I’ve been in touch with Litespeed today to ask if they would consider supporting CP long term. Their initial response was:
Our test team will confirm the compatibility and then we will add the official compatibility into our readme.
When I asked if that meant Litespeed is officially going to support ClassicPress from this point forward, complete with dedicated CP version of LSCache, I was told:
I believe so.
So, looks promising.
One reason why I think it’s important to get support from Litespeed is that many hosting providers with a dedicated WordPress hosting service depend on Litespeed. Subsequently, there’s little chance of hosting providers offering dedicated ClassicPress hosting if Litespeed don’t support CP.
We know that ClassicPress is a fork of the WP 4.9 branch, and we will surely maintain long-term support for WP 4.9 branch.
So it’s a fair assessment that LSCWP will maintain its compatibility with ClassicPress, unless CP diverges too much away from the WP 4.9 branch for basic WP functions.
… which is disappointing. They seem to be missing the point entirely. I’ve replied back to them saying we’re looking for dedicated support beyond ClassicPress 1.x. I’ll let you know what they say.
Unfortunately, this has turned out to be a dead end. Litespeed won’t commit to officially supporting ClassicPress. In their most recent response, they just say:
We can’t predict how far they will get from original WP. But if it’s popular and worth, we can try our best to support it.
Which is about as non-committal as you can get and is again missing the point.
All I can suggest is that hosting companies try to convince them.
I’ve not given up all hope yet. Not quite. I got another response from a different person today which reads as follows:
I just want to clarify the response. For the foreseeable future, the answer is yes - we will support CP alongside WP.
Continual support depends on how much ClassicPress deviates from WordPress. As long as ClassicPress keeps to its roots and does not deviate from its intent (to keep the core of WP 4.9.x), then we will continue to support both.
That is the bare minimum as to what we will support with ClassicPress. Meaning if ClassicPress becomes popular and we have more resources, then we will definitely support both. Otherwise, we will do our best to keep both versions working.
Our hope is that we will be able to use the same plugin for both versions. However, if it deviates far enough that it necessitates two plugins, we will split it into two plugins.
But this still very woolly.
While the plugin might continue to work with CP for some time to come, hosting companies (including my own) still won’t commit to supporting ClassicPress until Litespeed give an unequivocal “we support ClassicPress” statement.
You dont need LiteSpeed to host CP. Yes it’s great, but we don’t, and our sites run faster than a lot of other hosts. Part of that speed comes directly from our server provider. We fully support ClassicPress hosting.
Yeah, I understand that. But many hosting providers have “special” WordPress hosting packages mostly based on Litespeed and I’m trying to get them to add ClassicPress to that. It’s for the exposure as much as anything.
I think it’s a reasonable stance. They don’t really know what they are getting themselves into if they promise to support CP, so they are basically saying “Yes, probably”. And they added if CP becomes popular they definitely will. I read it as fairly positive.
My point is: it’s still not enough to get the hosting companies on board. I can fully understand their position but if everyone waited to see what everyone else is doing, then we’re not going to get very far. Fortunately, we do have some developers & hosting companies that have already made the leap of faith (thank you!).
It’s a chicken and egg. Developers and hosting providers etc. understandably want to see how successful ClassicPress is before committing but ClassicPress needs the support of developers and hosting providers to help make it successful.
Anyway, I am still in active discussions with Litespeed and beginning to make some headway again. So never say never!
The same could be said for WordPress. I think we all know that the “All singing, all dancing, super duper, massively powerful, dedicated WordPress hosting” is a bit of a marketing gimmick.
But having tried Litespeed on my own VPS, I do know that it does definitely make a difference.
Sorry I misquoted this paragraph, I was reading this as:
“I own an hosting company and I won’t commit to support CP until Litespeed say’s they are willing to support” and I was like you’ve been getting CP on most services, why aren’t you adopting it as early as possible, my bad, I thought you own the company, never knew you were fighting for all.
Ah, I can see now how that can be read the wrong way . To confirm, I don’t own the company (I wish!). It’s just the company that I use for hosting.
Yeah, I’ve had my eye on Nginx for a while now and have been meaning to test it…but there’s always something else that needs doing.
Just for information, the switch from Apache to Litespeed is really simple. There’s a few changes to be made to .htaccess but apart from that, it was more or less seamless. The performance improvement was noticeable straight away. Switching back to Apache is simple too.
So, I’m getting a little confused here. I thought Litespeed is something the hosting company runs on their servers. It isn’t something that is specific to WP or CP. However the Litespeed Caching plugin is a caching plugin, initially written for WP, that works in conjunction with Litespeed.
My hosting company has Litespeed. I have tried the Litespeed caching plugin and it made no difference to my sites so I don’t bother using it.
I’m not really seeing why this is so important for hosting companies. Installing the plugin is something the user should be doing.
There are two elements: LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) and LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP). LSWS runs on the server as a drop-in replacement for Apache. LSCWP is the caching plugin for WP. But they also do cache plugins for Magento, Joomla, OpenCart and other platforms.
Best results are obtained when the web component and the cache plugin are used together but the plugin can be used on its own.
If you look at most hosting companies, they offer various managed WordPress hosting packages, some based on Litespeed, others on Nginx. All make good use of caching. But it’s the fact that they’re managed that is significant.
Here’s a couple of examples:
The ones that are using Litespeed in their managed packages also use the caching plugin. But it is difficult (if not impossible) to persuade hosting companies to support ClassicPress if a key component of the underlying technology doesn’t support it.
So if we can get Litespeed to commit to supporting CP, the theory is that it will make it a lot easier to get hosting companies to support it too and perhaps offer a dedicated, managed ClassicPress hosting package.
And yes, it has been mentioned that Litespeed isn’t essential for ClassicPress sites, but that is missing the point.
Obviously everyone will have different experiences. When I tested LSCWP in conjunction with LSWS, it made a noticeable difference to most of my sites, particularly the larger ones.
OK, that’s clearer. We seem to be using Litespeed and the Litespeed Caching Plugin interchangeably. But we are really talking about getting a version of the plugin for CP.
. To confirm, I don’t own the company (I wish!). It’s just the company that I use for hosting.