With what is going on with WordPress, there has been a lot of discussion of there being a fork of WordPress. It’s a bit odd as there has already been a fork of WordPress that has been around for years. It’s ClassicPress. It does have a big difference as it doesn’t support the block (Gutenberg) editor. But for anyone that doesn’t need that, it is available and isn’t a flash in the pan.
ClassicPress refers to switching from WordPress to ClassicPress as a migration in their documentation. For those that have dealt with migration between versions of some CMSs that might sound scary, as the migration involves largely starting over. That isn’t the case with ClassicPress.
The basics of the migration process are really simple, though depending on your setup, it might require more extensive work.
The first step is to install the Switch to ClassicPress plugin in the existing WordPress website.
Once that is activated, the Tools menu in the backend of WordPress will now have a Switch to ClassicPress item.
If there is nothing the plugin detects that would stop the migration, you will see a screen like this:
It has a couple of warnings about possible incompatibilities, but nothing blocking the migration.
If you are unlucky, there may be a blocking issue that stops the migration from being possible until it is addressed:
Going back to what is shown in the first image, the only remaining step is click to the button to do the migration.
If everything goes right, as it did with the website shown in the screenshots. After clicking the button, the website was seamlessly switched to ClassicPress.
Before making any change like this, it would be a very good idea to make a full backup. You already should be making backups for the website.
Even better would be to do a test run of the migration first on a copy of the website. That way you can make sure that your theme and plugins are fully compatile with ClassicPress. If there are issues, it is easier to address them when not having to address on your production website. Or worst case scenario, you realize that your set up isn’t compatible with ClassicPress in the way that can reasonably be fixed, before you switch the production website.
For those looking to have someone else handle the migration for them, and address any problems that crop up, we can do a WordPress to ClassicPress migration for you.