208 - ClassicPress V WordPress

Debate with Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley

The debate season ends with one where Nathan and I may genuinely  disagree. I’m ready to storm off telling Nathan where to stick the next season.

Setting up the Debate

So for those who don’t know what ClassicPress is we had better say:

• It’s fork of WordPress 4.9 before the Gutenberg block editor was introduced and a reaction to the decision.
• It was started by a Laravel developer called Scott Bowler, a long term WordPress user who first campaigned for Gutenberg not to go into core (at least without being a majority support for it).
• It started in August 2018 and continues to be developed with folk writing plugins solely for it, as well as some forking of other needed plugins like eCommerce and SEO options.

ClassicPress (David)

The appeal of ClassicPress is that it offers a chance to take the good and remove things that were less democratically added, or seem bloated, or otherwise problematic to many.

So Hello Dolly and Akismet stopped being preinstalled.

XML-RPC (a security risk?) is due to come out of core, and probably the premade privacy page was a knee jerk reaction to GDPR is going to be going as well.

It might not have been suggested, but it’s tempting to suggest they look at taking out post formats (something from Matt Mullenweg’s love of Tumblr before he bought it).

They have a concept of core plugins, so you could add them back in as needed, but make the core fast (what’s not to like?).

The also want to make the minimum requirement for PHP to 7. This will cut out bloated low quality code in WordPress.

More practically I can offer a way of avoiding the maintenance cost that comes with Gutenberg. It’s software development being done on all our live sites creating issues for us or indirectly to the authors of plugins we use, and which we pay for.

• It increases updates and security fixes needed.
• ClassicPress aims to make Security a priority.
• The process seems more democratic.
• It allows for better versioning.
• Presently it does not have to be one or the other. You could move back to WordPress if needed.
• One of the most appealing things presently (but probably problematic) is the Classic Commerce folk of WooCommerce. So much breaks with WooCommerce, and there’s so much upselling! If they get the core plugins needed for most sites, there’ll be less Yoast style advertising in the admin area.
• It’s Page Builder friendly.
• It offers less clicks for writers.
• No one can guess the future, and Gutenberg might not pan out.
• There’s less issues with editorial staff – too much design control with Gutenberg.
• Finally, there’s a chance to make your mark in a new community.

WordPress (Nathan)

• WordPress has a huge ecosystem – too many people with a vested interest in keeping WordPress on the right path.
• More Plugins / Theme choices – this is important as many people cannot code and don’t want to learn, but do want the complexities that WordPress plugins can afford them.
• It’s great for writing text (no matter what David says!).
• Who knows if ClassicPress will be supported – you really want to put all your eggs in this basket, only to discover 2 years from now that the project has not enough interest to keep it updated?
• You have to move with the times, and a modern interface like Gutenberg is moving with the times.
• There’s less of a future with ClassicPress – all the interesting stuff is happening in Gutenberg right now. Just read the WordPress news and it’s one Gutenberg related story after another.
• The Classic Editor is rubbish…