I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here. I’m one of those personal bloggers. Actually, mine is more a mix of photography web site and blog. It’s my life, from old scanned film to new digital ventures, covering everything from street photography to bugs. Moving to WP was a struggle and it took the best part of a year to get my head around the plugins I needed, like SEO, backing up, caching and little touches like drop cap.
Now I feel lost. I’ve held off on the WP 5.0 update, but I don’t understand all the discussions and have no idea how my site will cope in the future. I’m extremely picky about how it looks and reading that old posts can be completely broken is a worry. I don’t want to sit with the classic editor plugin to find that in a couple of years time I’m up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
I don’t understand if I can move my site to CP. What about my host? (Jolt) What about the theme? (Photocrati) What about the NextGen galleries? (I pay to have NextGen Plus). Can I still use BackupBuddy? There are 21 plugins in total. Will they work now and will they work in the future?
I’ll be honest and say I’m not entirely sure I know what’s happening in WP or why, but it doesn’t feel right. I accept that eventually some things will change (like Photocrati no longer being updated) and I will have to adapt. I didn’t think that having a personal web site would cause my stress levels to go through the roof though. Any advice gratefully received…
Hi @Zooey, welcome on board.
You can safely migrate to CP. Version 1 is and will remainfully compatible with WP 4.9.8.
Nothing will change for you in the short term. For the long term end users are encouraged to reach out to themes and plugin developers to ask if they plan to maintain compatibility with CP. Moreover, it’s possible to migrate back to WP.
Last but not least, I safely migrated my blog too and it works like a charm… First thing I noticed was a faster loading time.
As per hosting, you don’t have to bother about that. There is the migration plugin you can download from https://classicpress.net - install it, activate it and just run it. It will do all the heavy lifting for you in less than a couple of minutes.
Thank you for that. I guess there is one more question I have and that’s about Jetpack. I started my blog on WP.com in 2013 and moved to WP.org in the summer of 2016. I was never entirely sure how it worked, but the Jetpack people told me I needed their plugin so I could keep my followers and comments - so somehow I’m still linked to WP.com. I know 90 followers isn’t a lot, but it’s taken five years to build up to that number. I don’t want to lose them or the comments. Will Jetpack work? I believe it’s an Automattic plugin and from what I’ve been reading, that sounds worrying.
Oh… and the back up of my site is 600Mb, so it will take a lot longer than a couple of minutes. We live in the middle of nowhere and our speed is very slow (sometimes as little as 200Kb or less) and Seagull keeps timing out. Will I have problems with that?
I use jetpack and it works. If it’s compatible with WP 4.9.8 it works on CP.
Concerning connection speed and timeouts I need to check on this and be back with an answer.
I’ve just looked at the migrate section and it seems really easy. Yesterday I landed on a page that seemed to suggest uploading via FTP again. Clearly I was in the wrong place. I’m just going to screen shot some settings (I made a full back up the other evening) and I’m ready to move
Everything seems to work fine with CP, as should be expected. Honestly, I expect everything to work fine except for WordFence,which just needs its settings fine-tuned until they make it fully CP appropriate. My biggest concern is six months or a year two from now how different plugins would react as more and more break away from the 4.9 fork and continue to accommodate Gutenberg. And I guess that needs to be addressed very slowly on a case by case basis, as plugins need to be either adapted to CP, stay as is, or offer compatibility. I have an older client site that I’m worried about because she likes to blog and be able to update her site and she’s been with me for almost a decade now. I don’t want to update it for obvious reasons, but at some point I have move it in one direction or another.
Just wanted to say hi Zooey. I’m a photographer too. Been using WordPress for a decade. Now totally confused and angry at this Gutenberg debacle. I have many of the same questions as you, so trying to understand what this all means and if ClassicPress is the answer.
It’s frustrating, isn’t it? I only really stopped tweaking my web site in the summer and was looking forward to just taking photographs and blogging about the experience. My gut feeling is that this is the right move. It was a bit like the massive changes they made to Flickr back in 2013 (which is why I left there and ended up creating a blog). I guess there is the option to move back if themes or plugins become a problem. I like it in here though and hope to see you around for the foreseeable future
Zooey, from what I can see on multiple forums, 10UP, WPTavern, and many other industry sites, people are still experiencing major problems with their sites after updating. Only a very small percentage of people are saying Gutenberg is working positively for them - and they are raving mad about Gutenberg - which makes me suspect they work for Automattic (the company owning Gutenberg). I have client sites who get referrals and leads through their sites (even if they have lousy SEO) - and just can’t afford to risk it all with an update.
I’ve switched over 10-15 sites to CP so far and have no had any issues and use the Divi theme and a handful of plugins in each build just by default. Some of my sites are fancier than others, some load slower than others. Part of that is cheap hosting out of necessity…but everyone seems sincere and positive about keeping this going.
Really…the alternatives are use Gutenberg and just jump in and commit to using it with a page builder theme like Divi or Beaver Builder (you need one or the other to create decent looking sites now more than ever before) or switch to CP. I can’t risk client sites or older sites on a new editor (and eventually their entire CMS) on a inherently flawed and buggy buildout that was rushed out to appease investors.
I’ve been watching the problems reported too, which is why I’m happy I moved to CP. However… I don’t understand the technical talk at all (like non-breaking changes) and I’m still concerned I may have problems in here further down the line. With over 800 images on my site, I am completely reliant on NextGen Plus. My images are in their galleries and not the media library - I found they were being duplicated, so deleted the copies from the latter. (My back up file is still 600Mb regardless). I was already aware Imagely are moving away from Photocrati towards Genesis and I simply cannot visualise what the future holds. I’m a photographer who knows nothing about page builders or editors. Any code I added was through trial and error - I don’t really understand that either. I already found WP a rather confusing environment, so this jump is a scary move for me…
I am just catching up here, but I will try to explain everything I can as clear as possible
WP 5.0 introduces a new page builder (the blocks). The issue with this is that it fundamentally changes how posts and pages are created. This is what leads to the breaking of sites.
The Classic Editor already has an end of life date announced. This means after 2021 the Classic Editor will be removed from WP. By this time you have to have either put up with the new Gutenberg ways or have moved on from WP.
You can migrate your site to ClassicPress. Your host won’t stop you from using our migration plugin (details in the link).
If your theme worked on WP 4.9 then it should work on ClassicPress. That being said, I haven’t tested it but others have been able to move their themes over.
Similar to the theme. If it worked on 4.9 then it should work on ClassicPress. The only conflicts we seem to have are from plugins that monitor the code.
Yes, you can still use BackupBuddy.
As mentioned above, most plugins that worked on 4.9 will work on ClassicPress. For the future, we hope to get more developers committing to supporting ClassicPress in the future. This is something we are working on, and you can help by contacting the plugin developers and asking them to support ClassicPress. You can find out more here: Contacting plugin developers to ask for ClassicPress compatibility
Hopefully that helps! If you have any further questions we would be happy to answer them
I’ve been looking at your e-mail for the developers, but I will be totally honest and say that I’m not sure how to do that either and if I had a reply, it would probably go over my head. I was hoping someone knowledgeable would eventually contact Imagely and the developers of the other plugins I use. I would worry that they are not friendly towards CP - I have no idea of the history between individuals, although I can clearly see there are some problems. Knowing me, I would put my foot in it and then fret for months afterwards
As a user of their plugin you should have nothing to worry about with asking whether or not they will support CP in the future. The committee has made a point not to reach out to developers as we believe it is better if the plugins users request support.
That being said, you don’t have to use the email provided, it is just there for anyone who wants it
I would say instead: ClassicPress core contributors should not be the only people to reach out to plugin and theme developers.
It’s important that this contact come from the plugin’s users directly, as this way it has more weight. Also, when more and more people contact plugin authors about supporting ClassicPress, it becomes a higher priority for them as something they know their users want.
So, @Zooey, please feel free to contact the authors of the plugins you use, as this helps all of us! If you have any more questions based on their replies, we’ll be here to help.
