A year on from the most significant update to Mautic’s underlying infrastructure with the Mautic 3 launch, today we have released the next major release for Mautic - Mautic 4.
While the Mautic 3 release focused on extensive rewrites ‘under the hood’ to support Symfony 3, we are pleased to say that Mautic 4 includes several long-awaited features including:
- New email and landing page builder based on the open source GrapesJS framework
- Four new MJML email templates
- An interface for managing tags within Mautic
- A read-only first phase of the new Mautic Marketplace
- An updated Zapier app including support for OAuth2
This release also provides support for Symfony 4, multiple dependency updates in readiness for PHP 8 support, and removes some long-deprecated technology such as OAuth1 (replaced with OAuth2) and the Froala editor (replaced with CKEditor).
We have also delivered the first phase from three of our six Strategic Initiatives in this release:
- New email and landing page builder
- Composer support
- Mautic Marketplace
With 46 contributors and over 1,700 files changed, this release has been a true community effort with contributions from individuals and organizations across the community.
What has changed?
There are some important changes that we have made in Mautic 4 which users and developers will need to be aware of.
- The new email and landing page builder is enabled by default - you can disable it under Plugins if you prefer to continue using the legacy builder, until Mautic 5 when the legacy builder will be removed. Ensure you reload the page if you disable the new builder.
- All themes you wish to use in the new builder will need a simple, one line change to be made in their configuration file. Read the documentation here.
- Support for OAuth1 has been removed. Use OAuth2 instead.
- The most significant changes will impact developers. A full list of deprecations and backwards compatibility breaking changes can be found here.
Important notes
There are a couple of features with the new builder which we have not been able to complete before the release due to a shortage of people working on the project - read more in the blog post. These include:
- Dynamic content is only available in HTML email themes - work is underway to enable it in MJML themes,
- Dynamic content is not currently available in landing pages,
- Gated video is not currently available in landing pages,
- Code mode can now be accessed from within the builder rather than through the separate ‘code mode’ theme,
- Preference centre pages can be created using tokens - we are in the process of creating a block in the new builder to enable configuration in the user interface.
How do I download Mautic 4?
From today, if you download Mautic from mautic.org/download you will be downloading Mautic 4.
If you prefer to work from Github you can pull the tag 4.0.0.
How do I update to Mautic 4?
Before you consider updating to Mautic 4, you must be running at least the latest stable version of Mautic 3. Updating from Mautic 2 to Mautic 4 is not, and will not, be supported. If you have not yet updated from Mautic 2 to Mautic 3, please review the documentation here.
Once you are running the latest stable version of Mautic 3, make sure that you take a backup of your files and database, and check that they are working by setting up a development area. Also ensure that you have PHP 7.4 available on your server - 7.3 is no longer supported.
Once you have tested your backup, you can proceed with the update in the usual way:
At command line (preferred)
- Connect to your server at the command line and use the cd command to move into the directory where you have Mautic installed
- Ensure that your server meets the minimum requirements listed here
- Ensure that any third-party plugins and integrations have been updated to support Mautic 4 - if you are not sure, temporarily disable them and/or remove them from your plugins directory until after you have completed the update
- Check for updates using path/to/php bin/console mautic:update:find to find updates, and then path/to/php bin/console mautic:update:apply to apply the updates (replacing path/to/php with the path to PHP on your server)
- Remember to update your themes to include the new syntax for supported builders!
In the user interface (not recommended)
- Ensure that your server meets the minimum requirements listed here
- Ensure that any third-party plugins and integrations have been updated to support Mautic 4 - if you are not sure, temporarily disable them and/or remove them from your plugins directory until after you have completed the update
- Check for the update alert in your browser notifications
- Click to update to Mautic 4
- Remember to update your themes to include the new syntax for supported builders!
Where can I get help?
If you encounter errors with installing or upgrading to Mautic 3, we have dedicated documentation available, and a forum category for community-powered support.
We also have a dedicated forum category for Mautic 4 install and upgrade in the community forum.
Please ensure that you use the post template and provide all the required information, as this enables our volunteers in the forum to troubleshoot with you more efficiently.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.mautic.org/blog/community/mautic-4-standing-tall