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! 🙂
2014 was amazing an amazing year for us here at ManageWP – we’ve crossed the 1-million download threshold with over a quarter of a million websites being managed by our service, affirming ManageWP as both the oldest and the most popular WordPress management service on the market.
We haven’t been resting on our laurels, even though we’ve been very quiet lately; for the past six months we’ve hunkered down and started working on the next evolutionary step in WordPress management that we dubbed ManageWP Orion; With your feedback since 2010 and the experience we’ve racked up during that time we’re ready to push the envelope and turn the task of website management into fun. That’s why we’ve chosen the name Orion for our versioning: to boldly go where no WordPress productivity tool has gone before and give you all sorts of new and amazing ways to improve your workflow. We find it only suitable to name our versions after prominent constellations, starting with Orion, one of the most recognizable constellations in the sky.
So what does this mean for you as a user?
- Faster performance: One of the greatest WordPress weaknesses performance-wise has been backward compatibility, which results with the amount of junk code growing with each new release. We’re having none of that; ManageWP has been re-factored from the ground up, removing miles of excess code in the process. This has sped up the ManageWP performance to the point of being instantaneous – stay tuned for a more in-depth explanation in the followup articles.
- Asynchronous actions: Progress bar watching is the number one productivity killer in any interface. That’s why we’re saying goodbye to the times of idling while your sites sync or backup completes. Most of the time consuming tasks will be done asynchronously to allow you to focus on other tasks and get the job done faster.
- Usability: Our current dashboard is the crowd favorite, but there’s always room for improvement. A great service needs to work, and it needs to be effortless – that’s what we’re aiming to accomplish with ManageWP Orion.
- Clone Wizard: This feature has been given a lot of love, both in the performance and in the error reporting departments as site cloning and migration does not tolerate failures and delays.
- Scheduled Backups: The Orion release is coming with the optimized scheduled backup process, with a lot more optimization in the months to come after Orion is released.
- Client Report: currently our most underdeveloped feature, the Client Report is finally achieving its potential with beautiful in-depth reporting and automation.
In the following month we will be releasing a series of articles focusing on different aspects of our service – design, user experience, security, back end development and more; our team members will discuss best practices they’ve applied in ManageWP Orion, and how they could be applied to your projects as well. The final article will conclude with an invitation for the closed beta, so stay tuned and send us your comments!
UPDATE: The second ManageWP Orion article is out! See it here.
Pamela Saxon
I would love to be considered for your closed beta, please. Thank you!
techops
Please add us to the list of beta testers.
Beni
Hi, we have 1 client with over 90 websites so we would love to be considered for Orion as we have needs like white label, different account dashboards and valuable insight to hopefully add to this new production. Regards – Beni – JHNet Web Development
info
Hi, Orion sounds awesome. I’d like to be considered for the beta test as well.
david
I found ManageWP today by accident and I am completely blown away. This is brilliant. Absolutely changes the game for me. I’m excited to see the new Client Reports. Please keep me updated.
Nemanja Aleksic
Thanks, David!
I recommend subscribing to our blog to keep up with the Orion progress. The first Developer Diary is already released 🙂
https://managewp.com/managewp-orion-developer-diary-1
me
Hi, I would like to participate in the beta test. 🙂
Greg Collett
I use your product very day. I’ve just had the chance now to read all about Orion. Very exciting. Congratulations on your companies growth and on you forward vision. I’m looking forward to the release.
jeroen
I’m also interested in participating in the beta
kwoodall
I would hope and beg that you finally include incremental file backups to Google Drive/Dropbox. Far too many of my clients sites cannot do a full backup to cloud storage anymore.
ngmatthews
Looking forward to seeing the reporting, the current version is a little lacking and manual.
Rex Stevens
This all sounds awesome. What I would really love to see with the client reporting is it being highly customizable so we can decide what is being sent to our clients as well as making it look really nice. Hope that is in the works, would love to be part of the private beta on this!
reiner.knudsen
ManageWP is my everyday tool to keep control over all my WordPress sites. I just wished it had a backup function that doesn’t rely on my server’s space because it always fails. Could you think of anything in that direction? Happy to pay for it!
Nemanja Aleksic
Although we don’t plan on fundamentally changing our backup process (the backup archive is first created on the site server, then uploaded to an external destination), we’ve been constantly optimizing the process for the past three years, and will keep working on cutting down the resource requirements. I can’t say anything else at this point, but we’ve got a couple of tricks up our sleeve 😉
Ricky Onsman
Hope they’re good tricks, Nemanja. Backup issues are the only issues I have with ManageWP, but they are a big headache for me. With 50% of 42 backups failing every week (always a different set), it takes me half a day to back up the failures manually. I have confidence that MWP will improve this in time.
Ron
Do the backups daily. Then you are bound to have one good one for each site every week. Then you wouldn’t need to do them manually. Send them to Amazon S3 for storage, which is really inexpensive. You can deleted unneeded ones periodically from the S3 console.
Ricky Onsman
There’s no “bound to” about it. The pattern of which backups don’t work is just too random: I’m not going to risk having one of my client sites not backed up. And I use Dropbox, which works fine and I use for a number of other purposes. What I need is to be able to trust MWP to complete the backups.
brianjosephking
Can’t wait! I hope I’m still on the docket for a potential tester!
Nemanja Aleksic
Yep! All of our users who asked in the past to be in the beta are on the list, as well as everyone who asked in the comment section. I only wish we had as many slots in the closed beta – but no worries, we also plan an open beta soon, and we’ll also be covering everything in our blog for those who don’t have the time to try Orion first-hand.
brianjosephking
Awesome, thanks! The new UI looks beautiful.
Eric
Great to read this post ! Two days ago, I was just asking for a longer period (more than two months, at least a year) on client reporting, hope it will be part of Orion !
Can(t wait to test the public beta. Thank you for the good job!
David Ransier
Awesome! I’ve been anxiously waiting for the next new version of ManageWP as I have a requested feature that will help grow my Maintenance business. If slots are still available, please add me to the list.
Thanks,
David R
gmourelatos
About a day ago I asked for more automation on client reporting and I was forwarded to this post; right on time!
Looking forward for Orion launch.
Jonathan
Would love you guys to release a stripped down, fast, junk code free version of WordPress itself 🙂
Congratulation on Orion. Looking forward to seeing it.
Alex
Wohoo! Finally! Can’t wait to see it.. Keep it up folks!
ivycat
Really excited about these developments, Nemanja! Especially the client reporting and automation.
Can’t wait to have access and I want on that beta. 🙂
Cheers to you, Vladimir, and your crack team for such great work!
Nemanja Aleksic
Thanks, Eric! I’ve put you on the beta list, will keep in touch 🙂
Vladimir Prelovac
Hey Eric thanks for stopping by! Thanks for the wonderful chat in Seattle, got a lot of your feedback implemented in Orion. Happy New Year!
Surbma
I’m looking forward to the new update and would be very happy to be in the first beta testers. 😉
Is it finally compatible with WP Engine hosted installations? I would be happy to test it.
Nemanja Aleksic
Unfortunately the issue with the WP Engine site backup and cloning will remain for now (everything else should be working fine). The proc_open function, the backbone of our code, is disabled on WP Engine servers. While we disagree that disabling proc_open is an efficient security method (with the encapsulation with modules such as suEXEC you can easily secure the server environment without sacrificing website functionality), it’s their house and their rules, and we respect that.
We are working on a couple of ideas that might move things forward, but I can’t make any predictions at the moment.
karl_s
My respect for all of you good folks behind ManageWP grows and grows. I’ve tried several of your “competitors” and found all severely lacking. ManageWP is truly the “best of class” and I literally could not get through the day without it. Sure, I could live without it – for about a day or two – before I’d have to put a gun to my head! 😮
I noticed the improvements earlier this year, and the increased speed was a huge boon. The new developments sound awesome, and I can’t wait to see ’em in action. Keep up the great work, guys and gals. 😀
Nemanja Aleksic
Thank you for your vote of confidence, Karl. You will not be disappointed 🙂
mnlgmz
When you will launch this version? Thanks
Nemanja Aleksic
Most of the work has already been done, but there’s no launch date yet – we want to make sure everything is top notch when it goes live, and not be slaves to some imaginary deadline.
Don’t worry, we won’t be pulling a Duke Nukem Forever on you 🙂
jackie
I am definitely looking forward to the update for the client reporting, especially automation. I wouldn’t mind taking part in the closed beta.
Nemanja Aleksic
The closed beta will have a limited number of slots, but don’t worry if you don’t get the invite – there will be an open beta as well