Concerns over Classic Editor Long-Term

  • I have decided I will permanently use the Classic Editor plugin. Gutenberg breaks my Academic Blogger’s Toolkit plugin, which is irreplaceable for what I am doing, which is rigorous scientific writing.

    My question is this: For the great many of us who will be sticking with the Classic Editor, what is going to happen to us long-term? Are we going to end up having security vulnerabilities? Will they day come when switching to Gutenberg is no longer a choice? Will the classic editor still continue to receive attention? I fear the claim that “we always have the option to stick with the classic editor” may in the long-term just be lip service.

    One thing that would really make me feel better is that the Gutenberg team actually has a plan for evaluating the success of Gutenberg after it is released, and having a path to actually choosing to abandon the project and revert to the Classic Editor, if that is what the evaluation indicates. I understand that people can be unduly negative sometimes in their reviews, but if developers are not willing to seriously consider the possibility that Gutenberg may not ultimately do more good than harm (considering the reviews are predominantly negative) then that is a clear sign of bias and senselessness. I formally request the Gutenberg team include in their formal project path a review at some point, that fairly voices the option of reverting. Publicly demonstrate that some kind of formal assessment process will be done to measure its success. That’s just good methodology. And for a change of this magnitude, simply required.

    This needs to be scientifically tested, not subjectively jabbed at. So far, the only attempt at such science was a survey done a year ago which said people were more than satisfied with the existing editor…You guys have a duty to publically present some supportive data.

    Included in that testing must be some kind of comparison against alternative ways of achieving similar functionality, such as some plugins.

    I charge that if this kind of research is not done and publically presented, then the Gutenberg team is simply being unscientific.

    Many are praising Gutenberg. Many are condemning it. That being the case, the guiding light should be the following two words:

    “Prove it.”

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by metallikat36.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by metallikat36.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by metallikat36.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by metallikat36.
    • This topic was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by metallikat36.
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • For the great many of us who will be sticking with the Classic Editor, what is going to happen to us long-term?

    The Classic Editor is written by the Gutenberg team to make is easy for people like yourself to opt out from using Gutenberg for as long as you like.

    As the plugin is GPL it can be forked and maintained by anyone interested for as long as they want. There are also already several alternatives available in the plugin directory.

    Are we going to end up having security vulnerabilities?

    Not more than otherwise. The Classic Editor plugin just disables the Gutenberg editor & reverts users to the current default editor. The current default editor will be maintained to deal with security vulnerabilities.

    Will they day come when switching to Gutenberg is no longer a choice?

    Probably not – it’s all GPL & as long as people are prepared to maintain a plugin to disable Gutenberg that option will exist for you. The Gutenberg team deliberately wrote Gutenberg in a way which makes it both easy & effective to disable.

    Will the classic editor still continue to receive attention?

    Probably only security updates – it’s unlikely that it will be improved.

    Classic editor leverages the TinyMCE bundled with WP, which Gutenberg also uses, so that’ll get updates as new versions of WP come out.

    Thread Starter metallikat36

    (@metallikat36)

    Thanks for these replies. That does reassure me a lot. Upping to 3 stars =).

    Phew.

    Well, as numerous and near-panicked WP Developers and high-end Users (many with a LOT of clients) pointed out in the pages of these Reviews, there is a high risk of the Classic Editor plugin causing its own problems. So I downloaded it and activated it to see what happens.

    I then got a 500 Internal Server Error. … But that was EASY to fix.

    I went into File Manager at the server and deleted the Classic Editor plugin. And now, it does not cause any trouble at all!

    ;-))

    So to be clear, the ‘Classic Editor’ is different to the WP Editor? So I do not need to install the Gutenberg Editor OR the Classic Editor. I can still use the WP Editor with something like TinyMCE Advanced?

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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