QA on new releases insufficient

[ielbury]

I love this theme and the support you guys give us!!!! But … frankly, the QA done on the last couple of releases suck! I am finding that every time I do an update, things are breaking and I am spending WAY too much time troubleshooting functional and styling issues.

It seems like the the problems are a combination of issues with dependent Plugins and/or addition of features. I am a newbie WordPress guy so this may be the way it is, and if it is … well … enough said.

The plugin issue is problematic and will always be problematic IMO. The Twitter oAuth plugin for example has broken twice on me since I have been using the Dante theme. Maybe you need to fork it and maintain it in your own code base?

I could live with a continuous release cycle if the site was not continually being broken. In order to make these upgrades a little smoother, maybe a versioning strategy could be employed where there are Beta/Stable releases. Beta releases where new features are tested and Stable releases are longer living with only bug fixes + tested new features??? It would also be nice to know what versions of dependent plugins have been tested with a given version of the theme.

The problem I am having is I have developed site functionality that does not require the new features and I just want to move forward with what I have. Security is paramount for me and from my limited understanding, one of the basic tenants of WordPress security is to stay updated. Unfortunately, in order to maintain security, I keep breaking the site.

I am not happy with the reliability of my site right now!!!

Thanks, Ian

[Mohammad – SUPPORT]

Hi,
Mr Ed Cousins from the support team will assist you very soon .

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi Ian,

I understand the frustration when things don’t work, unfortunately 99% of the issues are down to the plugins.

WooCommerce recently completely changed their code structure, which required a huge amount of template changes to suit that, and provide compatibility for users who weren’t going to be updating. The Twitter oAuth plugin has been incredibly problematic, but unfortunately it’s the only one which seems to be able to do the job for us. We would consider forking it, but then we’d have another thing that we’d need to maintain – when we’d like to focus our time on better things.

Unfortuantely the change of beta/stable releases is rarely an option – given the simplicity to update plugins, most customers will likely update before checking compatibility, and then they are stuck with a plugin that causes issues, with no way to go back without some advanced knowledge to rollback. They aren’t going to be in a position to install a beta build and will want their site working immediately. Hopefully it’s just been a bad few cases in previous months, and things will run smoother from here.

We are working to provide better QA in the future, it’s just been a hectic month. We’re bringing onboard full time support assistants to provide a better support environment.

Hope that explains things, and apologies for the delay in reply. Also thanks for the feedback.

– Ed