Th3 Core

Why We Are Here => Web Development => Topic started by: Brad on August 05, 2022, 08:33:51 PM

Title: ClassicPress
Post by: Brad on August 05, 2022, 08:33:51 PM
https://www.classicpress.net/

Is a fork of WordPress.  They forked it just before the block editor came out.

ClassicPress has a plugin that will convert a WordPress install to ClassicPress.

I've checked the ClassicPress forums:
1, They generally have all the basic plugins most bloggers would need: (ie. forms, anti-spam, etc.)
2. Most older WordPress plugins should work as long as they are compatible with Wordpress 4.9 or lower.  This means stuff like AntiSpam Bee should work.

Anyone using ClassicPress or converted to it?  How was your experience?
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: Brad on August 06, 2022, 03:15:50 PM
I just converted a new WordPress site to ClassicPress via the ClassicPress plugin and it was painless.  Anyway, now I know it works.  Like.

Useful and Why?

1. If you don't trust the direction WordPress is heading.
2. If all you want is a blog, but a full featured blog.  So many of the newer blog scripts seem to always be missing some crucial feature(s).
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: ergophobe on August 07, 2022, 03:55:03 PM
A similar thing happened with Drupal when they pulled the guts out and rebuilt it on Symfony. A group forked it to Backdrop.

It has struggled to get much traction, but in some ways it doesn't need that much traction because they are not focused on adding features. It's for people who were happy with Drupal 7 and that's what they want.

The thing that worries me with projects like that is
 - do they have the energy to keep up with security patches
 - do they have the energy to stay compatible with third-party library changes.

For example, Classic WP still uses TinyMCE (I think) and JQuery. You can strip them both out, but these packages evolve, so you need at least a minimal community to keep things rolling.

More generally, I feel like the strategic decision for Drupal was to make it more friendly to people who were professional PHP developers and less friendly to everyone else. This was not a bad decision since they were watching the "everyone else" crowd switch in droves to WordPress no matter what, so catering to that crowd was just a losing proposition.

WordPress still seems to want to have it all - an easy on-ramp for the masses and more developer features and ever-increasing complexity. But because WP prizes backward-compatibility, as the complexity grows, the develop experience becomes more and more of a nightmare. Because of the fundamental architecture, it is really challenging on a WP site to use modern developer tools like Composer, which is pretty much required to safely run any complex PHP package these days.

I do not see WP ever being willing to break backwards compatibility in a serious way, so they are sort of stuck with an app that gets more and more complex, but is still incompatible with the tools that help you manage complex apps.
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: Brad on August 07, 2022, 06:39:24 PM
WP continues on.  The new block editor was released too early and was full of bugs, but too their credit WP fixed that and I'm told if you like a block editor, Gutenberg is about as good as it gets.

What I see is more themes and plugins that only work with the block editor are creeping in.  Eventually, even with the classic editor plugin your choices for themes and plugins will be greatly reduced just by attrition.  Right now it does not seem so bad, but when I'm looking at a platform for a site I'm looking at least 5 years down the road.  For me, WP is a dead end.  Maybe not right away but I know the road peters out somewhere up ahead.

We will see where ClassicPress goes.  Now is a good time for me to experiment with it.  I can tell you they have cut a lot of bloat out of CP compared to WP.  CP is noticeably snappy compared to WP.

Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: ergophobe on August 08, 2022, 03:57:25 AM
That's pretty much right. If you don't like the block editor, you don't like WordPress and should find something else. If you like the block editor, the Wordpress implementation is probably the best there is (Drupal has things that are sort of like the block editor, but not nearly as user friendly for the person who wants to know nothing about the technology and just wants to write stuff, as one example).

As I say, I think it's mostly a good thing. For a while it was like ever CMS was converging, copying each other and competing with each other over the same feature sets. I feel like CMSs have started to differentiate again.
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: Brad on August 08, 2022, 09:04:33 AM
> differentiate

I'm seeing a lot of new "lightweight" blogging platforms.  "Lightweight" is a BS term for not many features and missing features which they cover up with marketing-speak.  You have to be able to live with that platform for at least 5 years.  Things like comments, site search, tags, categories, pages, forms, choice of WYSIWYG or Markdown editors might seem like extras when your blog is new but you will outgrow that platform especially if you turn out to be a prolific blogger.

And you also need to be able to export your data.

A lot of these newer lightweight blog CMS's seem to always have one or two features missing.

And the Big Guys are dwindling so it's getting harder to find a CMS that has all the features.

The new big thing are static site generators which may have some merit.  I really know nothing about them and I'm not sure what features they have and how friendly they are to the end user.

Anyway, I'm glad ClassicPress is around to fill all those gaps.
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: rcjordan on August 08, 2022, 02:27:00 PM
today's feed:

blosxom :: the zen of blogging ::
http://www.blosxom.com/
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: ergophobe on August 14, 2022, 11:06:00 PM
I think the model for the "lightweight" or the static sites is to use third-party apps to run dynamic features.

Disqus for comments (never used it)

Addsearch for search (have used it on one site and it's quite good)

Et cetera

The problem is that it becomes prohibitively expensive for a hobby blog - $133/yr for Disqus, $1188/yr for Addsearch, etc.
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: ergophobe on August 16, 2022, 05:23:04 PM
Brad - read this thread about redesigning the WP.org home page using the block editor vs the super fast hard-coded pages (but that required developer time rather than just content editor time to change).

https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/08/01/developing-the-redesigned-home-and-download-pages

Some analysis here
https://masterwp.com/no-matt-mullenweg-didnt-say-that-wix-is-faster-than-wordpress/
Title: Re: ClassicPress
Post by: Brad on August 16, 2022, 07:54:30 PM
The Search Engine Journal article came up on my Twitter feed.  I took it with a grain of salt because despite the block editor you might have a design by committee type SNAFU.

Still it sounds like not everything is roses in GutenbergLand.

From a business standpoint I understand the move to the block editor, cos commercial type blogs are more likely to use it (if it works) and start paying for stuff.  Mullenweg wants money.

But ClassicPress and Drupal are lurking out there as alternatives in the event there is a diaspora  from WP.  (I did poke around at Drupal and will look at it some more.)

> lightweight

Note: ClassicPress tore out some of what they called "bloat" from their fork of WP.  It is noticeably faster than WP.  A lot of that might be just getting rid of JetPack.

To me a blog script is like running a sit down restaurant.  There are certain things you NEED to have: cups, glasses, plates, napkins, utensils and trying to skirt around those and pretending it's a Feature just does not work.