We were fortunate to be involved in EE 2.0 early on and have enjoyed being part of the private and public beta testing teams. We feel there is at least an ounce or two of our feedback that’s been implemented in this new version and for the most part, we’re pretty happy with the product.
We’ve launched 3 websites in 2.0.x at this point and have about 35 in production (one project is a large MSM install and there are 7 single-site properties). We are working in 2.0.x every day now and our clients have been pretty understanding about the fact that EE is in Beta and that some features don’t yet work as expected.
For a while we were able to do frequent build updates for these clients and show progress and introduce them to *new* features as we kept their projects moving forward. Learning after a month without updates that there will not be another update until EE is out of Beta is understandable, and at the same time disappointing. I’ll be spending the week letting our clients know that we’ll be living with the bugs for the foreseeable future. It will be worth it in the long run through, as upgrading a live site from 1.6 to 2.0 will be avoided.
Right now most of the bugs we’re working with are things that annoy only the developer on the project, not our clients, and our newly launched sites are performing very well. It would have been nice to implement a build update now though, as we’re been living with many of these bugs daily for well over 2 months and EllisLab has spoiled us with EE 1.6.x in the last couple of years with all of its build updates. I’m just not use to living with EE bugs this long.
Enough of my grumbling.
For those of you who are on the fence, jump into EE 2.0.x today. Start out with what you consider a basic site and give yourself some time to get your brain around the new possibilities and how they can fit into your business systems. It took me nearly a month to get use to the new interface and actually feel like I could think 3 moves ahead during development. Also, if you can, do some content publishing your self, so you get a better idea of what that experience is like in the new EE. We’re preparing a relaunch of our primary business site right now and having to republish a full site in EE 2.0 has really helped me anticipate my clients’ questions (our clients do their own publishing) and adjust our one-on-one publisher training sessions.
Really looking forward to the “soon” er… “near” launch of my new favorite CMS!
Fresh launched sites performing great in 2.0.x
http://www.dougy.org
http://simplycats.org
http://floral-dreams.com