We’ll tighten forum moderation to prevent this. This shouldn’t happen and should be reported, including bullying. This should be a safe space to get help regardless of experience.
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I know CP is targeted towards businesses and that’s fair enough. But it will be the average person that will boost installations and therefore awareness of CP.
Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get and the more people who use CP, the faster news will spread. People like myself become the bread and butter users. Businesses and developers will then follow.
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The focus did change from “businesses” to just “creators” - the CMS for creators. Something we can revisit and better articulate probably.
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So I read through all of this and have been thinking about it more deeply through the last week. I do believe we need to have a high-level roadmap. I don’t feel that the initial roadmap outline should be prescriptive at all. It will also have to be realistic with expectations since the number of contributors is small and any work that gets done is on a best-effort basis only.
In the opening post here I see 3 overarching themes.
- Base software refinement and bug fixing (PHP and package updates).
- External systems upgrades (directories).
- The people/process management.
Keeping up with PHP and package updates is something that relies entirely on person power. We currently can’t keep up. How do we solve that?
- What if we don’t update to PHP 8 and don’t update TinyMCE?
- What gets better if we do update?
- How much time will the updates take if it’s done by one single person and is the amount of time reduced linearly if more people are involved?
As far as the theme and plugin directories go. I have felt for a long time that we have run before we can walk where this is concerned. We don’t have a non-manual directory yet. Everything hinges on having a working directory that requires minimal manual intervention to function before anything else happens.
The end goal should be a system that is on par with what is currently available in the WordPress space. The only difference would be an additional data source. I think we should line up to handle this in the following order:
- Build a functional directory within the ClassicPress site. The same code can handle both plugins and themes. One set of work, double the value.
- Connect the directory to an API that is a 1:1 drop-in replacement to the existing WordPress API.
- Consider how to integrate that into the ClassicPress admin in the same way the current system works.
As far as the people and process management goes that is a whole can of worms that I think is above and beyond what is suitable for a roadmap. I don’t believe a roadmap should detail processes or people management. We should talk about this kind of thing on its own - so it doesn’t get swamped out by technical requirements outlined in a roadmap.
I have more thoughts about all of these but forums is a concept I don’t feel comfortable working in. It requires me to write long-winded messages where the far more suitable way to do it is conversational with back and forth.
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PHP8 should be at the top of the list to focus efforts on because PHP7 is getting to the EOL. As a community member, not a future director, I would want to see this prioritised.
@joyously did most of the work on TinyMCE v5. I would value her recommendation on what we should do with it.
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We do have the directory integration plugin by Beda that brings the directory in the CP dashboard.
We however need to build theme dir and include that in the plugin.
I hope if trust is rebuilt we can ask Beda to join the effort again.
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Something I’m going to say here, may belong or may not. But there should be a more clear communication and leadership about ongoing things that are happening regarding core dev.
That means, keep this updated: Currently Active Projects - Projects - ClassicPress Forums (and if something is not really active, it should not be there, maybe have a second place for stale stuff that can be awaken… but, keep the active stuff in focus, crystal clear: “This is our focus now”).
If someone with dev skills sees that, he/she is gonna be lost and say: “uff… don’t know where to start, this seems dead”.
It needs to be: “We need to do this and this and this now for this task”. Like, divide the bigger task into smaller and realistic achievable milestones that any dev can see and say: “hmm… doesn’t look that crazy to me, let’s do it”.
Easier tasks → more people helping.
And big complex tasks are almost always a combination of many easy tasks. Someone needs to understand them and chunk them down and serve small taskiess for devieess to get 'em done.
Divide and conquer.
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So it sounds like PHP 8 compatibilityis probably top priority in terms of technical desires. Should it be higher priority than fixing and/or testing PHPMailer?
As far as i know it was mentioned that work on PHP mailer is already advanced during the core meeting.
I might have misunderstood but they were talking about scheduling it for release?
And it was reported that some of the work on PHP 8 is in progress, but I think they could use help since it is a very huge endeavour.
I think about PHP mailer it is important to release a fix because it is what broke the 1.4 release, so it’s natural that after the revert that was made to correct the issue we release it when ready IMHO.
I think, overall, we need better information on the main website about getting started.
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One other thing I want to mention is fixing donation button. I remember being reported that there were issues with it month ago and I don’t know if it was fixed.
Since Classic Commerce isn’t actively maintained right now, I think it might be right to move donations somewhere else. I will look into using Stripe checkout and other Stripe options to make donations easier. Fundraising will be #1 goal for me, so the process needs to be easy and functional.
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PHPMailer is updated to version 6.6.3 in develop and it now uses a similar fix that used to be used in Wordpress but that they decided to drop - this will maintain backwards compatibility - and there is a unit test to ensure the edit remains in place.
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On fundraising, I may well have missed earlier discussion, but have you considered joining Open Collective? I support a couple of other open source projects there and one benefit it is that they will themselves highlight interesting projects, which could bring CP to the attention of potential users. I would certainly be happy to support through Open Collective.
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Thanks, @JeremyCherfas for reminding us of Open Collective. When CP was forked, in the early days, it did have an Open Collective account. It was closed after a while. We will look into the possibility of opening it again. I will let you know once I have an update.
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Thanks again for the Open Collective suggestion, @JeremyCherfas. We have created a collective and plan to switch all donations to Open Collective. We’re still adding information, but it’s fully functional. So you can support CP and donate: ClassicPress - Open Collective
We’ll make an official announcement once we set everything up.
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Declined both my Visa and Mastercard.
Edit: Fixed
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I logged in today to delete my account and found a notification for this post. There’s a few points I’d like to clear up.
For me, that ship has sailed. I’ve moved back to WordPress and the idea of giving CP a third chance is…well… just not on the table. I won’t involve in another software project that attempts a democratic model for reasons I’ll state at the end of this post.
Stalling was the least of ClassicPress’ issues…and may have been more a symptom than a main cause. More of an issue was the human resources management. There was a tendency to not discuss/address HUGE (human resources) issues – such as removing Charles and James in a timely manner after it had become obvious they were a problem. Too, for whatever reason, certain toxic personalities have made CP their home. One can log on here almost any day and find a negative, toxic comment within a few minutes. The majority of the community is positive and helpful, but, a the toxics remain a fly in the ointment.
It wasn’t just the Directors. There were a lot more donations in the early days – I donated more than $3,000 to the project.
I’ve reported many posts over my time here… Nothing was ever done about any of it and it became apparent that reporting wasn’t worth the time. There were also a handful of times (when I was a moderator) where I’d make a forum decision and James would undo it, unable to stay in his own lane, which just led me to quit the position due to simple attrition.
Democracy was a neat idea…but what ended up happening is that, because everyone’s opinion had to be fielded, nobody’s ideas got acted on. A lot of time was always spent on pointless discussion. Remember the mile-long post where the guy wanted external links to open in a new tab and the entire thread was spent informing them again and again and again that is was not done this was for a viable reason – they still never accepted it and everyone’s time was wasted. I daresay that member probably isn’t even around anymore. My point is: all opinions on all topics are not equal and giving them equal airtime, opportunity, and legitimacy was a mistake.
This is a good example of what I referenced above – having to repeat the same thing because the other person doesn’t accept or understand it.
Anyway, while the ClassicPress project is no longer “for me” I do wish you all well in the endeavor.
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Thanks for sharing. It’s valuable feedback that, hopefully, won’t fall on deaf ears.
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