MD4.8.2 Maintenance Release, Skin in the Game, and New Tutorials

When you decide to upgrade to a major new release of your favorite software, one thing you want to look out for are the important maintenance releases that come after the fact.

From the experience I’ve gained leading major MD releases over the years I’ve learned that there are some people who are only comfortable updating to a major new version after seeing a few smaller maintenance versions released afterwards.

The reason for this is simple—they want to know that the bugs missed from a major release are fixed so they don’t have to experience them on their own sites. Smart people, really.

As the developer of MD I am constantly thinking about how each line of code I change can impact your existing site, so I’ve learned to make changes with great care.

To further keep me honest, I only release new MD versions that I’m able to successfully upgrade on my own sites—including this one—so I personally experience the full whirlwind of emotions and uncertainty that can sometimes come up before clicking the “update” button.

Or in other words, I take the “Skin in the Game” approach to Marketers Delight:

Reading through “Skin in the Game” by Taleb has reaffirmed my decision to only sell software to others that I use for myself. It’s easy to cut corners & offload problems to users, but would those same decisions have been made if that software powered your own business?

— Alex (@aamangini) June 19, 2018

Of course, things still slip through the cracks and I’m not always to catch every bug before the full release. In fact, in a brutal scene of honesty here, there are times where I’ve sent out a major new version of MD while knowing about some bugs still in the code base.

This may sound sleazy, but the reality of software is that bugs will always exist and it’s up to me to discern when the new features of each release have been adequately developed and are stable to use without wide scale interruption.

If I set out to sniff out every bug and imperfection in Marketers Delight 4.8 before releasing, that update simply would have never been released. And the majority of users who have upgraded have been success stories in spite of the few bugs found.

It only takes a small minority of users to report bugs to benefit the entire MD user base, and as someone who takes these things very seriously, you can bet they will get fixed as soon as they are found.

A big thanks to the users of the MD Forums who work with me through these issues and have made Marketers Delight the great platform it is today.

On that note, let’s briefly go into Marketers Delight 4.8.2, which has some important maintenance fixes.