What is happening with the website. I no longer have access to my project pages. It shows I have no purchase history. I need to get a new website built asap but I can’t even get to the themes to purchase one, then my project pages are gone so I can’t even assign them. WHAT IS GOING ON???
If you are using the latest version of Concrete, you should be able to connect to the new marketplace and assign any version 9 license you have previously purchased.
What if you still have websites on Version 8? Can’t seem to get to my projects page at all…
Version 8 is end of life, we’re only offering critical security updates to the core for v8 at this point. Your version 8 websites will continue to run just fine without connecting to the project pages in the old marketplace.
There were precious few (if any) updates happening to version 8 extensions, so there’s no need to worry about updating those packages.
Yea, but now my ability to update the core CMS has to be manual and I cannot add any extensions since I cannot connect to marketplace. This is a tough one for me. I have at least 15 to 20 client websites out there that are still in Version 8, and I just don’t upgrade from version 8 to 9… things always break… always. That entails quite a bit of time to fix them that I cannot charge for. Clients are not going to pay for something like this, so there are quite a few of my client sites that are still in Version 8… apparently now frozen in time. Understand the need to move forward, but the deal killer for me was the inability to seamlessly go from V8 to 9… as mentioned, things always broke. What would your suggestion be on upgrading? Do I need to start at the very first release of 9 manually? Then go to each corresponding upgrade after? Must say, I think it is time for me to re-think my CMS of choice at this point…
It is certainly not our intention to make anything hard for people.
I totally understand it’s frustrating to have things that worked for 15 years go away.
If there were a way we could be everything to everyone and never leave anything behind, we’d do it.
That said, just like you, we have limited resources and we have to make choices focused on the future.
Some facts that went into this decision:
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Concrete 8.0 was released in 2016 - that’s almost a decade ago.
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We first started talking about an end of support for v8 in 2022:
Update to v9 before v8 end of life later this year! -
There is a repository of old Concrete versions on the open source site here:
Download :: Concrete CMS - Org. You can also install free extensions from the marketplace (even the old one) via Composer from there. -
The old marketplace had a lot of v8 extensions that were not being maintained, new updates we’re not going up, and maintaining consistent quality was a challenge.
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The old marketplace was written on a very old code base that had not been maintained, and so upgrading it was not realistic.
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The old marketplace promised you delivery of a working package and 30 days of support, period. We never promised free updates & maintenance for life. The developers in our community just ended up providing that for free because of how things were built.
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We looked at how easy it is to install extensions and themes across our competition and realized our connect to the marketplace approach was very out of date and an impediment to growth.
Given those factors, we made the choice to build a new marketplace, move the stuff that is supported by Concrete v9 into it, and curate it to look great and work well on a code base that we could maintain easily. We wanted to focus on what we could do to better serve people who are installing and running the latest version of Concrete today.
We certainly don’t want to brick old Concrete sites, and nothing we’ve done here will do that.
The reality is the web moves quickly today. PHP decides that things which used to work will stop in new versions, and we get to do painful releases to keep up. Hell, google just sold a bunch of domains we registered with their service to SquareSpace - I’m certainly not happy about that change either. 
If everything we try to do new here has to be prefaced with “but nothing we’ve done before can ever change or go away” - we will surely fail to keep up.
We are not interested in running a dusty library of breaking memories. We are interested in making it easy for people to communicate their ideas online with websites today and tomorrow.
That said, no you don’t have to go through every version. If your sites are pre v8.5 I would recommend upgrading to v8.4.5 first as there are some database character changes that were challenging. Once you’re past 8.5.6 you should be able to upgrade directly to the latest 9.3.x version.
Please do take backups. It’s possible some custom code won’t work well on that path because somewhere in there you’re going to want to upgrade from PHP 7.4 (which is also end of life btw) to PHP 8.x - and that has some changes to variable scoping that can cause some fatal errors.
If at the end of the day you need to rethink your choice of CMS because we no longer offer one click distribution of end of life software packages, I’m disappointed, but I completely understand. I’d strongly suggest you explore SaaS offerings where the site is continually upgraded for you. I totally get its a chore to upgrade, and the longer its left undone, the more likely it will cause pain when it needs to happen. We spend a good deal of our own time suffering through the same pain for our clients. Given that, we have started offering a SaaS version of Concrete here where there’s no access to the code base, but the site will always be upgraded to the latest without you having to worry.
Last, I can offer that if there is a particular package you need from the old marketplace which you have a license for, hit us up via the contact form and we’ll do our best to dig up a copy for you.
I totally recognize losing the old marketplace is a tough transition. We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t think change was necessary.
We’ve very excited about how much easier it is to install extensions with the new marketplace and 9.3.+ already. The pace of improvements we’re able to maintain has increased. It’s going to be much easier for everyone moving forward.
If that is legitimately true you should re-consider your business strategy, and change the way that you setup your client contracts.
Your time and expertise as a provider is valuable and if you won’t stand up for your self and simply charge what you’re worth, no one else can fix that for you.
I’m willing to bet that if you were to communicate the situation in the right way, at least some of your clients will pay for your time to keep their site secure operational, and up to date. There will always be some difficult clients that won’t cooperate, but ultimately you’d be better off with clients that are willing to recognize the value you provide them. Shed the extra weight, and start working on attracting better clients moving forward.
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I can’t speak for the OP, BUT, I tried to explain this to some of my clients, they would have said tough. We paid you what you quoted us, period. This has nothing to do with companies business strategies, our the way contracts are set up. It has nothing to do with charging what your worth. Please don’t come on hear and bash someone for their opinion when I know for a fact there are many people going through the same issue right now!
I’m not bashing anyone. Just stating that if you have clients that are not willing to pay you for your time, you need to build a stronger business by finding better clients, updating your contracts so that you’re covered in situations where extra work is required etc.
Thank you, that was a very thorough and thoughtful reply. The good news for me is most all the sites I referenced are on at least the latest (or very near latest) version of 8 so I should be able to update to latest version of 9 in one step as you indicated. I did keep up all my clients site current as long as it was pretty straightforward.
Hi Franz. So under the old marketplace, we were able to be “contributors” on client’s project pages. Are we going to be able to do the same thing here in the new marketplace/project pages? We did have a bunch that were still legacy sites (mostly non-profits with no money to upgrade) so I understand those will no longer show, but we did have a number of V9 sites that are no longer showing up in my account and even when I try to connect our own business site to the community I can’t (running V9.2.6). We do have CURL enabled on the server.
Thanks,
Joe
Feels like there’s two questions going on there.
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Will we have “contributor” roles to project pages so multiple people can add licenses to a single site? Yes, one day? I believe the model actually exists in what we’ve built today for the marketplace but we haven’t put any effort into exposing it in the user experience. It’s not that common of a use case so it’s likely to get to wait as we worry about other features.
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Why you can’t connect to the community?
9.2.6 will not connect to the community. 9.3.x+ will connect to the community. One caveat there, there’s an issue that some people are having in 9.3.1 which there is a fix for which we’re planning to release in 9.3.2 shortly.
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Hi Franz,
all licences listed under my account are with a date- timestamp of today, are defined as legacy and unassigned.
It would be a great help if the licences listed had some more detailed info, so it would be easier to see when they were bought, what sites they are connected to or have been connected to. I have no idea what addon belongs to what site anymore as I have multiple sites set up with similiar addons. I also have “no transactions” if I click on receipts so no way of backtracking or accessing purchase information from even very recent transactions.
I understand the need for the update and appreciate the work and thought that has gone into this, but a little more clarity on past transactions and licences would be a great help for existing projects.
Thanks, Una
Hi again.
I am receiving the same errors as JRick above, even though I have set up my site on the platform and assigned licences to it. Curl is enabled. Because of this error, I can’t update installed packages.
Can I delete the project page on the platform and try again, or what should I do?
Thanks,
Una
Hi, I’m glad to hear it. I actually have the current version, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue. It’s a brand new site. But Thanks for the suggestion.
Project pages and transaction histories from the old marketplace are not migrating over to the new marketplace.
Licenses purchased for v9 extensions were migrated however.
The new marketplace only connects to new Concrete, you’ll need to be running version 9.3.x to automatically install packages moving forward. When you’re running 9.3.2 and you goto the Extend page in your dashboard, you can easily add themes, add-ons and integrations to your website.
It’s not our intent to make anything harder for people than we have to.
The way the new marketplace works is completely different (and better) than the old ways.
There was no viable path to keep the old stuff working while also offering the new stuff.
My apologies for the changes being disruptive.
My advice would be:
- Upgrade sites to 9.3.2 and connect to the community using the new approach. It’s wildly easier and when you do you’ll be able to assign licenses from your pool and get upgrades to extensions automatically.
- If an upgrade to an extension is available and required for an older Concrete site (spoiler, they rarely if ever are at this point) you can download the latest package for that extension from the license history and install it manually in your legacy Concrete install.
Hope that help, I recognize it’s not as good as “this just works for everyone like it used to but is also better for everyone new moving forward.” My hope is that connecting an upgraded site now is so much easier that it proves worth the painful change.
Thanks for your patience!
Hi Franz,
I’ve just checked again and realised I’m on 9…2.3 not 9.3.2 - so that’s most likely the problem, Thanks for your help. I’m updating now.
I fully appreciate that the new launch of the marketplace can’t migrate everything. I was just hoping to at least have some more details on the licences in my account (e.g receipts, purchase date). The information is a bit sparse. But its no big deal. All my sites are on 9.2 now, so upgrading, connecting and assigning should’nt be too difficult.
Thanks for your help,
Una