In a post published on the WordPress.org news blog, Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project, announced that support for the Classic Editor plugin will continue until 2022, “After discussing this with Matt, it’s clear that continuing to support the plugin through 2022 is the right call for the project as well as the community,” she said.
The plugin is actively installed on more than five million sites with an overwhelming number of five-star reviews, most of those coming within a year or two of Gutenberg replacing the Classic Editor. What the announcement doesn’t mention is when support for the plugin will officially be severed.
At some point, and I think it’s sooner rather than later, official support for the plugin will end. I think it’s prudent that users have as much warning and time as possible to really start thinking of transitioning to the block editor. Perhaps a call-to-action either on the dashboard or someplace else explaining when support will end will help motivate users to make the switch.
In reality, who am I kidding? Those who are using the Classic Editor plugin are doing so for any number of reasons and while the block editor has come a long way in the past few years, it still doesn’t seem like a major workflow improvement in a lot of areas, especially for those who work in the editor every day. When everything works, it’s pretty good.
Even if the WordPress project stops devoting energy and resources to supporting the Classic Editor plugin, it will be forked and maintained by someone else or a group of people. Some form of it will continue to live on long after official support is cut off. But with everything in WordPress going towards blocks, continuing to use the Classic Editor seems like a good way to put yourself way behind the 8-ball.
If a blocky kind of world is not your cup of tea and is not the direction you want to travel with WordPress, there’s always ClassicPress.
I think attention should be given to the Classic Block as an alternative to the Classic Editor plugin. It’s basically the Classic Editor experience inside of the block editor, for those who want to continue with that free flowing writing style.
And it’s pretty amazing how well converting to the block editor works for most content.
Hmm, I forgot that there is a Classic block in the editor. I wonder why there hasn’t been much in the way of discussion in using that as leverage to get more folks to transition to the block editor. You got me thinking now.
Yeah, because for most people it’s the old writing experience they have a hard time giving up. That’s really understandable. I don’t see the Classic Editor plugin as being necessary in those cases. To me it only seems necessary in those cases where a critical plugin is not yet ready for the block editor. I suppose there are other cases.