer to order.

@andrew

Really? A permanent structure is like software? Franz told you to write that, didn't he?...lol.

I'm sure there's a lot of whizz-bang new bells and whistles in 5.7, but I'm currently blinded by the nausea of no upgrade route. I guess it's not just "Misery for Miser" but misery for most [of us] :P

If I have to learn a new structure, API and mod a load of addons, it might as well be for something else as it will not help with any of my current CC5 sites. Just a little disappointed, to be honest.

Hah, he is the king of analogies, but no, that one popped into my head while I was thinking about all of the updates that have gone on under the hood in version 7.

In more conventional terms it's like the Final Cut Pro 7 vs. Final Cut Pro X update that Apple released a couple years ago. There was no way to get your projects into Final Cut Pro X at the outset – but now there is, and I imagine it'll be no different with us. We have the XML format, and we use it for content population, we just need to update our sample content generator add-on to export this XML and create a way to import just these parts of content into existing sites. It's certainly something we plan on doing – we just have wanted to get the marketplace up and running first so our developers can have a place to put these 5.7-ready packages.

Really, with namespacing and the PSR-4 code reorganization that has gone into 5.7 an in-place upgrade was going to be impossible, even if we had a massive migration script that could update old layouts to new ones, etc...

@andrew

Ah yes. But content is only one aspect. If the addons were backwards compatible (which is doable with the name spacing) you wouldn't have had to worry somuch about the Market place ;)

Don't worry much about the marketplace not being updating.

I do believe most of the devs will update their addons to 5.7, what is more frightening me is actually thinking they will … since that will result in a awfully big rush on the PRB, which means, a lot more work for us :/ .

I am personally porting all my addons to 5.7 (even the free ones), and I can already tell you that migrating content even for addons might be a bit tricky … that said it is not impossible, and we all wait for the core team to cook something we can use :)

@goutnet

>>I do believe most of the devs will update their addons to 5.7,

Maybe. Assuming that is true, it is still going to be some months before any appreciable number of addons appear. In the meantime the concrete team are going full steam ahead proffering 5.7 as THE choice for new builds.

When the Market Place does go online, I expect everyone will be downloading their favourite addons and themes with the expectation they will work in 5.7 (there is only a minimum version for filtering IIRC).

You addon developers are real gluttons for punishment. Writing addons for concrete5 was hard in comparison with other CMSs and is now harder, incompatible with previous versions and comes with a new improved learning curve to boot!. I only have one addon to speak of but hopefully it will be obsoleted so "No Action Required", The core team could have made this very easy, but have pushed all the new architecture specifics onto you to deal with and you (bizarrely) seem quite happy with that (and all the gratis work verifying in the PRB for the inevitable updates-now have to check in 5.6 and 5.7?).

I always have issues with developments that choose form over function especially if that form has wide scale impact. I regularly have to slap down designs in my own sphere of expertise where programmers have become OCD over a framework and expect others to "fit in or f~@ck off" just so it's "clean" - this is a classic case. I think this little escapade will cost Concrete 2 years of growth.

Well, let's see :

I have been working in the sw industry for almost 20years now, developping just anything from video games to embedded products passing threw websites and databases … If you had been working with Drupal or Wordpress, you would probably not say what you just did …

Drupal for instance had several architecture turn that prevent addons to work from one version to the very next even if they were not major releases, so keeping your addons working on the last bleeding edge (or simply on each small release) *and* not crashing the whole site at each update was simply a nightmare. That was the reason was we moved (far) away from Drupal … Same thing apply to Wordpress. And really, who would be brave enough to say that those CMS even have an architecture?? hell, even pastebin content is more organized than Drupal code! finding your way in that mess is a very long and painful process nobody should have to undergo (it should be forbidden by the Geneva Convention I think ;) )

I have been developing quite a few addons (and will be developing quite a few more), all addons have been just working with every 5.6 update so far, and this is the *first* time I have to port anything to make it work (with other CMS, we almost had to port it/rewrite with every minor releases).

PRB is an essential asset to me, it is just what every CMS should do (IMO), it ensures the user experience is the best possible, and make all crappy-non-working-but-hey-you-paid-it-anyway type of addon disappear, now lending a hand to it is the price for having the user happy … I feel that if we were more reviewers, things could get better, but anyway "somebody has to do it", so at least for now, I am ok with doing it, no big deal (plus it makes me challenge my views every day on some new stuff, that's pretty good, even though sometimes a bit annoying I must confess).

As for the new architecture, we see so many possibilities in the way this is now built, that it makes us almost reluctant to keep working on 5.6, so hell yeah we are willing to go porting our stuff to 5.7 :) (at least, this is the way I feel about it).

So all in all, even though we did work with the majors (WP, Drupal, Joomla, just to name a few), and will have to port things to 5.7, c5 is definitely the best choice for us…

>>I have been working in the sw industry for almost 20years now, developping just anything from video games to embedded products passing threw websites and databases

Then you should be familiar with deprecation. It seems CMS developers are not.

Does your defensive argument really just boil down to C5 is not as crap as the rest? I think you are selling Andrews capabilities short. The only issue with addon compatibility is name-spacing and it is solvable. However, the choice was made not to solve it and that is infuriating..

In my opinion the most important thing is to keep both 5.6 and 5.7 actively developed while the new version is still being ironed out.

If a corporate user is still using 5.6. I think they will be happy with it if we can guarantee that it will get updates and bug fixes even though they might not be able to update their site to 5.7. But if we have to tell them that 5.6 won't be updated that much (only critical bug fixes), then it will much harder sell to keep concrete5 as an viable option.

For example Drupal is still maintaining both 6.x and 7.x versions of the system while 8.x is in the works. And if I understand correctly they will keep 7.x supported until 9.x will eventually come.

I think that's a good way to keep customers happy.

If we develop a site now for example for Drupal 7 or concrete5 5.6 we can do everything with it. And in the future if we want to do a major version change, it will probably happen when we are doing a major revision of the whole website. So a migration both is ok then because the website is getting a complete overhaul.

While it is important to keep going forward, I think it's such as important to keep the current users happy and give the feel that their current systems are as valuable as new systems.

I understand that the developer community in concrete5 is much smaller than in Drupal so keeping both 5.6 and 5.7 active is harder but I think there is a point when you just have to slowdown a bit with the new version. At the moment we are getting releases for 5.7 very often and that's good. But releasing new versions very often makes the product seem very rushed. Especially with the major features like Marketplace support still being in the works.

I agree with this thinking, nicely explained.

There are a few things I think people aren't keeping in mind:

- Concrete5 as a company has committed to _at least_ a year of supporting 5.6.x. Beyond this they may still continue to support it, but they've set a sensible timeframe to initially commit to. When you download concrete5 and when it updates, it comes from their servers, from their hosting, so it's THEIR resources, for what is essentially a free product. Perhaps down the track releases needs to shift to github or elsewhere.

- People are forgetting that although the concrete5 team leads the way in terms of its development and is responsible for creating 'releases', a very large number of fixes and adjustments comes from the wider community, from members such as mlocati, remo, et al.
Concrete5 isn't some commercial, binary product where we're completely at the mercy of the publisher, it's completely open source, so we can all help each other out.

- For quite some time, the 5.6 releases have really all been about bug fixes, with no real dramatic new features, so it's less likely that big bugs are going to arise in the future. Software does reach a level of maturity where it is only very fine tuning left to do.
If some critical security issues arise, I have confidence that either the concrete5 team, or the broader community will treat these seriously. Heck, there could be a 5.6 club, with t-shirts and beer! :-)

- I'm sure concrete5 themselves have a long list of clients on 5.6 that they'll want to keep supporting and won't be moving to 5.7 in the forceable future. So they'll also want to ensure that their clients are happy, with systems that are bug and security issue free. The same goes for the broader community - if people find bugs or security problems, there is a good chance they'll submit pull requests in github, where everyone will benefit.

It could be as simple as a page on the concrete5 site with announcements and advice about what to look out for to continue to support 5.6 sites. The forums will also help with this, there could really just be a 5.6 forum section created for announcements.

C5 will probably have to rethink their strategy for support of pre-5.7 versions because of the clear delineation between the two versions, the consideration that 99.9% of the marketplace products only work (and may never be ported for 5.7) with older versions, and that existing clients will be left vulnerable down the road if support simply comes to a halt (think Windows XP- if you make something really good people are going to want to hold onto it for dear life).

Hindsight being 20/20, making this more defined to users/customers would have been a better approach. the download page should probably have the two versions side by side, rather than 5.7 on top because I think it sends the wrong message.

Maybe also more of an explanation as to why 5.7 is only for new sites (linked off of the "Note: There is currently NO UPGRADE script from 5.6,this is a new version for new sites" verbiage possibly) so that old and new users can understand the parameters a little better.

Perhaps the link:http://www.concrete5.org/about/blog/core-releases/concrete5-5-7-is-... should be listed under the "Download Version 5.7" section IMO.

I will admit I was confused about the lack of marketplace integration and other things on 5.7 until I read this page more thoroughly.

I'm working on some things for concrete5 upgrades and if anyone wants to talk send me an email. Check my profile for my contact info.

That's the trouble with these distributed internet communities.... It's so difficult to get everyone around for a barbie (bbq) and a beer.... I'll have one for all of you just to make do in the absence of a c5 totally random snag and fried onions event.

Coopers anyone?

I've been drinking Coopers all day!
(but that's because I'm in between home-brew batches)

to tell you the honest truth ... I'm looking into developing a new site for a client using Wordpress. I don't want to build it in C5 5.6 today and next year build it over in 5.7... I don't care much for wordpress though... but the client is not going to pay me to build it over..

Please note that the End of Life date has been set for legacy concrete5 (versions earlier than v5.7). Please see the official announcement here:https://www.concrete5.org/about/blog/community-blog/official-end-lif...