Classic Commerce 1.0.0.alpha.1 release

We are excited to announce the release of Classic Commerce 1.0.0-alpha1 which is now available for testing and feedback.

The Classic Commerce project was initiated in the early stages of the ClassicPress development process, when it became clear that a reliable e-commerce solution would be a definite requirement. It was decided to fork WooCommerce 3.5.3 and over the past year much work has been done on removing various dependent services and plugins, with consequent trimming of the initial setup wizard and other dead weight.

In addition to that huge task, there was also the job of archiving the functions and classes for easier and better tracking of the future development of the software. Excellent contributions were also made by many members of the ClassicPress community to rebrand colours and logos and create a new look.

The result is a cleaner, lighter and truly independent e-commerce solution that still retains all of the features that made WooCommerce such a powerful and versatile plugin.

What has been changed?

All connections to Jetpack and WooCommerce Services have been removed. This means there will be no “nags” or “upsells” at any stage when you are using Classic Commerce. You won’t find any plugins or products that are promoted or pushed in any way. The developers feel that it should be up to individual users to decide what they need, so that they can create their own e-commerce solution with Classic Commerce providing an independent core.

What hasn’t changed?

There have been no changes to any functionality hooks. All actions and filters are intact as before.

There has been no changes to the functionality of the software as forked, so all the extensions compatible with WooCommerce 3.5.3 should still be usable provided they do not rely on Jetpack or WooCommerce Services.

However, many plugins and extensions check for the existence of woocommerce/woocommerce.php in the plugins folder prior to their activation. To circumvent this issue we have created a special compatibility plugin called “CC Compatibility for Woo Addons” which can be downloaded from the link below. This plugin cannot run on the same site along with WooCommerce, so you will need to delete WooCommerce completely before installing the compatibility plugin.

If you are not using the compatibility plugin then you can have both Classic Commerce and WooCommerce installed together. You will just need to deactivate one before activating the other. Both programs share the same data, so you will find all your products and settings and records will remain intact when switching between them.

Updates:

Updates for the Classic Commerce plugin will occur in the usual way and are being handled by CodePotent’s Update Manager.

Testing and Feedback:

We do not recommend testing this on a live site… but if you must, please ensure you have taken adequate backups.

You can report any feedback, issues and suggestions here, or raise an issue on the GitHub Classic Commerce repo using the link below.

Github links:

Classic Commerce repository: GitHub - ClassicPress/classic-commerce: A simple but powerful e-commerce platform built for ClassicPress. Forked from WooCommerce and compatible with many Woo extensions.

Classic Commerce download: Releases · ClassicPress/classic-commerce · GitHub

CC Compatibility for Woo Addons download: https://github.com/Classic-Commerce/cc-compat-woo/releases/download/v9999.0/woocommerce.zip

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Yay! That’s GREAT!

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This is great news! I will definitely test out on a staging site.

I do have concerns though. How can you fork Woo products? (an Automattic company). While under GPL, its a little different than WordPress. I’m sorry to bring it up, but I think its a fair question to ask - that could be problematic down the road.

Now that I have that out of the way, there will be a lot of recommendations for plugins. Subscriptions for recurring payments would be amazing!

Good work, keep it up.
Cheers
Avrom

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WooCommerce can be forked in just the same way that WordPress can be forked and anything else released under GPL. In fact, WC is itself a fork of Jigoshop which was also released under GPL.

Here’s the license that is packaged with WC: woocommerce/license.txt at b20ecc648e136ff93ae91ed63e8387830ac31bf2 · woocommerce/woocommerce · GitHub

To quote:

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License

So, no worries there. :slight_smile:

By all means recommend some plugins…but perhaps you could also recommend some devs to go with it :grinning:

Ideas we’re not short of. Devs we are.

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@1stepforward Thanx for explaining that Tim.

I’m excited to have the ClassicCommerce capability now for ClassicPress.
Under Automattic Woo has become overpriced and horrible company to deal with.

I’d ask my developer if he has any interest in helping out, but he is crazy busy. He likes playing with the new Gutenberg. :frowning:

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Yeah, Classic Commerce is a great addition. There’s still a fair bit of work to be done to get it to a stable release but we’re off to a very good start. And as things stand, many existing plugins that work with WC 3.5.3 and WP4.9.x will also work with CC.

I agree with you on the Woo pricing. I stopped buying their extensions.when they moved to the annual subscription model with no discount for renewals. I’d often buy an extension and only receive 3 or 4 tiny updates during the year. Very poor value for money.

Your developer likes playing with Gutenberg? Really? I didn’t think anyone liked Gutenberg. :grin:

@1stepforward Yeah he doesnt mind it, though he agrees its poor UI and poorly implemented. We still get along though. :slight_smile:
Personally, I’d rather put my time and effort into ClassicPress, so happy to support as I can. Probably bring my current site over and start testing ClassicCommerce.

Do you think recurring payments (subscriptions) could be built in, instead of a plugin? That would be amazing…

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That is a good question. As you are probably aware, one of the key objectives of ClassicPress, from the core to plugins and themes, is to keep things as lightweight as possible.

On that basis, my initial thoughts are that recurring payments / subscriptions are likely to be featured in an extension rather than as an integral part of CC. But nothing is cast in stone yet.

I’ve added recurring payments / subscriptions to the Essential plugins/extensions for Classic Commerce list and that will make sure it gets proper consideration. If you currently use such a plugin in WC, could you let us know which one it is please?

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@1stepforward I use WooCommerce Subscriptions. It is an unmanageable beast.
But I agree with you to keep things light as possible. OK I have hogged this thread, time for others.