Approaching the eventual opportunity of a WP exodus

General Discussion
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Hello CP folks! A lurker and well-meaning WP user & dev here.

As most probably is well know by now, there’s a shaking event to the foundations of WP and its whole community.

As an outsider, I believe there’s a moment of great opportunity for CP because of this.

However, IMHO, there’s a fundamental weakness in the founding vision of CP, to allow it to become the natural new home of an eventual exodus from WP.

Namely, by deciding to get rid of Gutenberg, I’ve observed CP has now created a myriad of compatibility issues with the WP repository.

If CP could achieve a near 100% drop-in replacement with WP, and marketing it accordingly, CP could become the new WP, freed of MM influence, and aiming to keep the highest FOSS standards.

To achieve this, think there’s a rather easy and affordable approach. Namely:

Advertise CP: instead of essentially of it being “Instantly Familiar” i.e. “Gutenberg-free”, make it instead like “WP with a choice” i.e. Gutenberg-as-an-optional-plugin (which IMHO it should have been all along). That way, CP has a rather straightforward path to near 100% WP compatibility, and most importantly, a fresh and friendly management structure, for everybody from WP looking to jump ship in a mostly seamless way.

Technically, it should be a rather quick CP release and not much of a hassle, I believe.

Тhere are other interesting initiatives right now that could get united in a common effort, if CP management is open to reach out.

Please, CP leaders, give it at least a thought!

Thank you for your consideration.

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Welcome to ClassicPress!

But I’m going to disappoint you. What you suggest is the very antithesis of what ClassicPress is about. It’s not simply that we hate blocks; we hate bloat even more. Gutenberg has bloated WordPress core so badly that it’s now twice the size of the core of ClassicPress. There’s absolutely no way we want that.

With so much code involved, your assumption that it would be rather easy to do is also false. It would actually be a nightmare. If you or others want the current version of WP but without its leadership, you will need to create your own fork.

Finally, ClassicPress is far more than WP without GB. ClassicPress boasts far superior media management, a much faster and more accessible admin, an admin that works properly on touchscreens, elimination of old JavaScript libraries, and much more. We also have plenty more planned.

If you’d like to join us, you’d be very welcome. But if you want to use a different editor than the one we provide, you’ll need to find or build a plugin to do so.

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Thanks Tim, for chiming in so quickly.

Yes, it’s disappointing to hear that. I think CP is making a tragic mistake if that’s the official stance.

From a technical POV, I’m certain CP already offers some great advantages against WP, but what’s happening at WP right now needs of a more strategic thinking to catch this opportunity - as а community and sponsor-wise.

From an outsider, it becomes quite apparent that CP is a stagnant project, and the 2 forks so far prove that there’s also uncertainty within the team of the right way ahead.

If CP let this fast-pacing opportunity slip away, frankly, it simply doesn’t seem to me there will ever be another better time to gain traction as an alternative CMS to WP. For better or for worse, Gutenberg has evolved a lot since CP’s inception, and it has begrudgingly become a valid choice among the other leading WP editors and builders. Most of the WP community seems to also have moved on from the initial outrage that gave CP a raison d’etre.

The main issue with Gutenberg now is indeed bloat, but still, it has become ubiquitous to core for compatibility with many plugins. Splitting that bloat as a separate plugin seems like another more compatible way ahead, IMHO.

Anyway, this was just a friendly reminder and hopefully some food for thought for the leadership and community. Personally, I seek nothing, nor have anything to gain either from this whole drama, one way or another.

HTH.

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Let me correct you right there. ClassicPress is far from stagnant! We wouldn’t have made all those significant improvements to the software if we were. You can check out all the PRs on our Github repositories to confirm that.

You keep talking about an opportunity for ClassicPress, as if we were a money-making venture looking for market share. But we aren’t and we’re not. We’re a group of volunteers focused on making a lean, accessible, and effective CMS. If anyone wishes to join us, they’re very welcome, but we aren’t going to be changing our vision because two large venture capitalist-backed corporations have had a public falling out.

If you want to join a group making another fork of WordPress, that’s absolutely fine by us. The ability to fork and improve is what makes open source so powerful.

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@alx359 Alex, welcome!

In the spirit of friendly debate. I have to agree with Tim here. ClassicPress is not trying to be WordPress and that’s not the goal. If you need 100% compatibility with WordPress then you need to stay with WordPress. Just disable Gutenberg via plugins (or code snippets for that). We do have sites we have to keep on WP.

Regarding the block editor, Gutenberg will eventually be the default editor for everything in WordPress, and won’t be able to be disabled. It’s already moving in that direction.

I can tell you though that our ClassicPress sites load 400% to 500% faster than WP. And we find compatibility with most plugins, other than Elementor for example.

Personally I don’t think that kind of promotion would serve CP well. People will migrate over here as they need and want to. I don’t see a lost opportunity, I see it slowly building steady and in the way it should. But since CP is Community Governance, that’s up to the community to decide. Not any one person.

Stagnant? Heck no. In fact, we are adding ClassicPress Hosting to our core service, converting some of our WP sites to CP, and making a commitment to build new projects with CP.

For me, ClassicPress is a breath of fresh air with community governance.

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