Switched to ClassicPress

A few weeks ago I decided to switch this site to ClassicPress. The recent WordPress drama was merely the final straw. It was years of the block editor, aka Gutenberg.

I want to write content. The block editor feels like I am typesetting a magazine. The classic WordPress editor feels like I am writing content. Most people don’t need to handle the level of visual manipulation WordPress now makes default.

Matt, the cofounder and leader of WordPress wrote about this in 2017. And it mirrors that thought. I have issues with the classic editor and how integrating certain metadata works…but the benefits of a simple text entry for the bulk of my content can’t be denied.

There comes in ClassicPress. And I have my criticisms there too. Nothing is perfect. Currently tracking with WordPress 6.2, they are committed to a leaner version of WordPress that focuses on a classic editor experience. Version 2.3.0 just came out, and updates dependent libraries, removes Javascript in favor of HTML5 elements…instead of layering on more and more client side Javascript to help things run.

In previous versions they added categories and tags to media, redesigned the media modals to remove additional deprecated libraries, added security enhancements, and…in a feature I didn’t expect and cannot find much discussion or posting on, adding a new object relationships table.

This makes it possible to relate any object in ClassicPress to any other object. All that’s needed are the object types of the two items and the ID of at least one of them. Being as I am keeping compatibility with WordPress at this time, I have not used it for anything…though I can think of some great uses.

To quote the ClassicPress team themselves…it is not just WordPress without blocks, it “is developing its own personality, while performing faster than WordPress and with a codebase that’s only around half the size”.

I will continue developing for both platforms…and not specifically developing blocks because they do not interest me. But I look forward regardless to what we can build.