I’m thinking of migrating a largish site to Classic press. I am concerned that some plugins that I really rely on may stop working in the future with CP, so in that event will there be a way to migrate back to Wordpress in the event of that happening?
Thanks
Here are the instructions to get the advanced options in the migration plugin:
TLDR: after migrating to ClassicPress leave the plugin installed, if you run into issues you can go back to the “Switch to ClassicPress” page and paste the following JavaScript snippet in the developer console to open advanced options:
jQuery('#cp-advanced-migration-form').removeClass('hidden')
Click the “Show advanced controls” button.
In the text box, enter a valid build URL (for example https://wordpress.org/wordpress-4.9.9.zip).
With the latest version of the migration plugin this step is no longer necessary, there is a “Show advanced controls” button instead.
many thanks but I was more wondering if Classicpress can commit to saying this will always be available? I’m think more like a few months or years down the line when suddenly a plugin I have been relying on is not working with CP.
I recently asked one plugin developer if they intended to support Classicpress, and his reply was something along the lines of
"I’m in agreement about Gutenberg. I have tried but do not get on with it.
I’m sorry but I can’t say we will support Classic Press specifically. As far as I know, if a plugin supports WordPress 4.9 it will be supported by Classic Press. We don’t plan to drop support for WordPress 4.9 any time soon."
Sure, we won’t be removing this functionality from the migration plugin. It is useful for other scenarios than just migrating back to WordPress.
Having said that, it is labeled as an advanced feature for a reason, and we strongly recommend making a backup of the site before using it, as you’ll see in the plugin.
What the migration plugin actually does is not hard to achieve with an FTP client. Here are more details: Installing ClassicPress | ClassicPress Documentation These instructions are for migrating from WordPress to ClassicPress, but you can use the same process to switch from ClassicPress back to WordPress.
OK thanks, I thought it might be more complicated than FTP if migrating back to WP if changes had been made to the SQL database.
So my contingency scenario might be:
or:
I think that your contingency plan’s early stages should include asking the CP community if they can suggest a fix or a workaround. That would save a lot of panic and migration.
Good point. There will be workarounds I’m sure. Touch wood. I’ve already switched Yoast to Rankmath, Big ones are List category Posts and Advanced Excerpt (to render audio player in excerpt as part of an audio search forum) and Wonderplugin audio, Wonderplugin tabs. There will be alternatives but huge work for me.
@mrlucky you are speaking as if no one is going to develop plugins specifically for CP (I understand your concern).
But trust me, as CP gains traction many plugins will be developed. Who knows if also BETTER than WP ones.
That said, a way to migrate to other platforms or from other platforms (WP included) for me is something identifying CP as business-focused CMS.
Boone? Daniel or Pat? 
Ops, thanks for the heads up. Typoooo.
I wouldn’t recommend the “panic” part (backups help with this), but otherwise none of these steps should present any problems.
And as Tim says, it’s important to share problems and solutions within the CP community, because there are people here who can help you solve any problem you may have, and also knowing what our users are experiencing is another thing that will ensure our long-term success.
This is a really important point. It’s not very useful to the CP community if you have a problem and just revert back to WordPress to solve it. Much better to first ask about it and try to get a solution here.
Your solution may help others who have a similar issue. But more importantly, it can ultimately lead to a long term fix to make the whole CP platform stronger and more reliable.
One problem just arose. I am using WooCommerce Taxamo plugin for EU VAT MOSS integration with my Taxamo account. I recently needed some support, and for this the WooCommerce “happiness” engineer needed access to my site to troubleshoot. That site is currently on 4.9, have not yet upgraded to CP. I doubt Automattic would have been able to advise if they’d logged in and discovered I was using Classicpress.
I get the feeling Taxamo is quite a niche plugin so I feel it’s unlikely anyone would develop a ClassicPress version.
Adding to this as nobody has responded, to be fair I didn’t actually ask a question!
So here it is.
What can we do in this situation? ie we need support from a developer and that requires a login to admin. There is a problem if they then say, sorry you are not using Wordpress, can’t help you. This I am sure is what would have happened if the WooCommerce devs had logged in and found Classicpress, would they have been so helpful?
I really appreciate that reply, but would it have worked well if my issue was in regard to Woocommerce Taxamo?
Yes, I think the people here would take a very good shot at it. Keep in mind that the WooCommerce page currently states it is compatible with any WP version down to 4.7. That means that CP v1 shouldn’t contain any changes that will break anything with WooCommerce, or any addon that works with WooCommerce.
If something isn’t working correctly then I’d say the first step is to report it here. Try and detail as much about the problem with any messages from the error logs. That will help people here work out exactly what is going on and why there is a problem. It will probably mean there is something that need tweaking in the CP end, not with the WooCommerce product.
As long as WooCommerce doesn’t shift their min requirement to WP5 I feel quite happy continuing to use it.
Edit: Sorry, I just realised I was assuming the issue involves some sort of critical problem involving compatibility with the core files. When you said earlier…
…what sort of problem did you have that time? If it is some sort of deficiency in the plugin itself then that would be a different story.
It was that after disabling the Taxamo plugin, the orders in Woocommerce were showing some lines that looked like code, it was actually some data that was written to a Woocommerce table. They added some code to functions.php to hide it from the orders but the ticket is still ongoing as I’d prefer to actually clean it out of the database.
Ah, OK. So it’s an issue with the Taxamo plugin interaction with WooCommerce. That sounds like a bug they should be fixing, whether it is being used with WP or CP.
It looks like this is an “official” plugin made by a separate developer (OPMC?). I would imagine they’d be keen to address this, regardless of the CMS you are using.
This actually raises a wider issue and I have created a new post here: Support for commercial plugins using CP
True but are they obliged to? It was a free plugin (WooCommerce extension) but then OPMC acquired it. They upgraded to version 2 and it became paid for and I decided not to upgrade at that point, also as new laws allowed me to de-register for EU digital VAT MOSS.
So no, it was originally developed as an official Woocommerce extension then sold to OPMC.
I suppose at this point, ie uninstalling, as I had chosen not to upgrade, it may actually be arguable who, if anyone, is obliged to support this issue.
I am still waiting to hear if they can actually follow through with my request which is for a mySql query that would actually remove the data form the Woocommerce table instead of just adding some code to functions.php that would hide it (seems to me a bit of a bandaid solution rather than a proper fix)
It could well be that somebody here will help me with this if Woocommerce can’t or won’t.