My company is in the process of building a hosted control panel solution for the orchestration and management of servers & sites. Don’t worry, I’m not here to plug our hosting company (we’ve already had a shoutout on here actually)!
Out of the box we would like to build in support for ClassicPress and I was just wondering what functionality you would like to see from your current host that would make using and deploying ClassicPress a lot easier for you?
We’re at the early stages of development and I’d love for us to develop our solution around what the community feels would be the ultimate hosting solution for ClassicPress.
Thank you for your time, I look forward to hearing your thoughts
I think one of the most important things is to either retain compatibility with Installatron and Softaculous or to create your own one-click installer app that works in a similar way.
Also useful would be a tool that helps with migration from WordPress to ClassicPress. Although this is a simple enough procedure from within WordPress using our migration plugin, if this can be automated via a one-click app from your control panel, that would be good. There are some checks that the plugin runs through before doing the migration, so your app would need to pick up on these.
And of course, the ClassicPress one-click installer (in whatever form) should get installed by default rather than having to be separately enabled. We think it’s important that as many people as possible know there’s a viable alternative to WordPress. So, a nice big shiny ClassicPress icon on your dashboard - not unlike the WP icon for cPanel’s WordPress cPAddon - would be ideal
Finally, we’d also like ClassicPress to be available via a LiteSpeed plugin (as it currently is with cPanel).
This may be a separate issue concerning hosting only, but our aim is for hosting companies to offer dedicated ClassicPress hosting packages rather than WordPress hosting “that also works with ClassicPress”.
As this is a completely bespoke system, we would introduce our own one-click installer with the ability to manage the application further into development. Initially it would just accommodate installing ClassicPress and SSO but we have plans to introduce plugin, theme and security management features as well.
Although this is a simple enough procedure from within WordPress using our migration plugin, if this can be automated via a one-click app from your control panel, that would be good.
This is really interesting and something we would love to offer. The platform will accommodate many different applications, so the ability to easily migrate from WordPress to ClassicPress would definitely be something we can build into the platform. Making ClassicPress a prominent option during the setup wizard would also be feasible.
Effectively the platform will tailor the server configuration to the application’s needs, maximising performance, security and reliability. For caching, we do have long term plans to introduce LiteSpeed Enterprise support but in the meantime, it’s using our nginx based stack that our managed clients have battled tested over the last couple of years.
Given the flexibility this approach gives us, there’s no reason why we couldn’t make our solution tailored to ClassicPress. What would you say defines the difference between a ClassicPress-compatible host and a solution dedicated to ClassicPress?
Thank you again for taking the time reply, it’s greatly appreciated
Technically, there’s no difference but there’s always a (small) chance that could change if, for example, either CP or WP were to introduce a change that affected the minimum PHP requirements. That’s just an example, but it could happen.
The main reason is just a matter of public perception. ClassicPress is not WordPress. It has its own community, its own ecosystem…and it doesn’t have a block editor. So anything that helps people to view ClassicPress as a product in its own right would be welcome.
I think the part I would automate here instead is to install the migration plugin and navigate to the plugin’s page under Tools. Then the plugin can do its compatibility checks like normal (and they will probably change in the future), and the user can give a final confirmation before switching.
Backups before/after the switch could also be a nice bonus.
Agree with all the rest of what you and @1stepforward have said so far. Thank you for supporting ClassicPress, and we are also here to support you if you need anything
