All of us working on ManageWP Orion have only one goal: To create the ultimate productivity tool for WordPress professionals, packed with groundbreaking tech. We believe we succeeded in many ways, and we can’t wait to show you this on October 26th.
For those of you who have already been testing or following Orion and expected to purchase Orion on the 26th as a complete solution – we apologize for disappointing you. Orion is a huge project; we decided to launch it in what we call a mirror mode, and gradually add the remaining features over the next couple of months until it fully replaces the current ManageWP dashboard.
What’s in Store on October 26th
On October 26th, all ManageWP users will gain access to the Orion dashboard. You will be able to use the Orion dashboard and everything on it, including our brand new backup system, until the full version of Orion replaces the current ManageWP dashboard. This will most likely happen by the end of February 2016.
The Orion dashboard launches with essential functionality, with gradual introduction of new tools. Clone, performance & security scans are on a top priority. A more detailed roadmap will be published on October 26th.
Tell Me More About My Orion Dashboard
All current and future Trial, Standard, Professional and Business users will get their own Orion dashboard. It’s powerful and easy to use; when you try it, you will fall in love.
The websites on your ManageWP dashboard will be automatically mirrored in Orion. Choose the dashboard you prefer, or use them both – the choice is yours!
If you need a tool that is not yet available on Orion, simply switch to your old ManageWP dashboard. Keep an eye on our blog to keep tabs on new tools as they’re introduced into Orion.
The new, robust Orion backup, which includes secure off-site storage for your backups, will be fully available to all Professional and Business users. Trial and Standard users will be able to enable backup on one site.
Orion will come at no extra cost to you.
The final release will feature a pricing model that will allow you to mix different plans on a single account, so you could have, for example, 10 websites on Professional, and 3 on Business. We will also allow unlimited sites at the “free” service level, enabling you to keep all your websites in one place, using premium tools for websites that matter the most. We’re also toying with the idea of introducing new plans, but more on that in the future dev diaries.
How Can I Try Orion?
If you’re already a ManageWP user (except if you’re on the Free plan), your Orion dashboard will be waiting for you on the 26th as a button on your current ManageWP dashboard.
If you’re already a beta tester, you can happily keep using that account until Orion is available to replace the current ManageWP dashboard.
If none of the above apply, simply sign up for a 14-day Trial to access your Orion dashboard.
What you need to know
- All ManageWP customers will be able to access the Orion dashboard and the new awesome backup. All websites you have in your ManageWP account will be automatically transferred to your Orion dashboard.
- You will be able to seamlessly switch between the dashboards with a click of the button in the dashboard.
- Orion will start with essential features, with all ManageWP features mirrored until February.
- You can add and remove websites only on the ManageWP dashboard. But the change will be automatically mirrored in Orion.
Multisites will not be mirrored in Orion. Multisite support is not a priority for Orion at this stage of development.
Quick update: We have decided to support multisite installations. For more information, check out this article.- ManageWP backups and Orion backups are completely different and you can use them both at the same time. Orion backups need to be enabled on each site. The Orion backup is something we are very proud of – incremental backup with insanely low resource usage, and works even on the cheapest shared hosts. Oh, it also comes with free off-site secure storage.
- You will not be charged extra for Orion upgrade, as a matter of fact you will get many new stuff as a free upgrade once Orion replaces ManageWP in February. Some new stuff like Orion backups will have a price tag attached to it, but less than what similar solutions on the market cost (for example VaultPress).
- We will have more robust pricing which will allows plans to be mixed in one account.We will have a ‘free’ service-level for unlimited sited so you can finally keep all your websites under one umbrella and purchase premium feature for the most important ones only.
- It would be awesome if you shared your thoughts on Orion with us. So please spam that feedback button.
As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment below and I’ll be happy to answer.
Let the good times roll!
UPDATE: Orion is live! Check out the Dev Diary #9 announcement.
tech
We can’t seem to install our premium themes and plugins from our dropbox account. Developer Update #7 indicated we could do that. Now all we see is either the WordPress repo or “upload zip” as an option. Also backups are disconnected from Dropbox. We read the logic behind this and get it, but it doesn’t make us happy about it. So far, the Orion update looks prettier, but it seems like a downgrade. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Nemanja Aleksic
You’ll have both features by the end of February. We’ll soon publish more details on our blog 🙂
ryan
I do not see the button to change over the dashboard.
skarjune
Likewise, looks like it’s back to BETA…
skarjune
Ah, it’s live. Just click the opposing arrows in the upper right corner.
http://managewp.com/developer-diary-9-managewp-orion-is-out
matt
Will there be any possibility to use the new backup system but store the data on our own Amazon account? I’m a bit leery about trusting 100% of our data to an external vendor.
Nemanja Aleksic
In the long run it’s definitely a good move for us since we won’t have to pay Amazon for the storage and transfer, but it won’t be in the next couple of months, as it’s not as simple as changing the credentials.
We did implement several security measures on top of our regular ones, so even if Amazon gets hacked, the intruders will not be able to use the files, but we’ll go into more details in one of the future dev diaries.
matt
Thanks Nemanja
Nemanja Aleksic
We’ve postponed the release by 24h; Additional tests are being performed to make sure all the tools and the infrastructure will handle the user spike. We’ve taken Orion beta into maintenance mode – when it comes back online, it will be publicly available!
Keep an eye on our twitter from more details.
alexr
So.. Its Monday 26th! 🙂 Is there some speacil dance move I have to do in order to see new Dashboard? Or probably I overlooked something? 🙂
skarjune
Likewise, details please: Where is Orion???
abhijat.saraswat
Looking forward to seeing when this goes live :).
Nemanja Aleksic
It’s alive. ALIIIIVE! 🙂
philby
I hope you guys press the big red «DEPLOY ORION» button any minute now – can’t wait to see it and test the fabled backup (and, hopefully, «make staging copy») function in my ManageWP Dashboard.
elijah
I agree…my finger is numb from hitting refresh! Where’s Orion?
FYI – I am the only one noticed when replying to a comment, the “Sign me up for the newsletter” box is checked? No biggie except for the text is in white and barely visible…seems like slick way for ManageWP to hit up my inbox. Hmm…maybe the Orion update notification will come through! (he leaves box checked..)
Nemanja Aleksic
I apologize for the delay, we decided to ran additional tests and this pushed the release back by 24h. Orion is now live 🙂
michal.dybczak
Without multisite support your new update is useless to me. You cannot count for users to change their installations from multisite to singulars sites just because you think in your new system it would be redundant. People who have multiste need and use that tool and if you take that possibility back, it will be easier to look for another tool that supports multisites then changing the whole structure of sites to comply with new tool.
info
Have to agree with Michal… The update is kind of useless.
We need multisite support… just acceptered to maintain client websites that uses multisite, only accepted the client because this is possible in managewp…
Dont remove multisite support. Dont want to switch away from managewp again, because i cannot have multisites (rarely i work with multisites, but it happens)..
Have ~70 sites on my accounts… dont want to move away!
Nemanja Aleksic
Good news! Multisite will be supported by Orion. Check out the article below for more info:
http://managewp.com/orion-multisite-support-various-new-features
Thank you for giving us your opinion on the multisite matter!
Jurgen de Jong
Really loving the latest version of the Beta. The UI looks even more better than it already did. A Beta user from the start and still more and more convinced to move all my websites from infiniteWP to ManageWP Orion
Chris Mundy
Looking forward to trying it out! I was an early adopter when it first released and it has been one the key pieces in seamlessly looking after our client sites. Thank you for such a great product.
Nemanja Aleksic
Hi Chris,
It’s awesome to see you’ve also been in the original ManageWP beta, and stuck with us for the past four years.
On behalf of our team I thank you for your continuing support, and I hope we’ll keep supporting your business in the years to come.
ttownsend
If you manage multiple WP sites and you need the BEST Tool “HANDS DOWN” it’s ORION. I have been Beta Testing it for some time and I can tell you that the team at MWP have listened to users and made huge strides in this product. If you ever used MWP in the past and moved to another competitors platform you will “KICK YOURSELF” if you don’t give Orion a test drive. Just some pure awesomeness from this team.
Madeira Tech
OMG – If you manage any WordPress sites – you want this tool! I’ve been beta testing this and I can’t wait until it’s completed!
Manage all of your sites from one convenient dashboard, keep track of your activities on your clients’ behalf and easily generate beautiful, custom Client Reports.
There’s more, but you should take a look yourself!
Alec Kinnear
Hi Nemanja,
Thanks for the (mostly) good news. The gradual transition sounds great.
You are undervaluing WordPress multisite. With multisite, it’s easy to do network wide logins for membership style sites. This is very important to some of our clients. Like Surbma, multisite support is very important to Foliovision and one of the reasons we entrusted ManageWP with our site management. Please reconsider withdrawing full support for multisite.
Nemanja Aleksic
Hi Alec,
I actually agree that multisite is great – I might have come off a bit too harsh. It’s just that too many people thought of it (and still do) as a silver bullet. I’ve even seen people set up a multisite with just one site, just because they heard it’s better. But applied properly, it’s a great platform.
The biggest problem we have with multisite support is that it’s a huge task to fully support it. We’re basically talking about building an alternative backup and clone tool right now, and things will get even more complicated when we release the security tools and other goodies we have in store.
The decision to postpone multisite support is not something we’ve made lightly, but if we waited to release Orion after all the tools we want to were implemented, you’d be looking at Orion in 2018, not next week.
Alec Kinnear
Hi Nemanja,
Thanks for your quick and detailed reply.
Believe it or not we don’t actually use the backup tools at all (we have our own server side tools). What we love about ManageWP are the management, monitoring and update tools. We do like the idea of clone but could easily live without clone for multisite.
I don’t mind a more limited feature set for multisite but what is supported should be fully supported (i.e. plugin updates and WordPress updates).
We love ManageWP but if there won’t be multisite support we’ll have to look carefully for another tool to help us keep the weeds out of our WordPress sites (I don’t know how any agency gets by without ManageWP and/or centralised management).
Thanks!
Nemanja Aleksic
Hey Alec,
You did it! We changed our stance on multisites and decided to support multisites in Orion:
http://managewp.com/orion-multisite-support-various-new-features
Thanks for being one of the people who cared enough to give us feedback.
jeff
Will Orion back up to your data servers or can we backup to S3 using Orion?
Nemanja Aleksic
It will store backups on our servers (technically, it’s Amazon’s S3 storage). We’re considering introducing custom S3 storage down the line, but that’s still just an idea.
jjsararas
The idea to mirror sites on both systems initially is really cool and makes me breathe a sigh of relief. While I’m excited about Orion, I’m a bit nervous about how my workflow will change, ie, whether I will be able to accomplish certain things I do in ManageWP in the new Orion interface. I’ve spent years mastering ManageWP and I use some of it’s nuanced features that I have a feeling not a lot of others do (Worker Support tab? Anyone? Bueller?) Having it mirrored will allow me to jump back and forth and practice. I echo others here in saying that you’re doing a great job with this rollout, with the communication, and ensuring we feel fully ‘listened-to’.
Nemanja Aleksic
Excellent point, Jeff.
Adjusting to the change in the flow is a big deal for us, because it’s abig deal for you. We’ll have a good onboarding process, but we don’t want to force Orion on anyone.
peter
What about backups on my Orion beta – will I be able to transfer them over to our main account?
Orion is amazing!
Nemanja Aleksic
If you’ve got a beta account, we’re keeping you separate from your main account. All beta testers will get an email today with more information about their next steps.
Surbma
As I know, Orion will not be compatible with Multisite installs. If it is true, than how would mirroring work in this case? I’m managing only Multisite installs in ManageWP now, so it is very important for me.
Do you plan to add Multisite compatibility to Orion later?
Nemanja Aleksic
The idea behind ManageWP has always been to make multisites redundant by bringing all of its advantages to single-site installations, without any of the drawbacks (like network plugin & theme installation, shared database, etc.)
Multisite installations will not be supported for the time being. They will not be mirrored into Orion. There is an idea to introduce multisite support down the line, but we’ve got a really long list of priorities we need to complete before we dedicate some serious dev time for multisites.
Thom Leiter
I’m loving Orion and can’t wait to have all the functionality in one place so I can stop moving sites back and forth 🙂 Thank you!
tiago
Sounds like a plan, I think you guys are on the right path, I only choose the best professionals to work with. Cheers!
Nemanja Aleksic
Thank you for your vote of confidence, Tiago. It means a lot to us.
petaqui
That looks really cool!! The sidebar appears as in the old system, cool, I was missing that in Orion.
One doubt, what happen to already users and sites, will appear all sites in both panels? Or just the sites on ManageWP in Orion panel, but not the ones in Orion on the managewp one.
Thanks!
Nemanja Aleksic
It’s the same ManageWP Worker plugin for both dashboards. Both dashboards will show the same sites, and you can manage your websites from both dashboards.
You will be able to add and remove sites only on ManageWP – we will release an article on Monday that will explain everything in more details.
BTW the interface on the screenshots above is a bit different from the interface you’ve seen in the previous dev diaries, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise 🙂
ryan
Actually, dug around the comments on an old post and got the info I need. That’s fine for now.
petaqui
How much is that? I haven’t read anything about that.
Thanks!
Nemanja Aleksic
I’ve updated the article with some more information about the pricing. Don’t worry, there’s only good news 🙂
ryan
When are we going to get an idea about Orion pricing? It’s a little scary to move over to a new platform not knowing what you’ll be paying later.
Nemanja Aleksic
That’s a good question, Ryan. The prices will not change radically, that much I can guarantee. The most popular option right now is to introduce plan flexibility that I mentioned in this article, which would help you optimize your cost.
ngmatthews
Will I need to create new backups for my existing sites or will they be carried over to Orion?
Nemanja Aleksic
It’s a new backup system, the ManageWP backups cannot be carried over to Orion for now.
The good news is that the two backup systems don’t interfere with one another, so you could have them both active at the same time, for the same website, to be extra safe.