Core Plugins: Latest

General Discussion
1

We have had many discussions here about moving some parts of the ClassicPress core out into plugins (so-called “core plugins”) so that users who don’t want to use them would be able to deactivate them and remove them from their sites.

While this was a very popular idea initially, no-one has come forward to write any code to make it happen in practice. It’s also become clear that supporting a suite of “core plugins” in addition to core would just create an additional burden for the development team.

There are, moreover, several plugins already available that do a good job of disabling the features in question. For emoji, we suggest Disable Emojis. For the Customizer there is Disable Customizer. For the REST API, there are Disable REST API and Disable WP REST API. And for embeds, there is Disable Embeds.

So far as Gravatars are concerned, ClassicPress comes with a switch to turn off avatars altogether. Go to Settings > Discussion and uncheck the Show Avatars option. (In fact, this is unchecked by default on new ClassicPress installs).

Comments can be disabled in a similar way by going to Settings > Discussion and unchecking Allow people to post comments on new articles. (Comments that have already been made can simply be trashed.)

The one exception we are making to the new approach is with Post by Email. This feature has not worked properly for several years, and it has been deprecated for some time as a result. In version 3.0 of ClassicPress, therefore, we plan simply to remove it.

Please feel free to comment on the new approach below, and also to submit PRs on Github on these or any other parts of ClassicPress.

6 Likes
2

Sounds logical to me (as a user not a developer).

1 Like
3

XML-RPC

I’ve opened #1528 that adds an options under Settings > General to disable it.

4 Likes
4

I was under the impression that in CP that file was disabled by default? I remember some discussion about that around 2018/2019 that for safety it was set to disabled on new installs and could be re-enabled again if I recall correctly? Having the dashboard setting to do so is going to help in those cases where people do not want or can’t access the server to enable/disable it.

5

I remember that Gravatar was disabled by default. xmlrpc.php is working on a normal installation and requires a plugin to be disabled.

6

so that was discussed and never acted upon? it’s good you proposed the setting in dashboard then.

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Emoji

I’ve opened #1530 that adds an options under Settings > General to disable it.
Need help for testing that Emoji are removed as expected.

2 Likes
8

Great idea!

2 Likes