You should probably stick to 5.6x for right now. You will be able to find a lot of help and documentation here in the forums and lots of add ons. I have a helpful Cheat Sheet athttp://www.weblicating.com/cheat-sheet/...

It seems it would be a step backwards to begin a new project on 5.6 since 5.7 is so close to release.

I think the answer is sort of "It Depends".

I don't think that the September 12th "release" date is really meant to say that everything will be completely functional by then, there's certainly going to be bugs. I think this date was set so that people who are developing add-ons could have some sort of version that they could rest assured that there wouldn't be any major breaking changes from that point on. Maybe I'm missing the spirit of the the blog post though?

Also, keep in mind that even once September 30th rolls around, there's a good chance that there won't be many add-ons developed or migrated, the amount of testing and bug reporting in 5.7 will still be far less than that of the 5.6 branch, potentially meaning it is less stable.

If you're OK with being an early adopter, being limited to mostly core functionality, and potentially running into a bug here or there then 5.7 is probably the right choice for your project, as it will require far less work going forward. However, if you need some add-ons that currently exist today to complete your project, you need something that's been used on thousands of websites to help guarantee stability, then you're probably better off going with 5.6 and finding a way to migrate when the time is right.

Of course all this information is subjective, and someone else can (and probably will) disagree with my opinion on the matter. These are just my thoughts on the whole topic, and for what it's worth I think 5.7 is a great platform, but I'm not ready to start committing clients to it just yet and would rather make sure everything is working myself before doing so based on some "release" dates that sort of feel like they might have been etched in stone a bit prematurely.

I love that cheat sheet! :)

> or should I install the latest 5.6 stable, then upgrade ?

Bear in mind that there will be no simple "upgrade" path to 5.7. Transitioning to 5.7 from earlier versions will be more of a "migration". It's not known at this time when a migration guide or tools will be available.

That said, there's lots to like about 5.7 from a developer standpoint.

-Steve

Thanks Steve.

So is there any word on the upgrade path from the 5.7 beta to the production release of 5.7 on Sept 12th?

I'm thinking, install and work on the 5.7 beta now.
Would that approach make sense at this point?

I would wait until the 12th.

Personally, I'm waiting and still working with 5.6. I'll upgrade sites when 5.7(.x) is a little more mature/complete and marketplace add-ons are better supported. Probably not till 2nd quarter next year (assuming things go well!).

This is very much along the lines of my plan. I have huge confidence that 5.7 will be awesome, but like all heavily revamped software I'm pretty sure it will be the 'bleeding edge' for a while.

I think people need to keep in mind is that 5.6 is stable, feature rich and modern. We've got another bugfix version just around the corner. It's not like all the good things about 5.6 will evaporate as soon as 5.7 is released!

Once I've built a site, I want it to be stable and predicable for my clients to maintain - 5.6 gives me this now, and will continue to do so into the future.

When 5.7 is stable enough I'll make the switch with new sites we build.

fwiw, I agree with @mesuva about holding off on 5.7 for a while (unsurprisingly -- I pretty much agree with everything he says :)

I have so much tooling, boilerplate code, and client documentation for 5.6 that it's not worth throwing that all away at once. More importantly (and perhaps controversially), I think some aspects of the editing UI in 5.7 are a step backwards from 5.6 (no outlines around editable areas, illogical icons in the toolbars with no labels, confusing workflow for adding new pages). It reminds me of the 5.5 release when the dashboard was completely overhauled... I basically stayed off 5.5 entirely and waited until 5.6 which cleaned things up a lot and polished up the UI.

So I do think 5.7 will bring many great things, but it's going to take some time for it to get the polish it needs before it's up to the standards that 5.6 has set (in my opinion).

-Jordan

FWIW There is an option to turn text back on in the toolbar now, the dashboard now has "Accessibility" options. Just thought I'd throw that out there for those who missed that little feature add :)

I think of 5.7 in terms of the bathtub curve. 5.7 Will be up by the taps for a few releases. 5.6 is nicely in the middle.