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 donāt like uncertainty and WordPress hasnāt been completely transparent about what they plan to do long term.
The feedback Iāve gotten from clients is that they are not using Gutenberg, but they donāt take the CP fork seriously either. I donāt 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. Weāll 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.
Googleās involvement in āNewspackā has little or nothing to do with WPās continued suitability for business websites.
I also have clients who donāt yet understand that CP is their best option. Iām 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, Iām keeping squeamish clients on 4.9.9 with Classic Editor plugin enabled, just in case someone hits the update to 5.x.x button.
Itās 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.
Weāre going to do our best here, but weāll also be relying on support and help from the community. So please, āif you see something, say somethingā - weāve already fixed multiple bugs/issues due to user reports, and pushed several vendors to do the same.
I donāt use Elementor or BB, but I use other plugins, and Iām 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 AIsā¦ 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. Canāt imagine any future conscious developer not wanting to support that.
This is mentioned in the roadmap - ClassicPress | Stable. Lightweight. Instantly Familiar.
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 wonāt 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 jumpā¦
@NyssaTheHobbit this seems like sub-par support. Have you told them that the issues youāre having are also reproducible with WordPress?
I told them it was essentially the same as WP 4.9. Also, there were a lot of āme toosā in the thread. But they said they donāt support ClassicPress, so I figured there wasnāt anything I could do. Iāve been hoping they pay attention to one of the other people with the same complaints. You can see the thread here.
They definitely shouldnāt have marked that thread as Resolved with all the other people commenting that they have the same issue. Itās 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 wonāt support it, but because it sounds like Elementor will be keeping up with the changes in Wordpress over time.
Iāve never used Elementor (or any other page builder), but I do have one client who wanted to install it on their site.
So, itās basically a ābetter Gutenbergā? Is that right? Given that CP is a business-oriented CMS, Iām just wondering if page-builders might not be very high on the list of priorities. Donāt knowā¦ just speculating.
Iām 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 wonāt come to the party, Iām 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.
@NyssaTheHobbit Iām using Elementor with ClassicPress Beta 2 in my site redesign and I donāt have any issue till the moment.
I can have a look to see what might be going on. Do you have any staging site where that situation is replicated?
Iām not having any problems either. Maybe a plugin conflict?
No, my account doesnāt allow staging. My site is here; I can update Elementor to 2.4.3 for a bit so you can see.
A little testing just now revealed that Autoptomize is conflicting somehow. Now to narrow down howā¦