The release of WordPress 5 and the new Gutenberg editor caused a lot of commotion among developers and other WordPress users. According to many, Gutenberg was not ready yet to be used. That is where ClassicPress arose: another version of WordPress, but without Gutenberg.
ClassicPress: WordPress without Gutenberg
Late 2018 WordPress launched ‘WordPress 5’. This version came with a brand new editor called Gutenberg. By launching this drag and drop page builder, WordPress aimed to make creating pages easier for non-technical users without limiting them by non-flexibility. Therefore WordPress focused the development of the builder on easy adjustability. The idea to make WordPress more accessible sounds great, but there’s a big downside.
Despite the good thought, the new editor was feared by a lot of people. Especially developers were not looking forward to the release of it. The reason for most of them to rather see Gutenberg go, was the fear that the builder was not ready to be released. The rating received from the WordPress community was (and still is) very clear about that: an average rating of 2 out of 5 stars means a no go. However, WordPress decided to give it a go and forced it into V5.
That the new editor would not be appreciated by everyone, was signaled early by Scott Bowler. He discovered a lot of resistance against Gutenberg. Not only from his environment, but also from himself. A few months before WordPress 5 was launched, he expressed his frustration about the fact that WordPress didn’t give ear to the community. Therefore, the arrival of Gutenberg ment the arrival of ClassicPress: WordPress 4.9.8 without Gutenberg.
Go back to basic with ClassicPress
ClassicPress is a modified and enhanced version of WordPress, developed in GitHub. It comes with the good old WordPress editor, just like you know it. It is good to know that plugins and themes which work with WordPress 4.9.x will work perfectly fine with ClassicPress. Hence, you will be able to use most of your favorite themes and plugins when you choose to switch to ClassicPress. Speaking about, switching to ClassicPress is very easy and will only take a few minutes. By downloading and installing the open source plugin, it will overwrite all the WordPress files of your site with ClassicPress files. Just make sure you back up your site before.
When it comes to improvement, ClassicPress is strongly community-led. This means new features can be suggested by the community and will only be implemented if there are enough votes. The community-led character reflects an answer to the early mentioned frustration of founder Scott Bowler. ClassicPress is currently working on the second version. V2 will be released in the second half of 2019.