Will there be 4.1 Hotfix? (not just an internal build)

Hi there,

Long weekend is over and I now have to contact my clients to tell them the 4.1 update that I had told them would fix many issues is so buggy that it can't be deployed as it introduces to many show stopping bugs (page order, mysterious old data showing up in place holders, jscript errors on widgets and more). Now I need to know what to tell them. As has been the practice since 4.0, Telerik has released internal builds that were not to be used for production sites as they couldn't be guaranteed that upgrades would work (however even the official release was a terrible upgrade so that's actually pretty funny now). What I need is a 4.1.1 release that doesn't introduce new bugs and can be reliably deployed to a production site with no concerns of future upgrades not working.

If I have to tell my clients they now have to wait for Q2/4.2 release I think I may just close my doors and get a job on a Farm, there'd be less *** to deal with there.

Please let us know what your plans are, I held my breath for 4.1 and am still holding it...

Regards,
Phill

Hi Phill, I can see you are very active here and should have much more support in this forum. There must be other anonymous who can help with putting pressure on Sitefinity!

Sitefinity 4.x is a disasterl!!!
If I was not locked by the economy and purchased licenses (for a high price) I would run screaming away. I've spent my entire Easter holiday for trivial errors. It's just too bad what Sitefinity offers us develop and customers!

Regards,
Peter

Telerik,

Can you give a CTP before your next release? How can u just release the project into the wild, before letting your end users test it...

It happenned with 4.0 SP1 and now with 4.1. No wonder, so many bugs were introduced...

Please let us test your next release, and release it only when you think it's good.

I would love for a (quick) 4.1.1 release. I believe the roadmap calls/called for a 4.1 SP1 in 6 weeks (5 weeks now?), but a month and a half between releases when things are this broken is a hard wait. Fortunately, my particular situation is just us trying to launch a site for the company I work for, so I'm not having to excuse myself to clients.

@Phill: My heart goes out to you buddy. I'd be heading for the farm too in your position.

Phil, i've been in the same boat as you for the last six months.  This is ridiculous.  I'm stuck with bugs that they introduced in Sp1 that are suppose to be fixed in Q1, but after reading the horror stories on here that you guys have gone through i don't want to attempt a 4.1 update. Plus after reading about their api changes, according to my other developers that would break the huge custom module we built for our customer.  They have been waiting to go live for over 2 months now due to delays, broken promises and broken code by sitefinity/telerik. 

I've been at a a lose for words and so frustrated with this product since before RC1.  I wish i could have change our design platform before it was too late.  Now its just keeping our fingers crossed that some sort of fix comes soon so we can finish this project for our client and hope they are somewhat satisfied with this lackluster product.

Myself and my company will never use sitefinity again.

I could not agree more. We're running 3.7SP4 on our public site and it's fine but we really, really, really wanted some of the new features in 4.0. But ever since we first migrate a dev instance of our public site back in January we've been waiting and waiting and waiting. It's going on 4 months now and still SF is a *** to upgrade and many things just don't work like they used to.

We are seriously considering dumping SF entirely but what's holding us back is that it costs just as much money to move to a new platform so I'm praying that the SF dev team comes up with a solid, stable release that upgrades easily without fuss.

Can a Telerik staff member please let us know if a 4.1 hotfix is planned and when the 4.1 SDK is scheduled for release? My company has made an amazing amount time and money contribution to the Sitefinity platform in the past few months based on Telerik's track record of excellence. At this point, I am starting starting to feel like a fool.

Honesty and clear expectation would go a long way right now.

Also a weekly build like 4.0 would be excellent. Are any of those in the cards this week?

@Basem, the problem with a weekly build is that they've never been meant or supported as production builds so that doesn't help the 4.1 fiasco at all. I need to get sites completed and launched and an internal build does absolutely nothing to help that cause (other than wasting resources at Telerik). So as we still wait for someone from Telerik to answer this question (I've also posted it as a support ticket and no answer there yet either) I wait anxiously for an answer and even more anxiously for a stable version of 4.1 that can actually be used for a production site.

Telerik, anyone home?

@Phil
  From a recent ticket I have been told that they are preparing an "Internal Build"...which changed from the previous ticket which said "HotFix"

...So yeah, that's where we're at.  4.1 is almost a total disaster for me, sending the projects over with the tickets hasn't really solved anything except for having me re-create all my content on my own time.

...and the COMMUNITY is debugging the Lists Module...?

Hi guys,

This week, we are going to release an internal build. Next time we are doing a release - it will be a hotfix. That said, we will be ready in about two weeks, or mid of May. We need some more time to gather the critical problems that need to be addressed with an official release. 

@Georgi, You say "this week" you're going to release an internal build. To me the week ends on Friday (April 29th) so can you confirm if an internal build is going to be released today? Can you also confirm what 4.1 bugs are being addressed in this build?

Regards,
Phill

Hey everyone, regarding the internal build here is the message that was posted internally:

The Internal Build for this week will be released on Monday and not today.
We found two important regression problems with the build.

That's all the information I have.  The evangelist in me wants to re-word it as "early next week", but I'll leave it as is.  It looks like the team is aiming for a Monday release though.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Thanks a lot Gabe! I continue to struggle to understand why nobody at Telerik thinks that this might be important information to the community and that we have to chase you down to get this type of info communicated. We've heard Vassil go on about how he wants to improve things, communication one of those things and yet still communication is terrible. 

Again, thank you Gabe for providing us with this info.

Cheers,
Phill

On one of my recent support tickets I was told this:

Hello Matthew,
We are working to provide solutions on all your issues, fixes in our code are going to be provided regularly  through internal builds each Friday. We are planning an official version with hot fixes for all this kinds of upgrade problems some time next month, i will let you know additionally for the exact date - since we are going to plan this tomorrow.

For those who were waiting, the latest build has been released:

http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/sitefinity-4-0-internal-releases-for-developers-only.aspx#1627852

Pay attention to the big disclaimer on this release (and all internal build releases).  These builds aren't intended for production web sites.  Rather these builds give developers a chance to test our latest code in a test environment.

As always, feedback is welcome.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Gabe,

Any hope of those of us trying to take a site live? Been circling around a live date since 4.0 SP1, still can't manage to get there. Surely we don't have to wait weeks and weeks (or months) when things are this buggy?

Thanks,
Z

ZK, I feel your pain, but I'm not going to lead you down a worse path.  The not for production disclaimer is our official position on the internal builds.  

We're trying to get the official SP released ASAP.  These internal builds help with this, because it allows the wider community to test our fixes.  However, until that day comes the internal builds are intended purely for testing.

In the meantime, I would be interested to hear how the internal build works with a test version of your web site.  

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

@Gabe
  So are you saying that if I update to the internal to continue development...updating from there to the official SP isnt supported?

Correct.

Here is the disclaimer from Georgi's post:

NOTE: THIS IS A DEVELOPERS VERSION ONLY, BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY FOR YOUR DATABASE WILL NOT BE SUPPORTED WITH FUTURE VERSIONS. PLEASE DON'T UPGRADE YOUR PRODUCTION OR DEVELOPMENT WEBSITE WITH THIS RELEASE. USE ONLY TO TEST THE LATEST FUNCTIONALITY AND REMOVE ROADBLOCKING BUGS SO THAT YOU CAN CONTINUE WRITING YOUR CODE. THUS IT IS SUITABLE FOR DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Oh, well...dammit

I don't like giving this answer, but it's the right answer to give.

Many of you are already experiencing the pain of using a release that was not sufficiently tested.  None of us are eager to repeat that mistake again.

We'll have an official SP/Hotfix (whatever you want to call it) when we feel confident about the release.  I'll try to pin the team down on some estimates.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Will you guys at least accept our 4.0 projects to test with doing this upgrade?

@Steve - I'm sure the team would be open to using your project to test.  Have you already sent it?  If not, open a support ticket and supply your project.

@Everyone - The team is aiming to deliver the SP late next week.  However, the official planned date is May 18th.  As already mentioned, they are working hard to get it released ASAP.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

@Gabe, thanks for the update. This of course is the issue I've always had with the internal updates and now with the track record set by Telerik w/ the buggy 4.1 release. We can test all we want with this internal build, but if it's not a supported build what's the point, further more there's a really good chance that 4.2 (or 4.1 SP1) will introduce even more new bugs so we'd have to do our testing all over again. So really, to download this internal build, go through the process of upgrading is just a waste of time. Yes we may find that some of the 4.1 bugs are fixed but if they get broken again in the we've just gone in a big circle. 

I think it's pretty obvious that the internal testing for Sitefinity is lacking, not for lack of effort but I think more because you just don't have all the scenarios available that your customer base is coming up with. I think you need to not worry about an internal build that can't be used, but getting a SP1 pre-release to us asap, and keep things attainable, don't try to fit in more than you can. Freeze the code, give it out to your customers to test for a week and if all is ok release as a stable build. I'm already concerned that the next SP is going to try to accomplish too much and is going to introduce new issues.

Baby steps... get your process dialed in and get our trust back!

Just my 2 cents...
Phill

@Phil - I'll relay your comments to the team.  Beyond that, it's the "baby steps" comment that resounds the most with me.  There are only so many changes that are possible to implement within a couple of weeks.  For now, we just need to address the critical 4.1 issues customers are confronting.  This internal build has several of those fixes.  By May 18th (latest), these fixes will be accessible in an official capacity.  Thanks, as always, for your feedback.

Gabe Sumner
Telerik | Sitefinity CMS

Just wanted to add a whole-hearted "ditto" to Phill's post. While I can't imagine it's much fun from a supportability standpoint, baby-step releases occurring more often would be a real boost. When a highly needed and much anticipated release comes out with problems, knowing that fixes are 6 weeks away only makes it that much harder to swallow. Maybe 2 or even 3 SPs are in order between major releases right now?

Hi There,

I'll add my voice to Phill and ZK. Forget to add more features, just get 4.1 stable and into a production viable product.

Regards,
Jean Erasmus

Baby steps ....

first success for handling permissions and roles is that as long as a page is not for anonymous access, it is also not visible in the menu. - Like in release 3.7 ! Success.

But:

If you make a content block with permission for only administrators within a public page, it is also visible, if users are logged out and access is anonmyous. - No change - error remains .....

Therefore a large step for sitefinity - but  a small baby step for the community.

Robert

Baby steps

I have to hand over a project to a client May 15th and have to tell him that if he make a page group he has to be carful because he wont be able to change it.

A enduser does not care about the new 4.0 engine under the hood if you have to tell them that they can only roll down the window half way or the run into troubles.

------------------

About internal buils. To me they are an absolute waste too. If you can not use them as hot fixes then whats the use? We have been testing SF on the way all the times reporting bugs and improvment requests all allong since January. There were times I tought I file an application as professional beta tester to Telerik.

Sometimes there is to much focus on the engine and not enough on the windows and the simple guy driving the car (to stay with my car anology).

-------------
Looking very much forward to the Hotfix. Because some simple stuff realy make you look bad if you tell the client that SF 4 is the best CMS ever with just some common stuff not working.

-----------

Markus

As they say no news is bad news, so I'd rather have a non supported internal build that I can test myself, rather that wait until the supported version.  I'm able to communicate with my clients the status of the issues that concern the project proggress, and trust me they do prefer to get some timely info rather than wonder what's going on. 
Robert, I  was also experiencing exactly the same issues with some adult content in my Blogs that I wanted hidden for certain users. I installed the internal build form 2 May on my test machine and voila! - it worked. Only had to restart the application pool in IIS once after setting the permissions.

As I'm going through this discussion, I think Telerik should consider establishing some regular hotfix release schedule. The main CMS we are using along with Sitefinity 3.7 is Kentico CMS and they, for example, provide 7-day bug fixing guarantee that works extremely well for us. What are your thoughts?

I fully agree with Jean.

Can you please produce a version that you can actually use or give back 3.7.

If there are problems with navigation widgets (order, sibling pages in vertical menu and so on….)  if there are missing features that where so well done in sitefinity 3.7, if most of core functionalities of basic CMS are not working,  How can you expect that now suddenly you can start new projects with this half-done product.

 Give back possibility to purchase 3.7 licenses until next year so we can at least get new clients and start delivering project properly.

@Telerik

Is the 18th still the target date? Earlier is better but I need to know if a of now the 18th still looks good for the 4.1 SP1

Markus

Hello Markus and all,

Service Pack which will cover the critical upgrade problems is planned until the end of this week because of popular request. Please follow the announcement on our web site and forum for more details.

Kind regards,
Kalina
the Telerik team

Kalina,

you are kidding? What means "popular request" .... we are waiting since months for the solution! - And where at your website or forum can we find more details? Please make it clear that we can understand what you mean.

Robert

Hi Robert,

I am sorry for not being extensive enough in my previous reply.

The Release will be announced:

• In sections News (RSS), Announcements,and Release Notes (RSS) on our web site
• In our Forum General Discussions (RSS)

We will be using other channels as well such as Twitter and Facebook.
I hope this is of help. Let me know if you have other questions.

Greetings,

Kalina

the Telerik team

We gave up last week and decided to code our site from scratch ourselves. I wasted the better part of a month's programmer time goofing around with Sitefinity 4.0 with it's bugs, then SP1, all the while hoping that 4.1 would fix the situation. They our 4.1 upgrade took a site working in 4.0 and broke it. So, we tried to start from scratch with a 4.1 install. More issues there. Couldn't put the pages in the order we wanted. Templates randomly stopped working and had to be reapplied. 

Even if we could have gotten it "working", I would never have had the confidence to run our production site with it and ever install any sort of upgrade. I couldn't wait six weeks each time for the next supposed "savior" build that had it's own new bugs.

Like I said, a whole month down the drain. We're about a week in to writing the site ourselves and have made lots of actual progress. I just submitted a support ticket requesting a refund for our 4.0 license that was never and will never be used. I hope for the Sitefinity team's sake that they can stabilize this product, as it does have lots of nice features. I just couldn't wait any longer.

@Kalina

I understand Roberts frustration. I have postponed a project from January till April because of missing features.

After waiting 4 month we get a CMS that some would call a bannana CMS. As you know bananas a picked when green and will be riping on the way to the client. Me for one shure hope the SP1 will turn the bannan finaly yellow.

I am usually behind Telerik all the way, but calling an hotfix that makes a CMS in its core funtions (reordering pages, renaming page groups, workflow issues) work, beeing called a 'popular request' simply feels like gettins slapped in the face with a wet towel.

I simply hope the SP1 will be on time and introducing more features then bugs.

At the moment the CMS 4.1 out of the box can not be sold, shown to clients. Warnings that are not needed, errors that force me to end a IE with the task manager are just some issues.

Dear Kalina
At the moment Teleriks Sitefinity does not have to many bonus points with us - so you might think twice about what you write.

Markus

@Markus,

thanx for sharing bad feelings of all developers. -  I have been a fan of Telerik since years and love their ASP.NET AJAX rad tools. The hope was that Sitefinity could be an umbrella to carry all Telerik components as excellent user controls. - So, five stars for "mother" Telerik but hope that management of "daughter" Sitefinity is fired soon and replaced because of that poor implementation beyond 3.7 - since half a year with no view of satisfying real customers needs.

Robert

@Robert

Sitefinity 3.7 was simply the only CMS I could recomend to users. Afordable, fast, very easy to use.

Since 3.7 no longer exists I have all my money on 4.x. There are no other CMS around that I like better then 4.3.

And I have big faith that telerik get SF right. I just wish that the managment understands at what point they are now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISti1x8ecxM&feature=related

start watching at 2.20

Markus

I think it was just a translation issue, don't think she literally meant they reluctantly decided to release it because we voted on a PITS issue or something :)

(I've ran into an issue like this before)