[SOLVED] What is the end-of-life date for Expression Engine 5?

ExpressionEngine 5 is currently only receiving security updates. We have not officially said when we’re going to end security updates for v5, but I think there will be some talk about that at the EEConf Spring Summit tomorrow.

They just mentioned at the summit that EE5 EOL is the end of this year. No more minor releases, features or bug fixes - only security updates till the end of the year.

Personally, I don’t agree with fast releases in any software unless its beta. This is why the old EE 2, and 3 was so popular. You could buy a book about EE 3, and it was still relevant years later.

I’m still on EE 5. Not because I cannot upgrade, but just because I don’t want to upgrade important software that fast. I cannot keep up with all the new stuff when I’m still learning the previous features.

A major release every year seems a bit fast for my taste. I also like longer releases, (security and bugs), I’m ok with not having the latest features, but developers are also very slow at updating their add-ons for newer releases. I suspect this is why so many people are even still on version 3 and cannot update. If you rely on a critical add-on you are stuck.

The same goes for tutorials, video or articles that people write about a software. If a software is released as quickly, it makes the whole ecosystem outdated fast. And people like to find help and articles about things they can still use.

vw000, That’s exactly what we want to correct by making EE 6 LTS.

EE2 has been around for so long that so much content (tutorials, Knowledgebases, add-ons, etc) have been written around it. We hope the same to be done with v6 over the 5years that we’ll be maintaining it. LTS doesn’t just mean something for developers and people that care about technology support (PHP versions, MySQL, etc), it means people will building a lot of sites on version 6 for all those years. It means a lot of people will build add-ons for EE6 (that won’t break in a year’s time). It means so much more. We imagine that even after we release the next LTS version down the line (more than likely not every year), people will continue on EE6 for more than those 5 years. That means lots and lots of content that is going to be available for it.

I believe ExpressionEngine needed to get back on track with a few things and we needed to set the foundation before we could go LTS with a version. EE6 was a pretty big improvement on 5 and 6.1 will address a lot of bugs and feature requests that have been frustrations for years. If you missed yesterday’s EEConf, you’ll want to hear Tom and I talk about that in the open talk when those videos are released. With the foundation set, we’re looking to have a version that the community will again rally behind. When the community rallies, the content will come with it.

That sounds great. 5 years for LTS sounds great. Love that. That will surely bring back developers and the community, more important in commercial or enterprise environments which are slow to update or change software.

I believe the community is already coming back. Slowly and it will surely take sometime, but I do see more chit-chat about EE on the net.

I even found some new articles about EE posted just 2 months ago while searching something. That was surprising as most articles about EE where always old, and now I see new content already.

There also seems to be more activity here in the forums as well.

I’m very happy and excited that EE is in part coming back to its roots on what made it great in the past. It was the surrounding ecosystem. Great books, tutorials, content.

I will check the EEConf videos to get a bit updated on the recent news.

just circling back around to this one. I’ve re-launched the Supported Version page on our site as well. Not sure why this was ever taken down: https://expressionengine.com/support/version-support