About to jump in to Classicpress

General Discussion
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I’m about to start a new project for a client, and I’ve decided to go with Classicpress over WordPress.

My reasons are as follows:

  1. Gutenberg is not appropriate because the design of the new site needs to be rigid and we don’t want to allow the client to make changes to the layout within the editor.

  2. I’m not sure how long the Disable Gutenberg plug-in will be a realistic option.

  3. The frontend of the site is going to built in Gatsby so Classicpress will function as a headless CMS which still allows me to use all of my favourite tools such as WP Migrate DB pro, ACF and WPGraphQL.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else is using Classicpress in a similar fashion.

10 Likes
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Congrats. I switched ALL my sites just prior to WP5. All of them work flawlessly

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Yes and no. I’ve used WP like this in the past, and am currently preparing the supplemental CP installation at my portfolio site to be used in similar, but not identical ways. Also I’ve implemented something like this recently for a client, in that specific landing pages are being generated as stand-alone, pure-bred static pages, based on their original post_content and meta fields (ACF of corpse).

So, yes, this is possible, and yes, it also works decently. You might want to look into the WP / CP REST API as a possible data supplying option, too.

cu, w0lf.

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Gatsby has introduced me to the joys of GraphQL, so I will be using the WPGraphQL plug-in.

which also provides this really cool GraphQL browser to the CP admin:

The only downside is that I need to purchase a commercial license to get ACF support working. I’ll pass this cost on to the client so it’s okay, and I like to know that these plug-ins will be around for a while.

https://www.wpgraphql.com/acf/

I’m hoping that Classicpress will be the perfect choice for this project.

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WP GraphQL is a wonderful tool, I am using it the way you first mentioned having CP as a headless CMS. But in my interactions with Jason Bahl, the creator of WP GraphQL, he shared that it works with WP 4.9.9 and CP along the way however, he is not so dedicated to developing it for CP specifically. It’s just a good run off. Personally, will keep testing it for this particular use case on CP and update anyone else if it breaks.

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That is interesting, and touches on an area that I don’t yet fully understand.

If this or any other plugin works now, is it likely to break with CP as WordPress adopts the new block based approach more and more?

If this divergence does occur, am I right in thinking that we can just continue to use older versions of the plugins?

I intend to buy a commercial license for WPGraphQL so I will contact Jason and let him know that I think he should support CP going forward. It’s worth a try.

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If a plugin is really good, chances are, that someone will fork it from the WP 4.9 stage. IMHO, from the CP point of view, it is even prefferable.

So, dear plugin developers, you should support it, or we will fork it.

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Or you can just create a custom endpoint using the REST API and query and return whatever you want without the need for a plugin.

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That’s an intriguing idea, but I’m not sure that it will work for my needs. The plugin provides a GraphQL API which I can query from Gatsby. As far as I understand, it would be a bit of work to recreate it.

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Yes, I wasn’t really suggesting that that is what you should do for your current project. You’ve already got the architecture sorted out.

I was making the point more to address the concern of what happens if the plugin you’re using stops working with ClassicPress. One possibility, as @LinasSimonis noted, is that the plugin gets forked. I was making the point that there’s another alternative too, which is to use custom REST API endpoints. It’s what I do already and it’s surprisingly easy.

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Indeed.

I guess this means I can stop worrying and dive in. Thanks!

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This is a different (and better!) way to think about the potential challenges ahead for CP.

I am convinced that the headless CMS is in the ascendant and therefore the various implementation problems in WordPress / Gutenberg will favour CP for this use case in the future.

I’m really excited at the possibilities.

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I came across this article about WPGraphQL which I thought might be of interest:

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Looks good. But the article compares apples to oranges. Using a custom endpoint on the REST API does the same thing this does. So then it’s just a matter of personal preference and habit.

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