Why we rewrote Oxygen from the ground up?

Oxygen 6

We are thrilled to announce the successful completion of a comprehensive rewrite of Oxygen, transforming it into a more powerful and innovative WordPress builder. The new Oxygen is a testament to our dedication to excellence, redesigned from the ground up to exceed the expectations of today’s most advanced developers, designers, and creators.

Since the first line of code was written for Oxygen over a decade ago, the web has evolved in ways we could hardly have anticipated. Back then, we built Oxygen on the best technology available to us, technology that set the foundation for a tool that empowered tens of thousands of developers and designers to build beautiful, functional websites. However, as technology advanced, we found ourselves increasingly constrained by the legacy systems at our core.

Being tied to our old, Angular-based codebase became increasingly unsustainable. We’ve openly admitted before—Oxygen could be a buggy mess at times. The architecture and technology stack we were locked into limited our ability to innovate and improve at the pace we wanted. Every new feature, every improvement, required more effort and more complex workarounds, which in turn made Oxygen less reliable and harder to use than we—and you—would like. The technology had become a bottleneck, stifling innovation and making it difficult to incorporate the advancements we and our users desired. It was clear: if we continued down this path, we’d be mired in technical debt, our legacy codebase dragging us down like a sinking ship.

The choice was clear. To deliver a product that lived up to both our standards and your expectations, we needed to break free from our old codebase. This decision wasn’t just about fixing bugs or making incremental improvements; it was about fully reimagining how Oxygen could support the workflows of tomorrow’s web professionals, delivering best product imaginable, and realizing our vision of innovation.

With the rewrite, our new codebase has positioned us to move quickly and easily adapt to future demands, ensuring that Oxygen will always be at the forefront of innovation.

Our Commitment to Oxygen Classic

If you’re wondering about the impact of our new release on your existing projects, rest assured that your current Oxygen websites are unaffected. Oxygen Classic will continue to be maintained and updated as before.

While we are excited about the potential of Oxygen 6, we want to reassure our users that Oxygen Classic is not going anywhere. We understand its value to the 180,000+ websites that rely on it, and we are fully committed to maintaining, updating, and continuing to sell this established platform.

Any sites you’ve built using Oxygen Classic will still receive the support and improvements necessary to keep them running smoothly. Oxygen 6 is introduced as a completely new product, distinct from Oxygen Classic. Due to the extensive changes and enhancements, there isn’t a direct upgrade path from Oxygen Classic to the new Oxygen 6.

However, there is no need for concern. Oxygen Classic will continue to receive support, maintenance, and updates. We are committed to ensuring it remains compatible with the latest versions of WordPress and is secure from vulnerabilities. You do not need to rebuild your existing sites. You can continue to use Oxygen Classic with confidence, and when you are ready to start new projects, you can choose to either stick with what’s familiar or venture into the enhanced capabilities of Oxygen 6.

Embracing Progress at the Expense of Backwards Compatibility

In our quest to fully harness the potential of modern web technologies, we faced a pivotal decision: maintain backwards compatibility with Oxygen Classic, or break free from it to unleash the full capabilities of the new Oxygen. We realized that adhering to backwards compatibility would severely constrain the new codebase, limiting our ability to innovate and ultimately delivering a product that didn’t meet our standards for functionality or innovation.

Therefore, we had to make the difficult choice to break backwards compatibility with Oxygen Classic. Making this decision was, without a doubt, the hardest decision in the history of our company, but absolutely necessary to fully leverage modern web technologies and drive innovation.

Maintaining backwards compatibility with Oxygen Classic would have meant the death of innovation for Oxygen. It would have forced us to carry over all the problems and limiting architectural choices into the new version. While Oxygen Classic has served many well, and there’s love for what it was able to achieve, we knew we could do better. There is better. And after a decade since the first line of code was written for Oxygen Classic, it is time for change.

However, we also recognized the vast number of users relying on Oxygen Classic. We could not simply abandon our loyal Oxygen Classic users who have built and maintained their sites with us over the years.

So we decided to take a dual-path approach and support both versions of Oxygen simultaneously.

This strategy allows us to push the boundaries of innovation with Oxygen 6 while still honoring our commitment to the tens of thousands of users who rely on Oxygen Classic. It’s a commitment that allows us to balance respect for our past with a vision for the future, ensuring that all existing customers can continue to rely on Oxygen Classic, while having the freedom to explore the new capabilities of Oxygen 6 at their leisure.

Why We Chose Silence Over Speculation

We have always believed in delivering solutions that meet your needs today, not in selling dreams of tomorrow. That’s why, during the process of rewriting Oxygen, we chose not to announce it publicly. Our philosophy is simple: if Oxygen doesn’t fulfill your requirements right now, we don’t want you to buy it.

For the same reason, we avoided having a public roadmap for a very long time. We didn’t want to sell based on future promises. We’ve observed many products use hype and future roadmaps to attract customers. This approach often leads to mismatched expectations, where customers are drawn to the potential of what might be, rather than the reality of what is.

Many started rumors that we were rewriting. In response, we publicly denied these rumors, a decision we recognize will be very controversial given that ultimately, we did indeed rewrite the platform.

Our main reason for doing so was to manage expectations. No software development project is guaranteed to succeed or be completed on any specific timeline—especially one as ambitious as the Oxygen rewrite.

Software development is inherently experimental. One cannot always be certain of achieving something until it’s actually accomplished. Timelines are tough to estimate. The WordPress landscape or the state of our business could have changed drastically, making the successful completion and business viability of a rewrite questionable.

Even though we were confident in our ability to succeed, when we started the rewrite, there was no guarantee at all it would be successful. There is risk inherent in all endeavors, and we wanted to ensure that no potential customer would decide to purchase our product based on the speculation of a rewrite.

Ultimately, the decision to stay silent was made to protect users from potential disappointment stemming from unmet expectations based on rumors rather than official announcements.

We believe it’s better to entice customers by selling them a product that works as advertised today, not to trade on unconfirmed and speculative promises of what tomorrow might be.

Looking Forward with The New Oxygen

As we stand on the precipice of this new era with Oxygen 6, we are more excited than ever about the opportunities that lie ahead. The journey to this point has been one of rigorous testing, intense development, and an unwavering commitment to providing a product that both meets and exceeds the needs of modern web professionals.

The launch of Oxygen 6 marks a pivotal moment in our history—a leap towards a future where the limitations of the past no longer hold us back. But more importantly, it represents our commitment to our users. Whether you are continuing with Oxygen Classic or transitioning to Oxygen 6, we are here to support you every step of the way.

We extend our deepest gratitude to our community for your trust and loyalty throughout this transformative period. Your feedback, insights, and dedication have been instrumental in shaping Oxygen into what it is today. As we move forward, we promise to continue delivering excellence, pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and ensuring that our solutions continue to be reliable, innovative, and ahead of the curve.

Thank you for being a part of our journey. Here’s to building a brighter, more innovative future together with Oxygen.