I know from the post below that there are plans to improve the ClassicPress download process in the forthcoming website update.
However, I was introducing CP to an acquaintance yesterday and almost the first question was “how do you download it?”. This person is non-technical but quite capable of downloading and installing Wordpress themselves. I asked what the problem was and they said there were two things. Firstly, on clicking the “Download ClassicPress” button on the homepage, they expected then to see a large “Download latest version of CP…” CTA (similar to WP) but instead they got a “busy and confusing form” (their words). Secondly, and seemingly the largest issue, was that on clicking the small link on the form, they were taken offsite to a “confusing” site they hadn’t seen before (i.e. Github) and consequently wondered if it was safe.
As I say, I know this issue is being looked but I just wonder if it should be brought forward? From my experience yesterday, it does seem that non-technical-but-otherwise-capable people are being put off right at the start.
I don’t think anyone’s working on the old (existing) site. I could be wrong. I’m under the impression that this will be fixed when the new site rolls out. When is that? …as soon as this list of issues has been worked off.
I think it is safe to say that one out of two users never get to the download links. Once finally on the download page, the download link is a small font size at the bottom of the page named Assets.
Good luck finding this.
Does this really need to wait until the revamped site is completed? Would it not be relatively simple to add a big CTA that links to the gitthub download without the user even knowing they’ve visited github? Or as a temporary measure, could the download not be hosted on the CP server? I do understand however that there may be potential issues with bandwidth costs/limits that might prohibit the latter.
Yes. I must confess that I don’t understand why something as fundamental as this needs to wait for the new website and why it can’t be made more of a priority.
I’ve seen for myself the difficulty that one person had when trying to download CP. And this person has many years’ experience of working with WP and is certainly not what I would call your “average” WP user.
While I don’t think wasting much more time on the old site makes much sense, I have gone ahead and updated the download links on the download page to link directly to the zips for the time being.
@Aussie & @1stepforward if you both have time, it would be great getting some help finishing up the new site then these would no longer be an issue
Thanks @wadestriebel. I’ve asked the acquaintance I referred to in my original post for their thoughts and they agree that even this simple change makes a big difference. I’m not sure how long it took you to do it but I think it’s time well spent so thank you for that.
Regarding helping out with the new site, I’m currently working on the new SEO plugin for ClassicPress so I am really struggling for time but I’ll take a look to see if there’s anything I can help with.
I have just downloaded and extracted the archive on Android. From what I can see on the phone both links are similar zip archives from github. So if one works its strange the other doesn’t.