Need More Information on BETA Design Manager and Modules

[aquandt]

I was referencing the docs today and noticed the BETA sections for the Design Manager and Modules V2.  

I was intrigued but also a bit nervous when I saw that some options are being discontinued.  Can we get more information:

• When these changes will happen?  I didn't see any release date.
• Can we have some sort of sandbox access?
• How do we switch to V2 without breaking out existing templates and modules?

I am excited about having a more intutive UI and options.  I (like I am sure other devs have too) have put a lot of time into using the tools available to make Hubspot work for me.  Tricks and hacks to work around limitations of working in a controlled enviroment.   

How do I take advantage of the new features without breaking what I already have?

[ndwilliams3]

me too!

[SvenVanbrabant]

I would like some more information about this too.

[jausura · Accepted solution]

We've added a blurb to the signup page to make this a little clearer. Once you're signed up for the beta, the app gives you explicit notices about compatibility. So you can jump back and forth and decide for yourself what you want to keep in V1 for now and what you want to upgrade. 

The release date question is a bit trickier. We want to give ourselves as much time as possible to kick the tires on this thing so we're trying to put off naming a specific date for as long as we can. 

Let me know if that answers your questions!

[SaraLynnn1]

 It seemed like it was going to be a good upgrade to me...until our website was automatically "migrated” to the new design manager ( for what reason I have no idea and no one has been able to advise me otherwise...)  Anyway this “ migration” broke a bunch of modules (for instance every contact form housed in a popup modal custom module) on every page on our site......and now we are forced to use the beta version of design manager even though we never specifically opted into it.  I suppose you could technically switch back-and-forth but once you make changes to certain things-particularly modules - you’re pretty much stuck. 

I won’t even get started on the bugs/confusion/ complete lack of resources available to assist with troubleshooting.  I’ve probably spent upwards of 40 hours at this point just restoring things to the way they were before  — and I was fairily proficient with the “native” design manager so I would like to think the learning curve is not a total lack of competence on my part 🙂 .

My advice-don’t opt in —because it does not let you go back-and-forth once you’ve changed certain elements in the templates-such as modules that now have been depreciated such as a lot of HubL code, etc.  

The most alarming part of the whole situation was that our site was using the old design manager -  and functioning completely normally— on a Sunday night and then on Monday morning it had just somehow switched over as if by magic -- and changed over 100 pieces (lack of a better word) of code across our website (apparently because it is no longer supported....?)

I even had to access a cached version of the source code of a page through Google search to prove to the support team that I didn’t erase the code myself! I ended up comparing the cached page code with the live version and running a text difference tool to highlight all the changes that were made —and then had to send it to them. So odd. 

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any specific questions and I would be glad to send screenshots / the coded files etc. demonstrating what happened to our site and what the new beta version looks like once your templates and modules are switched over. Quite a mess in my opinion...and a big disappointment from a company I have always really admired.