Versions and Upgrades

We are constantly working to maintain and improve the LiveWhale platform, and we want you working with the very latest features and bug-fixes! This section describes how to prepare for and execute your LiveWhale upgrade.

Release Notes

You can always see what’s new in the latest version of LiveWhale linked from your upgrades interface, explained below. Or, you can check out a comprehensive list of all the changes since LiveWhale 2.0.0 here.

Version Numbering

Starting with our 2.0.0 release we moved to a system of semantic version numbering using the following guidelines. This allows us to better reflect our ongoing development of LiveWhale by releasing new versions more frequently, as well as making certain that your current version of LiveWhale is numbered to reflect what features/fixes you have in place.

Release type	Changes	How we’ll number	Example
Patch Release	Backward compatible bug fixes	Increment the third digit	2.0.1
Minor Release	Backward compatible new features	Increment the second digit, reset last digit to zero	2.1.0
Major Release	Changes that might break backward compatibility	Increment the first digit, reset other digits to zero	3.0.0

Enabling automatic upgrades

You can set up your LiveWhale site to automatically pull the latest release every Sunday morning by following these steps:

SFTP into your server
Edit /livewhale/core/config.php and find the line 'SELF_UPDATE'=>false,
Change that line to 'SELF_UPDATE'=>true, and save config.php
Now, every weekend your site should pull new updates. The first time you log in after each upgrade you will see a “New version installed” message on the dashboard.

You can enable automatic upgrades on dev only, or—if you’re using LiveWhale Calendar—on both dev and prod. See below for further explanation.

When automatic upgrades are enabled…

…on your development site only

Each Sunday morning, LiveWhale will upgrade your dev site to the latest new release (Patch, Minor, or Major) for you to test. After dev has been upgraded, your production site’s LiveWhale dashboard will show a message “Upgrade Available: LiveWhale Calendar 2.x” which you can click to learn more about the new version.

After you’re satisfied with the testing you’ve done on dev, you can follow steps 2–4 below under Upgrading manually to upgrade production. Please reach out to support if you would like our assistance.

…on your development and production sites
(LiveWhale Calendar Only)

Each Sunday morning, LiveWhale will upgrade your dev site to the latest new release (Patch, Minor, or Major) for you to test. After dev has been upgraded, your production site’s LiveWhale dashboard will show a message “Upgrade Scheduled: LiveWhale Calendar 2.x (July 2, 2022 at 3am)”. This upgrade is always scheduled for seven days after dev has been upgraded, to give you a chance to glance at what’s new and prepare your editors.

Important: automatic upgrades on production will only pull Patch and Minor releases (i.e., 2.x, only backwards-compatible new features and bug fixes). Major releases (3.0, 4.0, etc.) which correspond to breaking changes will require a manual upgrade on prod, following the below steps.