Does anyone want to work on ClassicPress v2 (with breaking changes)?

You mean you sell websites or customize ClassicPress sites?
I also use cp for business - for my business thou

The clients don’t want to hear about it. “Are there plugins? No? Ok then why would I use it. I can’t hire a programmer for everything” is the Standard answer …

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I sell access to websites.

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As far I understand, then, same as me?
The business site is on CP. No client wants to use it, however.
That is what I meant with “no one uses it for business”.
With CP you can not make a living (in my experience).
The only one I know here who has stated to build CP sites for clients (and thus making a living with cp) is James, and he does it by simply “doing it” as far I recall.
But I am diverging too much from the topic, sorry!

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Here’s the doc for our API:

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@alvarofranz it looks like we already have directory API. Check it out. This would be the best way to get started with v2. We all want and need plugins and themes to update automatically and be able to install them quickly without downloading zips.

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That’s awesome. I am moving a platform to CP, one that is actually being used by a business. Not a huge business, but it’s paying the bills for two people.

I am making sure everything works fine. Have to undo some stuff that I did to adapt to WP 5+.

Once I get that under control I will start with plugin directory. If someone is taking a look into that, It would be nice to get coordinated.

Started a topic to keep track of Plugin Directory Integration.

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Hey, are you still interested in working on ClassicPress stuff? Haven’t seen you around, wanted to check in. Thanks.

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Hi, got a job that required full commitment for a while. After that, I realized there was no point in investing time on trying to run after the WordPress shadow.

I have the energy and the will to do something creative with PHP and the WP style. But it has to stop being a compatibility chase. I see no point. :slight_smile:

Some will hate on me for saying this, but again, ask yourself: how long will it take for plugins to become obsolete and for CP to become “an old copy of WP with some patches?”.

If you’re doing this for fun, what’s the point to chase compatibility anyway? The WP style was cool, creating something new from that has always been a spark in my brain.

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@alvarofranz thanks for an update. I thought you were planning on working on CP version that did not prioritize compatibility, and would take CP away from WP. James created repo for this:

or did I miss something?

With the release of 1.4.0 and the bugs it introduced, it’s becoming more clear as WP continues to diverge backports will begin to cause more and more problems. So ClassicPress “next” version might be the only viable option to keep CP alive and relevant. Maybe others disagree, but that’s my 2 cents observing things for the last few months.

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I said many things, but did nothing. Had some motivation planning a plugin with @anon66243189 but then forgot about it after very busy times (sorry for that, I didn’t even reach out :man_facepalming:). But now with fresh perspective I really see no point in doing anything until an organized effort moves in a direction that doesn’t consist on chasing compatibility.

I’m not saying: BREAK EVERYTHING.

I’m saying: go ahead without fear of breaking stuff. And then, whoever likes a specific plugin, can fork it and adapt it to ClassicPress. Instead of adapting ClassicPress to the everchanging WordPress plugins, which is, essentially, being a delayed copy of WordPress.

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I think if you put together some draft plan where you think CP should go (a bullet list), that would help people make a decision to organize or not. Right now it’s a bit vague, people won’t support what they don’t understand.

For example, what would you like to accomplish in the first release of ClassicPress “next” or 2.0 version? (feature removals, additions, changes, etc).

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Great question.

I think the most important thing is to cleanup the codebase as much as possible, before trying to add anything at all.

STEP NUMBER 1 - “The removal”

So, I’d first ask: is there anything that the COMMUNITY thinks is really irrelevant in ClassicPress, that shall be removed?.

  • XML-RPC?
  • wpautop?
  • Links Manager?

If there is → do it. If there isn’t → ignore this step.

STEP NUMBER 2 - “The modularization”

After doing that, I’d go with separating (not removing) things that are merged within or entangledly spread all over the core and keep them as feature plugins. This isn’t easy… so we should make a list of stuff that falls into this category and order it by complexity. Then start with the easiest to get motivated and go on with more difficult stuff like the comments system. Remember, I’m not saying to remove the comments system, I’m saying to separate it into a plugin so that sites which don’t need/want it, don’t have to deal with it. Same applies for everything else. Means → faster, cleaner, leaner. (Isn’t that what CP aims to be?)

STEP NUMBER 3 - “The cleanup”

After getting this done, the CORE will be way lighter and I’d say to reorganize it, removing old PHP polyfills and backcompat stuff.

STEP NUMBER 4 - “The media & editor upgrade”

Both the Media Library and the Editor need to be refreshed. Instead of retweaking the currently tewaked tweaks, why not? → ADD TinyMCE 5 as the new editor and then instead of fixing all the jquery plugins to make them work with OLD oldness, create what needs to be created from scratch or implement existing open source alternatives that fit the case.

STEP NUMBER 5 - “Constant optimization”

And then! We can talk about editing currently existing stuff to make it better. But I wouldn’t add stuff to core. Rather… clean and optimize the core as much as possible, iterate over it with that goal in mind. Almost everything else is plugin territory. Constantly adding tweaks into it will only lead to a harder to maintain project.

TO THE COMPATIBILITY LOVERS:

What’s the point of all this?”, you may say. “WordPress people won’t like/join ClassicPress”.

It may be true. But isn’t it a logic statement to say that it may also attract people who like WP but ran away from it because of it being a mess?

PHP is more alive than ever! WP killed the WP Way. We can make it rise from ashes in the form of a brand new awesome PHP CMS.

At least it will be a clean codebase to build stuff and have fun and learn about modern PHP instead of wasting energy on maintaining PHP 5 stuff that will power nothing else but a bunch of personal blogs that will break when popular WP plugins stop supporting WP 4.9.

Also, WordPress people aren’t currently using ClassicPress ANYWAY (show me one big site that isn’t a personal blog with 5 daily visits that is using CP?).

So, I say: what’s the point on wasting so much energy on trying to make 20 years of old code work for… nothing…?

Passion feeds creation. And I like the CP soul (bring back WP). But what my passion won’t feed is painting on such a limited canvas.

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I agree with all of this. I think step 2 is the most important (and I think that if gravatar gets removed, then the replacement self-hosted avatar functionality should probably be replaced by a core plugin).

Apart from separating out tons of functionality (already started, as you’ve noted, by @MattyRob) we will also probably need to create a new core-plugins folder in wp-content, and have it load before mu-plugins. We’ll also need to make clear which hook(s) fire each core plugin, so that anyone who prefers to do so could build an alternative plugin.

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You don’t give CP enough credit. Google "powered by ClassicPress" and you’ll see a good number of business websites, not just blogs. It’s not huge, but also not zero.

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As I’ve said many times before, I want a platform that will support my works for many years (decades) to come, that’s why I’m on the side of “compatibility lovers.” Stability is much more important to me than new features. (I know I’m not alone on this mentality, and I know that there are businesses and organizations that also prioritize stability in software above all else; just look at the Debian project.)

Still, I was in agreement w/ the plan of @alvarofranz leading the efforts on developing CP v2 while @james continue to lead CP v1 and the later transition to v2.

But the works on CP v2 didn’t happen. And I did feel bad about that.

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Work is being executed as we talk. Spent some more hours today working on this. You will get more news soon, I’m taking my time to clean up the Avatar plugin and structure it in a way that I can feel proud of.

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Some general comments, to whom…
I have been using Wordpress since 2004, when I switched from Movable Type. For a while the improvements were actually that, then stuff like Jetpack and being tied to wordpress.com was questionable, but I understood ya gotta make money and stuff still worked.

I had one issue with auto-update, client site was blank white after it tried to do it unsupervised. After fixing the site manually I found the code to enter in wp-config and disabled that on all sites.

I sent Mullenweg a nastygram when I received a “how we doing?” email from the mothership not long after that happened. We had a short discussion and my point was that not only did it fail but it failed to tell me it failed, no warning emails came. I had to check in to find out anyway, so what was he saving me?

The answer being that there’s a chart somewhere showing how many sites are running the latest version and he wanted better numbers and users got burned because of that auto-update push.

Time went by, then apparently they changed the code needed to disable auto-updates somewhere in 5.x and I missed that memo. so the last few updates happened without my express permission.

And things broke. Again without warning. Including plugins I depend on.

What I saw in 5.x and up was further movement toward the Google methodology of tromping forward singing the happy wanderer lustily without looking down and not listening to single users and rethinking everything just because they’re bored and want to look cool to their peers.

It looked to me like all the “innovations” were for corporate clients and pros. All the new stuff did was get in my way and make plugins I rely on obsolete for no reason.

And then the day came when the Widgets panel just stayed blank and I needed to work on a site. Because I dislike and distrust Google, I won’t use Chrome or let Chromium call home. The blank widgets panel made me think of Google making up new web stuff that only works on Chrome, it felt like being excluded.

The blank widget panel was the final straw. 4.9 is a fairly happy place in my view, and rethinking needs to be done with great care and lots of time passing for consideration.

I’m really happy with Classic Press. When I was thinking of making my own fork, and BTW I do not have any programming skills, I was going to call it NoGu, for No Gutenberg. But this name is fine with me, I don’t care as long as it works and I can easily get things done, which in my case is uploading some photos, posting them along with some writing if needed, and being done. Out the door to take more photos or work on writing.

When the WP Support person started going on about looking through logs, yep I can do that, but I’d rather post my work. That makes me happier than diagnosing dysfunctional crap that was forced on me.

If we can, please, remember that people use this as a tool for an objective. I love tools and playing with versions, if you want someone to test V2 builds I have very content-light installs that I will use to help try things out, access to the file side, and modest database skills.

But I also have working installs that I depend on. Thank you for bringing back the joy of creation.

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ClassicPress is perfect. In fact, the direction to be followed is: Develop your own editor (CPpress). In which we can create the content, and it format it like Facebook Instant Articles. Okay, challenge won. Regardless of the way you write, in the exhibition, it would be like Facebook Instant Articles. Simple, intelligent and efficient, as long as block formatting is controlled by the editor, without user interference. It would automatically default to prevent breaks, and we could live quietly on ClassicPress without the terrible Guttemberg.

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I like the normal classicpress and maybe one day make more changes. But now, most important is to make a new plugins page. Less plugins but that work. Now… it’s like a shit. Because wordpress plugins don’t work. It’s not good to keep the wordpress inside classicpress. I can help with making new plugins for classicpress. Where do you submit new plugins?

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Sounds great! There doesn’t seem to be any official place to submit plugins right now:

… but you can always start forking your favorite WordPress plugin and sharing the repo URL. I started creating a JSON directory as a temporal solution while work is being done on the official plugin API. Now I stopped this because I have other things to do, but will come back soon.