ClassicPress Roadmap Released

ClassicPressClassicPress, the community-led project which forks WordPress 4.9.9 has just released a development roadmap covering the first and second versions. As ClassicPress is community-led, the roadmap might change based on the community needs and desires.

It’s extremely important to note that version 1.x of ClassicPress will be fully backwards compatible with WordPress 4.9.x. We won’t introduce any changes or features that would cause plugins or themes to break.

WordPress 4.9 itself will be maintained for the next few years and plugin/theme authors will need to remain compatible with this version. As such ClassicPress confidently state that the vast majority of plugins and themes will continue to work with ClassicPress for many years to come.

The roadmap map can be read in full here.

ClassicPress 1.0.0 Beta 2 Now Available

ClassicPressEarly today, ClassicPress 1.0.0-beta2 was released; this is a security release with changes pulled from WordPress 4.9.9, which has the same security fixes as WordPress 5.0.1. ClassicPress has also fixed all known cases of an issue where certain security scanners were incorrectly detecting ClassicPress sites as WordPress 1.0.0.

I’ve upgraded two of my sites to Beta 2 without issue:

ClassicPress 1.0.0.Beta2 upgrade finished

You can find more information or download the full release on GitHub.

If you’re on Beta one, you can click the Upload link on your ClassicPress admin section.

Migrating to ClassicPress: Backup Before Running the Migrate Plugin

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

Before running the migration plugin, it’s recommend to make a complete backup of your site; both files and database should have a good backup made. This isn’t particular to migrating to ClassicPress; I make the same recommendation for any process which is going to impact on files and/or database.

By a good backup, I mean verifying that the backup has worked (e.g. all the expected files are downloaded and the database backup file contains the relevant tables. Without this you won’t be able to restore in case of need.

Migrating to ClassicPress: ClassicPress Migration Plugin Now Supports WordPress 5

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

I mentioned yesterday that the ClassicPress migration plugin was not ready yet for WordPress v5, but was coming soon.

Apparently I should have waited a day and posted today, as the migration plugin is now supported with WordPress 5.

Migrating to ClassicPress: Run ClassicPress Migration Plugin

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

With the migration plugin installed, the next step is to complete the site migration.

The activated plugin is available from the Tools menu in the sidebar; select Switch to ClassicPress:

Migration Plugin on Tools menu - Switch to ClassicPress

Continue reading “Migrating to ClassicPress: Run ClassicPress Migration Plugin”

Migrating to ClassicPress: Install ClassicPress Migration Plugin

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

With the migration plugin downloaded, the next step is to install the plugin.

To do this, log into your WordPress site’s admin panel and select Plugins from the navigation pane and then click the Upload Plugin button at the top of the page, next to the Add Plugins header:

Add Plugins - Upload Plugins button

Continue reading “Migrating to ClassicPress: Install ClassicPress Migration Plugin”

Migrating to ClassicPress: Migrating from WordPress 5 to ClassicPress

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

In the last post, I downloaded the migration plugin. If the site you’re migrating is on WordPress 4.9.x then you are good to proceed; if your site is on WordPress 5, then you’ll need to wait a little time.

ClassicPress are about ready to release a version of the migration plugin which will allow migration of a WordPress 5 site. Once this updated plugin is released, all WordPress sites could be migrated to ClassicPress.

Migrating to ClassicPress: Download ClassicPress Migration Plugin

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

The easiest way to migrate an existing WordPress site to ClassicPress, is to use the ClassicPress migration plugin available from here:

ClassicPress migration plugin available at https://www.classicpress.net/migrate/

The file downloaded is a zip file, but, as the download page says, this does not need to be extracted; the zip can be uploaded directly via the WordPress plugin upload function.

Migrating to ClassicPress: Why Migrate to ClassicPress?

ClassicPressThis post is part of a series on migrating to ClassicPress from WordPress.

As mentioned in the series index post, ClassicPress is a fairly recent fork of WordPress which has announced itself as ready for use on live sites. Initially as a response to the inaccessible Gutenberg, they are now positioning themselves as a CMS business-focused CMS which is modified and enhanced version of WordPress (without Gutenberg) that serves the business website market.

From the About ClassicPress page, ClassicPress styles itself as a community-led fork of the WordPress content management system who wants to get back to basics and focus on open dialogue and democratic decisions. This is reflected in the mission statement and the Petitions site.

Like WordPress, ClassicPress is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) (or later) license from the Free Software Foundation.

I’ve been a user of WordPress for almost 8 years and have been developing plugins for WordPress for quite a while. I’ve known about Gutenberg for a while, but only really delved into it farily recently.

If you’re hearing about it now for the first time, I did a post recently which might be useful: What is Gutenberg (for WordPress)?

I also did a post WordPress and the Problem With Gutenberg and why it is unusable to me. Some of my friends use WordPress5 now and are happy with the new Gutenberg block editor, as are many people online, but there are also many people who are unhappy with the new Gutenberg block editor.

One of the other issues with the development of WOrdPress, is the lack of transparency and development direction which appears to be completely controlled by Automattic. WordPress.org is, in theory, the independent open source project. However, the creation of Gutenberg appears to have been decided upon and drbvien by Automattic to benefit Automattic’s wordpress.com site.

The ethos of ClassicPress, is that the community will decide the development direction by way of the Petitions site.

ClassicPress v1 is fully compatible with WordPress 4.9.x and will remain so; ClassicPress v2 will potentially start to diverge from WordPress, but this will be by the petitions logged and voted upon by the community.

ClassicPress appears to align better to the type of sites I run, and the democratic structures for development offers the best opportunity for this to continue to be true going forward.

Migrating to ClassicPress: Series Index

ClassicPressClassicPress is a fairly recent fork of WordPress which has announced itself as ready for use on live sites. Initially as a response to the inaccessible Gutenberg, they are now positioning themselves as a CMS business-focused CMS which is a modified and enhanced version of WordPress (without Gutenberg) that serves the business website market.

In this short series of posts, I’m going to take a quick look at what is involved in migrating an existing WordPress site to ClassicPress.

Migrating to ClassicPress
Why Migrate to ClassicPress?
Download ClassicPress Migration Plugin
Migrating from WordPress 5 to ClassicPress
Install ClassicPress Migration Plugin
Backup Before Running the Migrate Plugin
Run ClassicPress Migration Plugin
ClassicPress Migration Plugin Now Supports WordPress 5
What About The Plugins and Themes I Use?
Using Migration Plugin With Unsupported WordPress Version