Upgrade Hurts

[Terry]

Wow, this upgrade totally broke my clients site. I saw that this was a major upgrade, but to change basic id & class names. Pretty hostile.
I even checked my email because you did send out a May Newsletter, but nothing since.
On the chance that you did let your (paying) customers know the upgrade was going to cost them time, sorry for the rant.
My in box is empty and time at a premium. The fact that ALL my calendar widgets/page disappeared on this upgrade with no notice is lousy customer service.
Unfortunately used your silly calendar on more than one site. **Bummer**
Not. Happy.

[Rob]

Hi Terry. Thanks for taking the time to write this, and let me start by apologizing on behalf of the whole team here. The fact that the update wasn’t a smooth process for you is a failing on our end.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “hostile,” since I personally wrote much of the messaging we’ve used for upgrade notices, etc and wrote it to be both helpful and direct (so people understand the gravity of the update). We did try to stress actively in pre-launch materials and readme/upgrade notices that this was a huge upgrade…and that users, particularly those with customizations of any kind, are probably going to want to budget some time upon updating to clean those up based on the templating changes. This is standard practice when releasing a major update but the fact that this message wasn’t conveyed strongly enough to you is indeed another failing.

Regarding the update itself, and not sending out a newsletter blast: this was an intentional decision, as we opted to go the “soft launch” route. This was both because we launched leading into a holiday weekend, and – more importantly – because it’d allow us to catch and patch the obvious bugs early. That way, by the time we do announcements and newsletter blasts next week and the masses start updating, there’d already be a more-stable 3.0.2 on the way. In the past we’ve found that the first people to update are usually the more dev-minded, as they’re actually going into the backend of their sites looking for updates / willing to jump into the code to patch inconsistencies / etc. While I would certainly take issue with your claim that this is “lousy customer service,” as it was indeed an effort that in the past has proven more beneficial to the end users in the long run, I’m sorry you felt this way.

All that said, let’s see what we can do to get your widgets/pages sorted. As this is certainly not the behavior everyone is experiencing, it sounds like there may be something else related to your install here…and I’d like to see if we can get that addressed. If clearing your cache and checking the different templates available under Settings -> Events -> Display doesn’t have any impact, please provide a link to your site and we’ll do our best to get this sorted for you.

Thanks again for your patience and I hope this helps shed some light on the process. Now onto getting your issue resolved – I want you to be stoked about 3.0, not bummed, and we’ll do what we can to make that happen.

[Terry]

Thanks for taking the time to reply Rob. The day before a holiday can be a light day, in my case it was. Sorry that I misunderstood the upgrade and will watch for a “more-stable” version to be released before moving to the next client.
In the future I’ll be more careful.
When a plugin causes all widgets to disappear *poof,* to me that is hostile and not customer friendly. It wasn’t the customizations, it was the widgets. The customizations I get.
I spent the time to redo it and will certainly be more careful in the future.
Sorry if my characterizations offended you, the upgrade caused me time I hadn’t anticipated or budgeted – beyond any customizations. Hopefully I was the only one and it was my configuration specific.
The idea that a paying customer was testing your plugin via a “soft release” has me a little hotter than I was before. Not to mention that I took time out of my day to share with you an experience I had with your product. Not for me, but for you. For me, I finished and had a good beer. Please don’t call out my characterizations, I understand a release process and the craziness, this wasn’t a good one for one of your paying customers. As I said, hope it was just my configuration.
Ah well, it’ll all work itself out.
Take Care.

[Rob]

Hey Terry. I really appreciate your follow-up here, and while I saw it when you first replied, I hadn’t had a chance to craft a response of my own until now. I can totally understand your experience and that it’d create some tension – no worries at all about the tone or the note itself. I’ve been in your position before and felt very much the same way 🙂 It sucks to be using a product you’ve come to rely on and find it rendered useless; even moreso when you’ve paid for that product.

You raise a good point on the “soft release” front. We haven’t heard this perspective yet but after hearing it, it’s obvious we definitely need to approach with more caution in the future. Let me apologize here for misleading you on that end…and for delivering what you saw as an unstable product. Though the initial release was going to be the same codebase (and same level of stability) for everyone regardless of whether it was a soft launch or a fanfare-driven one, the intention was definitely not to have people testing the plugin for us. It was and remains – in our eyes and many we’ve talked to – a stable release that was ready to hit the public. It certainly wasn’t 100% bug free, as no first release in a plugin’s fresh lifecycle ever is, but it was ready enough that we wanted to get it out there so we could start patching what bugs we’d missed. We’re hoping in the days and weeks ahead, as you update to the newer builds, the stability of the code will speak for itself on this end.

All that to say: I realize it’s been a few days here, and I want to check in as to how things are going. Can we do anything to help get your site squared away? In the early weeks of the 3.0 lifecycle, we do have a bit more support bandwidth to help resolve problems for customers such as yourself doing the 2.x ->3.0 jump. I want to make sure we get you sorted as best we can.

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