I think the thing to realize is that ClassicPress is not an alternative to Wordpress, it’s an alternative to Automattic. From my perspective that includes WooCommerce and the CLI. Looking at the .org plugin page, WooCommerce has over 4 million active installs. That’s twice as many as the Classic Editor plugin(!). Some of my clients have a lot of customization tied up in WC and can’t migrate without it. The only way for CP to have WC is to fork it which has been started.
CP can’t fork everything though. The challenge at this stage is to make the business case that CP is a viable platform for premium plugins like Elementor. The reviews for the Gutenberg plugin are overwhelmingly negative. Many users just don’t want it. For those using page builders, Gutenberg was the answer to a question no one was asking. Time will tell if CP can connect with that market, but the market does appear to exist.
These are exciting times! Each time I make a decision on what is best for me and my 25 or so clients, I second guess myself because there are arguments for both sides. I put my own site on CP as a test. I really like the lean and mean and not beholden to a corporation direction of CP. But if my favorite plugins end up, for some reason, not working after a year or two, I will again be in a similar position as I am now. I can see that may not be avoidable as no one knows where WP will go either
Right, businesses don’t like uncertainty and WordPress hasn’t been completely transparent about what they plan to do long term.
The feedback I’ve gotten from clients is that they are not using Gutenberg, but they don’t take the CP fork seriously either. I don’t think they realize yet how far WordPress intends to go in this direction or how much it will cost them to update their site customizations. They seem to think pressure from users will force WP to pull back and keep the classic editor compatibility indefinitely. We’ll see, but the involvement of Google is worrisome and would explain they have pushed out such an unpopular change and done so before it was ready for release.
Google’s involvement in ‘Newspack’ has little or nothing to do with WP’s continued suitability for business websites.
I also have clients who don’t yet understand that CP is their best option. I’m not going to argue with them: they will understand in time, I have no doubt. As CP moves forward, its credibility will rise.
In the meantime, I’m keeping squeamish clients on 4.9.9 with Classic Editor plugin enabled, just in case someone hits the update to 5.x.x button.
It’s very important to us to avoid this outcome, too. We use many of the same plugins ourselves, and we know how damaging this would be to ClassicPress as a platform.
We’re going to do our best here, but we’ll also be relying on support and help from the community. So please, “if you see something, say something” - we’ve already fixed multiple bugs/issues due to user reports, and pushed several vendors to do the same.
I don’t use Elementor or BB, but I use other plugins, and I’m sure we all have plugins that we are attached to. A possibility may be to support ClassicPress v1 as an LTS that will always be compatible with WP. As in, regardless of whether the plugins officially support, they should always work. Sort of like Drupal 7 is still in wide use, even though the latest is Drupal 8.
The less complicated plugins can be forked and adapted by us or the ones supporting CP will move forward into further versions as well.
I think if we plan features on further versions of CP that are desirable but absent on WP, it will be motivation for plugin developers to intentionally support.
For example, properly supporting plugging more customizations into tag and category pages as well. SEO related optimizations, featured images, custom fields to support linked data making the site way more accessible to AIs… Instead of all the semantic plugins doing half baked jobs of linked data or very expensive paid alternatives, linked data could be a reality with existing tags and categories. BOOM. No more having to recreate endless terms and so on. Can’t imagine any future conscious developer not wanting to support that.
Preamble: The first version of ClassicPress will be a long-term support (LTS) version. If you choose to, you can stay on this version for years to come. We won’t introduce any changes that could break compatibility with themes or plugins that support WordPress 4.9.x.
When I read that paragraph it gave me the confidence to move everything over to CP.
I hope Elementor will be forked. I have issues with the latest updates which are not being addressed by the plugin authors because I use ClassicPress, even though other people are having the same problems. This would not inspire people to make the jump…
I told them it was essentially the same as WP 4.9. Also, there were a lot of “me toos” in the thread. But they said they don’t support ClassicPress, so I figured there wasn’t anything I could do. I’ve been hoping they pay attention to one of the other people with the same complaints. You can see the thread here.
They definitely shouldn’t have marked that thread as Resolved with all the other people commenting that they have the same issue. It’s up to you but I think it would be worth another reply pointing out that other people running WordPress are experiencing the same thing.
In any case it shows that a fork of Elementor may be essential to convince some people to use ClassicPress. Not just because they won’t support it, but because it sounds like Elementor will be keeping up with the changes in Wordpress over time.
I’ve never used Elementor (or any other page builder), but I do have one client who wanted to install it on their site.
So, it’s basically a “better Gutenberg”? Is that right? Given that CP is a business-oriented CMS, I’m just wondering if page-builders might not be very high on the list of priorities. Don’t know… just speculating.
I’m not too familiar with it, having just recently installed it and used it for only one page. But it and Beaver Builder are popular plugins, basically page builders from what I can see, and yes, better at it than Gutenberg. The OP says he needs them to build client sites.
Yes, would be good to get ONE page builder that supported CP. I think if just one of them gets on board, and is known as the one that works with CP, then they will get all our business. Same with a security plugin. They all do much the same job, so if WordFence won’t come to the party, I’m happy to go with whoever does.
It would be interesting to start a list of categories of plugins we feel are important, and then see if we can get at least one CP-friendly version in each. Might just do that.
This would not inspire people to make the jump…