There is a great deal to be proved by
ClassicPress being a newcomer fork of WordPress.
WordPress has been the ruling CMS as it has been powering over
42% of all active websites worldwide. WordPress recently integrated the so called
Block Editor to core (initially introduced as Gutenberg plugin), which attracts lots of users wanting a more visual editing experience.
Since WordPress 5.8 the Block Editor now is also used on the so called “Widgets” page in WordPress.
ClassicPress launched without the Block Editor, as one of the major reasons for ClassicPress to be established was the discontent of thousands of former WordPress users over the Block Editor.
ClassicPress is less avid to make new improvements every fixed amount of time, thus avoiding disastruos updates where partially untested features get pushed to user sites, just because it is “release time” or some decision upstream is made to push a new product/idea (like it is the case with WordPress in many occasions, the Block Editor being just one of them).
ClassicPress of course maintains bug fixes and security fixes and keeps a backwards compatibility with WordPress 4.9 in its Long Term Support (LTS) branch 1.x.
ClassicPress uses
SemVer 2.0, thus once it breaks backwards compatibility it willl release under version 2.x.
However the LTS will not just stop working, instead, continued support will be provided.
After looking at all of these differences, I think we can see how ClassicPress can become one of the best options for professional websites. Below further factors contribute to how ClassicPress is a better option for business and professional websites towards many other similar tools (not only related to WordPress)
So, Let’s dive in:
Open-Source Opposed to Proprietary
The Open-source CMS (i.e., ClassicPress, WordPress, and Joomla) allow you to do whatever you want to do with the software on the hosting platform you wish to use. On the other hand, proprietary solutions mostly offer their off-the-shelf solutions and that too on their hosting platform.
Though proprietary solutions (i.e., Wix and Squarespace) would be a better choice for certain types of business and professional websites, their limitations can prove them to be a poor selection.
ClassicPress is 100% open source and community lead.
WordPress is
also open source, but it is practically controlled by a multinational, multibillion Company:
Automattic. Automattic is the Company “behind” WordPress, and is owned by the very creator of WordPress. Even if officially WordPress is an Open Source project, the decisions of its path are not. They are made behind closed doors and pushed downstream without further consulting the end users.
ClassicPress
chose the more “community driven” and “democratic” path, where every user has a voice, and no decision will be taken without a broad discussion and agreement.
ClassicPress – while being fully community driven – also has a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization under United States law –
the ClassicPress Initiative – to promote and support the ClassicPress project. Thus any donation made for ClassicPress is tax deductible and serves directly, and solely the ClassicPress project.
Security
One of the biggest strengths of the major modern CMS’s is the flexibility of using plugins, but these plugins increase the security risk.
Also, poorly designed plugins can become the reason for conflicts with the current features of the site.
However, Open Source also means that everyone can see, read and contribute to the source code, and it is vetted by the community, thus, risks are discovered earlier, and can be fixed by anyone in the community.
ClassicPress also has a security team (volunteers) who improve the security aspect from it’s “Parent” WordPress towards a more secure platform, consequently making ClassicPress the best choice for business websites. Not only limited to ClassicPress itself, but also the plugins and themes developed for it.
Flexibility and Extensibility
The potential to improve the capabilities and leverage the flexibility that open source CMS provide has been proven as a major benefit by the simple fact that so many website are powered by the Open Source CMS WordPress.
This freedom and flexibility can be used by any skilled developer to make a website as per the business needs because the software can be modified, and it is independent from any hosting company.
Platforms like Weebly and Wix (Propiertary CMS) do not belong to the open-source CMS group; therefore, they do not offer any modifications that any developer could deploy.
Even if there is no skilled developer, ClassicPress (and WordPress) can easily be used by novice or intermediate users, as it allows the use of numerous plugins offered by the community, consisting of various features, along its “core” User Interface which makes Content Management so much easier.
After WordPress drops the active maintenance of the Classic Editor Plugin (which disables the new Blocks Editor), most of the WordPress plugins will stop working with the known “Classic Editor”. This will destroy part of that flexibility known to WordPress, and passion for ClassicPress can be seen amongst developers oriented towards a more stable and persisted CMS, as well as amongst users who dislike the blocks editor (
5+ Million Installs of said Classic Editor Plugin should say a lot).
The Blocks Editor of WordPress is nice for novice users who quickly want to set up some posts and pages.
It is not the tool of choice of people who want more control over the source code, such as developers, but also companies and more advanced users.
It is also not the tool that seems to cope with large, heavy customised Websites, typical to businesses.
Developer Availability
Both professional, as well as business organizations require good and skilled developers. Competent developers are more likely to be hired for their services. The block editor in WordPress is React.js based, and
hardly any WordPress developer is well versed with it till now.
On the other hand, all the developers that worked for years with WordPress while it was not based on React.js, will automatically feel at home with ClassicPress, thus if you use ClassicPress, your chances of finding a Developer who really understands its job, is higher than if you use WordPress.
Ease of Use
The real purpose of CMS has been to provide the ease of updating content quickly to the owner of the websites. WordPress has been successfully providing this ease to its users for years. After a few proprietary platforms introduced drag and drop features, WordPress came with the “Gutenberg plugin”, ensuring a flexible and fun editing experience for users.
But any serious business’ goal is never “fun in editing”, instead the timely completion of tasks and the future stability of said goals.
ClassicPress keeps the classic editor and is also committed to improving its V1.0.0
Thus, ClassicPress can be a better choice for the businesses using CMS as well as professional organizations.
SEO Support
The strength of the SEO of the website depends upon the person who is managing the SEO of the website.
Not only SEO is needed to strengthen the position of the website, but also content production plays a crucial role here.
SEO strategies will be of no use in the absence of content or if the quality of content is poor.
WordPress and ClassicPress provide good SEO plugins to content producers acknowledging their performance and helping to improvise SEO.
Isn’t it better to evaluate the SEO score and manage the content simultaneously to complete the task in a shorter time?
With Open Source tools like ClassicPress (or WordPress) this is much easier than with many propiertary tools.
If you plan to work with ClassicPress – it has you covered with an in-house SEO solution, read more about it on the
ClassicPress Plugin directory
Plans for Longevity
Just like WordPress, ClassicPress also has the approach of making consistent improvements, however with the focus to make the best CMS platform available for
businesses and professional organizations.
WordPress became the best by innovating features that not only provided the ease to add content but also provided the flexibility to use plugins offered by third parties.
And this ease is what ClassicPress aims to provide to its users through consistent improvements,
without breaking backwards compatibility and keeping a
task oriented approach.
Final Thoughts
ClassicPress is not only providing ease of use but is also looking forward to creating a healthy system that would suit the maximum needs of the users and simultaneously looking for innovations.
The goal is to be
the best choice of CMS in professional and business organizations.
With each site launch and every plugin that ensures consistent support, ClassicPress is on its way to being the best CMS for professional and business organizations.
Undoubtedly, it will be a challenge to compete with all other CMS, but ClassicPress is ready to take it and ensure a completely flexible, versatile, strong, and secure Content Management System Software to its users and is already on its way to becoming the best choice for business organizations.
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8 comments on Why ClassicPress is The Best CMS for Your Professional Business Website
Hi:
I am excited to learn about ClassicPress! I have been building custom themes in WordPress for several years and I had a workflow developed, and variations in CSS I used over and over. I have been using Underscores as a base and then write CSS to customize the theme, which will have been designed in Photoshop. I had become very speedy was sailing along and then Gutenberg and blocks arrived.
In the years that I have worked with WordPress I have had very few clients that wanted to actually learn it in order to do their own updates. Most of them don’t add content very often so they don’t interact with their site often enough to get good at using the cms – they forget how. I realize that ideally websites would be constantly changing content to keep Google happy etc. but unless you’re a blogger or a store that has products coming and going, constant changing just doesn’t happen. Additionally, while changing some text is simple enough, when people want to add images/graphics they typically first have to size the graphics and optimize them and that’s another thing they have to learn how to do and they don’t want to. And they certainly don’t give a single damn about how html is supposed to work – the idea of h1 versus h5 etc. (Still less do they want to know how CSS works.) Add the difficulties of floating a graphic and having it look good on a phone – text gets squeezed, one-word sentences happen, etc. – they can’t fix those things. But I can. I also do things like use flexboxes or columns so that text doesn’t stretch all-the-way-across-the-screen-no-matter-how-wide, which is something I see in websites all the time now and it’s a usability problem.
Blocks is a variation on the WYSIWYG tool and it may end up being terrific for some segment of the public but I don’t see it meeting my needs or that of my clients. Now my clients don’t care what tool or environment I use as long as they get a speedy, responsive, up-to-date-looking usable website. They like the IDEA of being able to do their own updates – they just so rarely do them. And I HAVE been able to train those who really DO want to do their own changes and they do them. (They’re just rare.)
Covid interrupted my business in a big way and I’ve done very little in new projects for several months. During that time I’ve done other work to pay the bills and considered closing up for good. But lately there’s been signs of life and I’m going to have to decide whether to reorganize my process to use Blocks (which means learning Blocks) or find a new CMS. My own business site needs a redo (everyone else’s comes first, sigh…) and I have to decide what to build it in.
I enjoy learning and applying new CSS3 styles as they reach widespread adoption – I hate the idea of styles being inline and not on the stylesheet.
I will be exploring this site and the offerings!
THANKS!
Hi Paula, thanks for your comment. For some reason it had ended in the trash/spam, I only saw that now and restored it.
ClassicPress might be a good solution for you indeed. One thing that can be a pain is the lack of a thousands of plugins and themes like WordPress does have it. But please join our forums at https://forums.classicpress.net to ask for help, or if you are looking for specific functionality, the community might have solutions ready for you.
I hope you enjoy the fast, lightweight and “known” interface of ClassicPress!
Yeah, thanks for this but my remarks were misunderstood. They were not related to this particular post but rather to CP as a project. Their communication strategy is really poor, to say the least, and I took the “themes” topic as an example.
I don’t ask for a repo and whatever the history of WP the reality is what I stated: a bunch of excellent shops selling – often upselling as you say – themes that work mainly with blocks and/or with builders. But there are tons of users that are not using either of them and if you don’t offer alternate ways for designing your site without those you won’t attract anyone. The examples you cite are really not interesting from my perspective as I work for clients and I never touch an Apple product for whatever reason. Nobody’s asking for bloated themes but you have competition with non-bloated ones that offer a lot.
Again, it is mainly a question of communication and how you position your product in a very competitive environment. What I’ve seen so far is frankly not convincing and, again, the “themes” topic is just an example.
Other than that, I won’t follow up from here anymore because you don’t offer notification alerts when a reply is posted and it’s not really convenient having to visit this page to see if there is a reply… Also, please note that the field titles for this form (email, name) and the submit button are missing here below so I just enter them the usual way and hit enter…
Good luck but sorry, I’m not switching my core environment for now. Activating Classic Editor & Widgets and working with some solid themes that integrate this environment is still much better in my opinion.
Hello John, thanks for the feedback again.
I see yo say “Their communication strategy is really poor, to say the least”.
Interesting, because WordPress’ communication strategy equals to none. I am wondering and truly interested how CP’s communication can be improved, given that as opposed to WP’s, it at least attempts to exist 🙂
In WordPress, it is communicated 30 hours before release when breaking changes are done and break hundreds of thousands of sites.
It is communicated that an “Improved editor experience” will not threaten any Theme or Page Builder, only to the head on run towards a full fledged page editor, where blocks are. everywhere, not just in the Post editor as initially stated.
WordPress… I’d not even know who actually makes decisions or communication statements. It seems all somehow shadily driven overnight behind closed doors.
If CP’s approach is not perfect (nothing is) then I am fine with that, because it at least attempts to be transparent and considering.
You are right that there has been a lot of slack in CP. That is also due to too many people watching and eating popcorns instead of actually rolling up sleeves and helping.
This changed. I for once, and a whole bunch of other people, are daily developing, interacting and building the future. That’s tight – the future, and we do not mean Gutenberg. We mean a reliable, modern, stable and useful CMS. There is a long way to go, an endless way, I’d say, but at least I feel at CP I have a voice, a future, and am not bound to using tools that are a plain joke in any serious analysis.
When you say “you don’t offer alternate ways for designing your site without those you won’t attract anyone”, you really mean those Theme and Plugins developers, because “We” do actually, a lot.
For starters we maintain a whole CMS project _with_ plugins _and_ some themes just for people to _not_ need to be stuck with WordPress’s block editor and the “blocks only” themes and plugins.
ClassicPress however is intended for professionals and businesses, not for the quick blog that needs a fancy looking image pulled up in 2 seconds (so it can then break in 4 further seconds). Thus, you will not find a lot of those “options” and “settings” and “on the fly” things that are currently bloating WP to the obnoxious. This might just not be the right tool, if you are looking for such features. CP really is more of a “hands on” Developer tool, that can of course also be used for simpler sites, and by people who do not directly develop, however they’ll at least need to have some understanding of basic HTML and CSS to get great looking sites.
I know that this is the main motor behind Gutenberg, to make it easy for anyone to style and drive dynamic content. But the cost at which it comes, is too high. For professionals and businesses who rely on stability, it is the wiser choice to use “real” code that stays stable, for the years to come as well as it was for the years in past.
However, you say don’t ask for a repo of themes, but simultaneously are not happy with a few single themes that are perfectly adequate for professional web development and are working very smooth with CP (and will continue to do so, specially if you adapt the to your needs), and neither you want suggestions of other tools to be used (there are many, not just Mac)… then you will never be happy :), and likely should stick with WordPress 😉
That said, I believe there is a right thing for everyone, and for me, alike for Many other Users, it is ClassicPress, and sometimes WordPress, and for you it will be whatever you think is best. That is fine, and no one needs to apologise for not using the others preferred tools 😉
Related to “because you don’t offer notification alerts when a reply is posted and it’s not really convenient having to visit this page to see if there is a reply”. I will say nothing to that, unless link to this privacy policy rule” https://tukutoi.github.io/Zero-Tracking-Policy/. You are welcome. True privacy has its costs. And I am not going to start an email list, or gathering emails, just because some people are too lazy to visit a post then and when. Later, those are the exact same people that complain “they track my email”. It is similar as with CP versus WP.
You cannot have it all, without any effort or “cost” even if the cost comes in form of a step more to take, or a comfort less to enjoy.
Sorry about that.
Thank you very much for pointing out that “the field titles for this form (email, name) and the submit button are missing here below”!
I am not getting lots of comments here in this site actually and never noticed it before. I have fixed this now, clearing your cache, and reloading the page should do the trick.
Sorry it was annoying to use the form prior to said fix!
Thank you for the interaction and best of luck in all endeavours to come!
Encouraging to see ClassicPress keep pushing forward. There still needs to be a lot more plugin and theme makers to get on board. As one who creates WP themes at Rough Pixels, I’ve been making them compatible (currently) for WP with the classic editor, the block editor, and also ClassicPress too. However, I am planning to begin designing dedicated themes just for ClassicPress soon; the way WP is going now, it won’t be long until the theme (or plugin) compatibility will be 100%.
I’d like to see ClassicPress make a huge push towards marketing and don’t hold back!
It is great to see someone with the motivation to contribute to, and the understanding of how a Community Open Source project can grow.
Come visit us in the Forum or Slack!
Every helping hand, especially Theme and Plugins designated for ClassicPress, are a huge help!
I am myself a developer, thus I’d be nothing but happy to see another fellow Dev in the community!
This article is the first one really convincing and motivating about this project. Everything else published so far really lacks basic motivational arguments and quality communication elements.
It’s nice to hear about democracy but I need to know the most before moving OUT of standard WP is whether my journey will be really as easy as it is currently.
And the first question I need elaborate answers about is “where are professional themes that work nicely in such environment”?
Please don’t reply “Themeforest”. Most advanced theme agencies like GeneratePress, Astra and Kadence are full steam ahead with blocks. So…?
You simply cannot switch core platform without having a solid theme development partner that you can count on.
Hi John, thanks for reading the article and sharing your concerns.
We completely missed out talking about themes in this article, my apologies for that. But it also has to do with the fact that this topic is food for a whole new article.
Themes are directly “threatened” by WordPress’s last developments, just like Page Builders. WordPress is entering the Theme and Plugin market now. Thus, Themes have to keep up and start using what the WordPress leadership decided to be the way to go (Block Templates), and that is why you see the major themes you mention (all upsell theme btw) focusing on Blocks. They need to do this, otherwise they will soon reach end of life in WordPress’s ecosystem!
Now, about themes that work in ClassicPress, let me explain further.
When WordPress started, they didn’t have themes nor plugins. They where introduced later. ClassicPress doesn’t have to go thru this “pioneering” process anymore since it is a Fork of WordPress. Thus, every single theme or plugin that supports WordPress 4.9 (any version below 5.0) will work just fine on ClassicPress.
There are also designated Plugins for ClassicPress at http://directory.classicpress.net and https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/classicpress/
About themes, there is no usage of the “ClassicPress” tag in the WordPress repository but many themes do support WordPress under 5.0, see these cherrypicked examples:
https://wordpress.org/themes/hello-elementor/, https://wordpress.org/themes/generatepress/, https://wordpress.org/themes/blank-canvas/
ClassicPress itself has no official Theme Repository yet but this is in progress as we speak. Remember, every project needs to start at some point and needs people to help with, thus the ClassicPress ecosystem is still small, but growing.
What I personally use on my sites is a number of Custom Themes. This is sort of the suggested approach when you go with ClassicPress because you wouldn’t want all that bloat that Blocks Oriented Themes (or other major modern themes) bring. Settings in Themes are nice, but they also mean a lot of bloat and performance issues. I personally usually take either a Blank Slate theme and customise (I have also a version coming just for ClassicPress), or I use Blocs (see https://www.tukutoi.com/partner/blocs-the-ultimate-mac-website-builder/) to design my themes. Blocs is 100% ClassicPress compatible, and will produce very fast, lightweight and 100% customisable Themes in the blink of an eye.
I see the future of ClassicPress less with a library of bloated “Thousands of Options” themes, and more with a few, very good and solid starter themes, perhaps with a few basic options, where the decisions are left the the user, and not forced you.
For convenience ClassicPress also includes 3 child Themes when you install it (currently children of the Twenty-X WordPress Themes), which are also planned to be changed to fully “in-house” themes made by the ClassicPress Community. Here I see that possibly a more developer oriented and a more user oriented Starter Theme will be provided soon.
I hope this helps to get you started with Themes in ClassicPress!