Is it OK to post this, I am wondering to myself. I searched first and didn’t see it mentioned and then was unsure if it was Ok to share here. If not, please don’t hesitate to delete.
WPTavern published yesterday an article on how block-based WordPress themes might work in WordPress. It’s worth trading your time for a read…
My reaction? Well, should it even matter in a world of opinions everywhere, my opinion begins with the words “He who forgets history…” Carry on!
Fine to post this, I just moved it to a new topic rather than being part of the “About the General category” topic.
It will be interesting to see where WP takes this, but I think most of us are here because we want an alternative approach (basically to keep using what existed before Gutenberg and continue building off of that).
Thank you. The article confirms what many believed would eventually happen, the elimination of the need for the thousands of themes for WordPress. Instead, those folks can find an alternative for their sales here at ClassicPress. This also opens the door for other excellent opportunites, but I believe it’s best to keep those ideas private.
It just confirms to me that WordPress is dumbing down and wants to control everything. It gives the impression they’re aiming more at the basic / hobbyist user rather than the professional, business user. I can even see WP ending up as just wordpress[.]com and ditching OS altogether.
The role of themes will be greatly diminished in the future along with the theme ecosystem. Best for theme developers over there to learn plugins and blocks…real quick.
What I don’t get is themes provided design, a critical component of websites. So where do the users get their design? I suspect it will be through templates. Templates will become the new themes.
That’s why I said WP is dumbing down and looking to control everything. I really do think that WP are moving towards an online-only (cloud-based) service model and this will without a doubt affect plugin and theme developers.
Don’t ask me to… my english is just good to order beer
And maybe help them to get their Envato Market WordPress Plugin compatible with ClassicPress…
At the moment it seems to have the same user-agent troubles as eventsmanager in this thread.
That might be an idea. Although I’ve seen a number of developers leaving Envato recently, I think it’s still an important marketplace and it’d certainly do no harm to have them on board.
Before anyone does contact them, can you let us know what it is or isn’t doing and if it still works on WP 4.9.12?
I’m doing some test, and for now it works (changing user agent) on a production site. Tomorrow I’m going to do some more destructive tests… but not on the live site
Don’t know why 5.1 is required.
And, another thing I can’t understand, it seems to just throw an admin notice when the user-agent is different, but nothing else… then the admin notice disappears!
LOL, I love seeing my article(s) posted in discussion. But the theme industry is not going to last too long as the theme ecosystem is going to drastically change; especially if the core is considering a core-based theme where theme authors will apply CSS only.
As we end this year of 2019, I will be updating that article at Rough Pixels. For 2020, I will be looking to see how much of a ClassicPress market there is if I were to drop WP themes in the new year.
I won’t be submitting anymore themes to the WP theme directory either; the review queue is horrendous (currently a 4+ month wait time). A shame really because I liked submitting free WP themes to it, but with that wait time, it means I’d be lucky to only get 2-3 themes per year added there.
What I would like to see is a free CP theme directory at some point. I have some ideas on the process of it and reviewing themes.
Hi Kevin…nice to see more WP theme review people here
Anyway, it’s true, theme authors need to start the changeover quickly because the concept of themes is going to change faster than antisipated. I spoke with Rich Tabor and even he said that theme authors need to start focusing on plugin-based block development. Themes will be CSS and blocks (from plugins).
@kevinhaig and @RoughPixels are correct! It’s not so much about dumbing down, as Automattic has been moving in this direction for a long and inevitable time. And here it is. I hate Gutenberg with a passion, but this looks impressive.
For those of us who use wordpress, the new (and much denied) page builder from #Automattic (using #Gutenberg), could put the entire theme and page-builder market at risk.
