Kirby 3 is here! – FAQs and more …

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Hey everyone,

after more than two years of development we finally launched Kirby 3 last Tuesday :tada:

We instantly drowned in support requests of all kinds and while @texnixe, @lukasbestle and @distantnative worked very hard to help you out here in the forum, I spent most of my time answering license questions via email. There’s still a backlog and we are very sorry for any delays!

Here’s a follow-up post with a lot of answers to your must urgent questions from the last days.

v3

The new version is a huge step forward and has been built in close collaboration with more than 450 supporters from the Kirby Next project. (another follow-up post about the project will be published a bit later) It has been an amazing time and this new version implements tons of feature requests that we received for v2 and adds so many new opportunities to build exciting new projects with Kirby. We are really looking forward to the coming months and are eager to see what you will build and how you like it.

What’s new?

If you want to learn what’s new, we have a summary for you:
https://getkirby.com/v3

Documentation

You can find the docs for v3 here: https://getkirby.com/docs. Make sure to check out our brand new and super detailed reference (formerly known as cheatsheet) https://getkirby.com/docs/reference. We also updated all matching cookbook articles for v3: https://getkirby.com/docs/cookbook

Download & Source Code

You can download the v3 Starterkit here: https://download.getkirby.com The source code for v3 is still open on Github: https://github.com/getkirby That’s where you can also find the new Plainkit: https://github.com/getkirby/plainkit and the source code of the new Kirby website: https://github.com/getkirby/getkirby.com

Issues

Issues can be reported on Github as well in the Kirby repository: https://github.com/getkirby/kirby/issues

Ideas and feature requests

Please post ideas and feature requests in our new ideas repository to keep them separated from our bug tracker: https://github.com/getkirby/ideas/issues

Plugins

@texnixe has taken over the plugin directory on Github: https://getkirby-plugins.com and our supporters already built a great bunch of new plugins, which are already available there.

Themes

The first set of v3 themes are also available on https://getkirby-themes.com. Make sure to check them out.

Licenses

Launch sale

We currently offer a launch discount. You can get Kirby 3 for € 89 / $ 105 instead of the new regular price (€ 99 € / $115) This sale will end on January 29th.

Personal licenses

Many of you have already seen that there’s just one license for v3. We know that this is a tough step, but we had to remove the personal license. We discussed this for a very long time with our supporters, with the team and with family and friends. The personal license in v2 was intended for hobbyist projects only. We clearly stated on the v2 website that it is not valid for any form of a commercial project. This includes professional portfolio sites, client projects, sites that advertise a product, company or business in any way etc. This model has been based on trust. We didn’t have a way to check or enforce this. It turned out that it got abused way more than we had expected, which was very disappointing. But worse than that it clearly hurt us as a team financially. We have been building Kirby for the last seven years in a very open and transparent way and always tried to find a good balance between fairness and sustainability. This model just isn’t sustainable and it’s not fair for those of you who bought a professional license.

We know that this step will make Kirby unattractive for actual hobby projects that don’t have any form of budget and this is something we really regret. But in return students, educational projects, open-source projects or non-profit organizations can now apply for a big discount.

If you bought your personal license after October 2017 and you already have a hobby project up and running you can write us to still get an upgrade: support@getkirby.com Please send us a link to your project.

For those who bought a personal license before October 2017 we offer a full upgrade to v3 for 79 €. Please login to with your email address and order ID: https://licenses.getkirby.com

Pro licenses

All v2 pro license owners who bought a license after October 2017 will get a free v3 license as promised. Login here to get your free license: https://licenses.getkirby.com

For those with older v2 pro licenses or v1 licenses, please login to https://licenses.getkirby.com as well to get a massive discount on upgrades.

You don’t need to upgrade if you don’t want to

Keep in mind that your v2 license is your v2 license. We don’t force you to upgrade. We will provide security patches for v2 for one more year (see below). It’s your decision if you move forward with us and you can always do the upgrade later.

Kirby Next Supporters

We sent out newsletters to all our supporters to let you know how to get your supporter licenses. If you didn’t receive those newsletters, please login here: https://licenses.getkirby.com

v2

How to upgrade to v3?

For those of you who want to upgrade their v2 installations, please have a look at our upgrade guide: https://getkirby.com/docs/cookbook/migration/sites

Documentation

The documentation for v2 can now be found here: https://getkirby.com/docs/archive

Broken Links

We couldn’t keep all the links from the v2 website and docs, but we are currently trying to fix more of them or to provide better redirects and a more helpful error page. As a temporary fix you can replace https://getkirby.com in old links with https://k2.getkirby.com to fix most of the links.

Source Code

We moved all repositories into a new organisation: https://github.com/getkirby-v2

If you use Git Submodules, please make sure to update the repository URLs.

Licenses

Quite a few of you got in contact because they are still working on a v2 project and cannot upgrade at the moment. We will offer v2 temporary licenses starting either later today or tomorrow. I will add a link to the FAQs on https://getkirby.com/buy and also announce it on Twitter as soon as they are available again.

The prices for those licenses will be the same as for v2 and will only be valid for v2 installations. You can upgrade them later to v3 for the difference to the v3 price.

Support & Security patches

We will provide security releases for v2 at least until 31. December 2019. If you need extended support for your projects afterward please get in contact. support@getkirby.com

Further questions?

We are always here to help you out with additional questions!

Thank you for being such a fantastic community over all those years!
Bastian

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I totally agree with you on the license.
My site is still running on v2 but the moment came I would take a license v3!
On the other hand, (for me and the other designers who create themes), we do not have to buy a license for the demo themes online? It stays like the v1/v2?

Thank you very much to all the team! :heart:

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Yes, that’s true. If you run a theme or plugin demo you don’t need a license.

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Uhm, I met Kirby only 1 month ago, and I fell in love immediately…
for the versatility the power, the no database core… and mostly… the price!
Around 20€ for a personal site for me was awesome!
I appreciated the help of @texnixe and other guys, very kindly, I really like interacting here in the forum
I’ve worked hardly developing my personal website until wednesday, when I’ve see Kirby 3, and with great amazement I’ve discovered isn’t possible to buy a licence for kirby 2 now!
this is a big mistake in my honest opinion.
Remove a personal licence because there is someone that is going to be dishonest… punish one to educate many?
I know you’ve talked a lot of time around this thing … and I guess you have so many reasons … but honestly it’s very frustrating for me …

I thought I had found a treasure, maybe now isn’t, I’ve worked for nothing?

I hope you will find a solution for those people like me who just want a personal site

Best regards

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That’s not the point. It’s not about punishing anyone. It is about running a business sustainably, healthy: We want Kirby to stay. Not to vanish in a year or two because we cannot sustain it. This does not only apply to the development but also to the support. You mentioned the great support by @texnixe yourself - that’s not her hobby (even though a lot of dedication certainly goes into it), but @bastianallgeier wants to pay for her hard work. Support was never intended for the K2 personal license. But falsely we did give it. It simply isn’t sustainable to provide it for a once-in-a-lifetime fee of barely 20 euros. But we want to give great support, we want to be able to develop Kirby (and v3 shows how we can continue taking it to new levels), we want to be around for much longer. That’s why we had to make this decision.

As Bastian said:

We know that this step will make Kirby unattractive for actual hobby projects that don’t have any form of budget and this is something we really regret. But in return students, educational projects, open-source projects or non-profit organizations can now apply for a big discount.

And trust me we aren’t doing this with a big cheer, but knowing that we need to do this to keep Kirby healthy. You said

I thought I had found a treasure, maybe now isn’t

And maybe that already speaks the truth: a product that great for almost no money, that’s just too good to be true. We mistakenly thought we still could in v2, we learned and had to change course for v3.

There are always special cases - we have named students, educational projects, open-source projects or non-profit organizations, but for sure there are others as worthy that those terms do not cover. For those, please get in touch directly (best is to email to support@getkirby.com) and we will try to find a solution that works for everyone.

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thanks @distantnative, nice to meet you,
I’m so sorry, I was misleading in my latest post, I think Kirby 3 is very powerful, an enormeus and awesome work, I can only congratulate those who participated in the developments!
I’m a developer too, I know what it means to work the entire software life cycle, and offer support that meets expectations, support that needs to be paid.
I’m frustrating because it seem that I’ve having worked for nothing… or at least, for what I had not foreseen, I am a small, simple employee.

I had so much enthusiasm and I just wanted a personal website to motivate myself, a way out of the daily stress of my work, I worked seriously night and day in the last twenty days, holiday complicit, and now I’m so sorry but to see quintupled the price disaffects me a lot.
it’s just my emotional thought.
I already write at support mail this morning, I would also like to help, without compensation only for passion, here on the forum

bless

1 Like