While it’s only a few weeks into the new year, I thought I’d take a look at a few recent blog changes.
Back to ClassicPress (yet again)
For the third time, I’ve swapped out the content management system (CMS) for the blog from WordPress to ClassicPress, a fork that restores the classic editor and removes the block-based editor/widgets.
As I’ve written before, I’m not a fan of the changes WordPress has made in recent years. WordPress these days is more focused on being a site creation tool (and competing with Squarespace) than a blogging tool, as shown by its shift from the classic editor to a clunky block editor. There’s also the amount of maintenance WordPress requires. Still, my biggest annoyance recently is with its leadership, with Matt Mullenweg of Automattic seeming to embrace a lot of the worst aspects of modern tech figures: crass profit-seeking behavior; annoying software changes users didn’t ask for; selling out its users for AI; and so on. Overall, a lot’s changed for WordPress, and not for the better.
Thus, I’ve spent time looking for alternatives to WordPress. Unfortunately, many of the alternatives generally fall under one of several categories:
- Too barebones: Static site generators, Blogspot.
- Too hard to self-host: Ghost, some static site generators.
- Expensive hosted versions: Ghost (again).
- Overkill for a basic blog: Drupal, Joomla.
- More about site creation than blogging: Squarespace, Wix.
- Proprietary: Squarespace (again), Wix (again).
WordPress became popular since it managed to address or not run afoul of all of these. It’s an easy to use blogging tool that offers plenty of features, can be easily expanded via plugins, is relatively easy to self-host, isn’t proprietary, and has numerous affordable paid hosting options.
Long-time blog readers know I’ve tried several alternatives in the past, but ended up eventually returning to WordPress. Still, WordPress’ questionable leadership, on top of my previous concerns, has made me decide to try yet again to find an alternative. As such, I’ve reinstalled ClassicPress—the third time’s the charm?. Since I last used ClassicPress, some of its own leadership’s changed, as well as a re-forking from a newer version of WordPress (version 6.2). That said, ClassicPress does still rely on WordPress’ theme and plugin repositories (though it has some of its own), and of course, not all of WordPress’ themes/plugins are compatible (anything needing a WordPress version past 6.2).
Still, switch I did. Before installing ClassicPress, I went through my plugins and swapped out two that wouldn’t be compatible, as well as using this as a way to pare down on some plugin usage. So far, ClassicPress seems to be working fine.
As for the long-term future of ClassicPress, WordPress, and what this blog’s running on, we’ll see. Will I switch back begrudgingly yet again to WordPress? Will I stick with ClassicPress long-term? Or give yet another option a go, such as Ghost (which has its nice aspects, despite my aforementioned remarks) or an obscure option like Grav? Let’s hope my online future doesn’t require me to “pivot to video” (TikTok, YouTube) or develop a radio voice (podcasts), given the current state of traditional blogging.
Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay
I’m amazed at your flexibility and nimbleness to be able to switch platforms so often. From what I recall, I started on Blogger in 2001, moved to pMachine maybe the next year. Then, in 2012, I moved to WordPress. It was so much work moving over some 20,000 comments, including a couple of years when my comments were using Facebook’s comment system. But I managed to get all the comments moved over. I suppose that means I’ve been on WordPress for 14 years. Wow.
My main issue with WordPress is that I want an easier and quicker way to post. I’d like my site to be more like Dave Winer’s scripting.com. Lots of little micro-posts. An occasional longer post. I kinda have micro-posts with my “notepad” category. Even then, it’s still cumbersome to fire up a WordPress compose page and fill out the fields. Versus the ease of opening Bluesky and just posting.
Anyways, those are my little issues. All your switching around platforms is impressive that you are willing to try out so many different things.
That or I have a lot of free time on my hands. 🙂