Hi. I got a little too dramatic with this topic’s title. Sorry ‘bout that. I just wanted to share my feelings as a hard workin’ web guy who’s a loyal Kirby fan. When these major versions come out, and I see it coming, I think, hell I need to go back to all my past web projects and upgrade their site. If I don’t I’m a slug (the slimy kind that hate salt, not the ones found in address bars). It can be a good deal of work upgrading complex Kirby builds. Most of the time the client could care less, but security is a factor so I do it whether I’m getting paid or not. Last time it wasn’t so pleasant (v2 to v3). What’s it going to be like this time?
I’m completely focusing on the negative here so let me just say… The Kirby team works hard and I’m always excited to see new features and performance improvements. I just like to fuss and see what other folks think and perhaps gain some insight as to what to expect with v4.
as far as i remember similar questions on the discord channel the answer was something like this: „we have a solid foundation and will keep expanding on that for the next years. there is no roadmap for v4.“
In case you don’t get the newsletter… Kirby 4 incoming!
There’s something great on the horizon
After the release of Kirby 3.9, the voices asking if a next version of Kirby is on the horizon, not surprisingly, became louder and louder. So today, we want to share some important news with you:
Kirby 4 will launch in 2023
We are very excited to announce that we are actively working on Kirby 4 with many great user-facing features and improvements. We want to release a first beta around May and share our progress with you out in the open. Final release of v4 is scheduled for later this summer.
All licenses purchased in 2023 qualify as Kirby 4 licenses
We will treat any license bought on or after 1 Jan 2023 as if you bought it on the day of the v4 release. For older licenses, we will offer very fair upgrade prices as always. No worries if you recently bought a license.
Upgrades
Kirby 4 will be built upon the healthy code base we established for Kirby 3. Upgrades will be comparable to a 3.x release. While we stay on the same architecture, this new version will bring many long-awaited features and is going to move your projects forward. But more on this soon.
The next big step
We are quite excited for Kirby 4, a great next step for our CMS, and we can’t wait to share it with you. We really appreciate your continued support and are looking forward to taking you along for the ride. Stay tuned for teasers and more information about the upcoming beta.
Good news about Kirby 4. Excited to see how the team will round up the feature set.
Not worried about updating personally. If Kirby 3 works for your project, it should continue working for a while, the team will ship critical security updates, and Kirby is not a huge target for hackers like WordPress can be. No need to panic. ^^
The V2 to V3 process was pretty painful, but with good reason. Sometimes you need to make bigger changes to focus on the future. I don’t think V3 to V4 will be as bad. At some point there will be another painful upgrade process as bigger changes are needed again, just not this time
Yeah. And I fully appreciate ditching legacy code in and effort to keep things light. Breaking changes are a side effect of that. In some cases I just have to find peace over the fact that some of my clients will continue to run on Kirby v2 (until they’re ready to completely redo their web project).
From my experience, upgrades from Kirby 2 to Kirby 3 can really differ a lot in complexity. As a basic rule, when they have no custom Panel code, they are pretty easy to update, and most of the work has to be invested in the blueprints. When it comes to custom Panel stuff, that’s another story.
