Update: There have been some changes from the time the Orion idea has originated. I would highly suggest reading our newest edition of Developer Diary #8! 🙂
As discussed in the previous articles, we’ve decided to rebuild ManageWP from the ground up. And now we refer to this journey of ours as ManageWP Orion. We knew from the beginning it was going to take a lot of time and effort; it did, and it is still something we are working hard on.
Why Not Upgrade the Existing ManageWP?
This way we got to build our product the best way we could imagine and that is very important, especially technology wise. We are no longer chained to the technologies we used up until now. The logical question is, what did we do and what are the results? I’ll talk a little about this from the perspective of a frontend developer.
Near-Instant Loading Time
We got to the point of complete separation of the frontend from the backend of the application. By doing this, we escaped the hell of building frontend in backend code and risking that some visual change is going to cause unexpected trouble. Most importantly, our users will be thrilled, since this gave us the opportunity to boost the performance of ManageWP by a ton. Serving static frontend files means that the controls are there as soon as you land onto our page!
AngularJS Supporting Stability
Being able to build the application using AngularJS is something of great value. Because of the framework’s nature, code written the right way is much more stable compared to using alternatives. This is due to the amazing fact that the framework has great tools which minimize room for error.
Say Goodbye to Waiting
Driven to create something that works as instantly as possible, we’ve decided to use a concept called “Streaming JSON”. It is a system we use to continuously communicate data from our backend while a request is still in progress. Now you’re able to watch the progress of every single action that you make in real-time. Also, you can have many requests running at the same time!
Some Features Surprised Even Us
Given this new environment we’ve tried and implemented many interesting features. Most of them are ideas we had for quite some time (the majority of which came from you, our users, and we thank you for that!), but there are some of the features we’ve never even dreamed of having. One idea that came out of the blue is voice recognition. Many ideas are there, but lets start by imagining finding a website you would like to manage just by saying its blog name or URL… Well, we got that!
Development and the Future
I have to say I’m very excited with what ManageWP Orion has developed into and even more excited about what it’s yet to become. From what I can see, this journey will bring us an application that makes managing a single WordPress instance (or many, many websites at the same time) something we enjoy and are happy to do even more because it’s fun.
A Final Thought
As this experience has shown me that the less time you spend battling routine tasks, the more time you have to create something original, new and refreshing. Let ManageWP Orion take care of your business for you, while you show the world what you are capable of!
This is the 3rd article in the Orion series. See the previous article: Design Decisions Behind ManageWP Orion
UPDATE: The 4th article in the Orion series is out! Developing Backend for ManageWP Orion
james
Looks great! When is launch date? Can I access Orion now?
Ahhhhmed
It sounds like it’s as fast as a laser, but will it blend?
Nemanja Aleksic
Yes, it blends!
Dan
Just logged into the dashboard since you guys did the upgrade – WOW!!! I was expecting the usually ~3 minute refresh of the dashboard but it now loaded my 25 sites in less than 60 seconds (with 3 of the sites erroring out – my issue, not yours).
Thank you so much for this. The speed boost has made your product much more user friendly.
Keep up the good work!
vinjar
How to I get to the new dashboard?
jon
This. Looks awesome but can we start using it?
Nemanja Aleksic
Dan is has been our user for a long time – he was actually referring to the improvements we’ve made in the past few months. The Orion will be even faster, and you’ll be able to sign up for the closed beta on Monday 🙂
Matthew Pritchett
Did you guys use Angular 1.x? If so, what are your plans for the 2.x release?
Sergej Grivcov
Yes, we did use Angular 1.x and are still using it.
We will probably move to 2.x when the time comes. AngularJS 2.x will definitely be something interesting to experiment with!
ccnokes
I’d be interested in hearing more details about this “streaming JSON”. What is that? A Web socket connection that emits progress notifications on a long running process?
Sergej Grivcov
You are correct, we are emitting progress notifications on long running requests. To be exact we are using the line delimited JSON standard for that. So, we send some JSON encoded data from the backend that is followed by a new line, and our frontend receives that data while the ongoing request keeps being processed.
We’re currently not using Web socket for this. The request itself flushes the data.
GINGALLEY
Can you manage my websites too so I can go to the beach? :/
Nemanja Aleksic
That’s the idea – get your job done with ManageWP in minutes instead of hours manually, and take your day back 🙂
karl_s
Outstanding and exciting. This is GOING TO ROCK!!! 😀
johnkrol
kEEP ON kEEPING oN—- BEEN A user from the start!