This document provides an overview of WordPress and ClassicPress content management systems (CMS). It discusses WordPress' popularity for general usage and ClassicPress as a popular WordPress fork. It outlines what will be covered in the session, including setting up WordPress on Reclaim hosting and building a small site. Key terms like plugins, themes, and Gutenberg are defined. Advantages and disadvantages of WordPress are presented, as well as a comparison to Drupal. Two lab scenarios are proposed for creating WordPress sites - one for a soap business and one for marketing Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere".

1. Week 6
ClassicPress / WordPress
The most popular CMS for
general population usage
Reclaimhosting.com
Wordpress.org
ClassicPress.net
Bryan Ollendyke
[at]btopro
Developer Activist

2. reclaimhosting.com

3. This week (6): WordPress
Next week (7): Drupal
Week after (8): Drupal again

4. Today’s Topic / What you'll learn about
- ClassicPress / WordPress
- What they are, why they are popular
- What we’ll do this week:
- Setup WordPress in reclaim hosting
- Play with site building capabilities
- Build a small site on WordPress
that effectively communicate:
- Different page builders through use
- Strengths / examples sites using
- Weaknesses / anti-examples
(when not to use it / examples not using)
- Compare and contrast w/ Grav
WordPress &
ClassicPress

5. Week 6
ClassicPress / WordPress
The most popular CMS for
general population usage
Reclaimhosting.com
Wordpress.org
ClassicPress.net
Bryan Ollendyke
[at]btopro
Developer Activist

6. Links to poke around / sources
- https://wordpress.org/
Community hub for the project
- https://wordpress.com/
Automattic owned SaaS platform
- https://reclaimhosting.com/
where we’ll install it
- https://classicpress.net/
Popular fork of WordPress; the hope for
a better, less corporate dominated web
WordPress &
ClassicPress

7. $3 Million dollars

9. Example usage - whitehouse.gov

10. Example usage – sites.psu.edu

11. PaaS  SaaS – campuspress.com  sites.psu.edu

12. Terms / definitions for today
- Plugin
- WordPress (WP)
- PHP
- MySQL / MariaDB
- Gutenberg
- Project Fork
- ClassicPress (CP)
WordPress &
ClassicPress

13. Terms / definitions for today
- Plugin – Enhancement for CP/WP
- WordPress (WP) – Security nightmare
Most popular CMS great for small sites.
- PHP – Same as last week, backend lang
- MySQL / MariaDB – database engine for
storing data related to the site(s)
- Gutenberg – Controversial,
Facebook’s React driven authoring
experience to slowly strangle the WP
community and replace it with a JS driven
ecosystem
(editorializing but so not untrue)
WordPress &
ClassicPress

14. Terms / definitions for today
- Project Fork – When you all clicked the
fork button on github, your taking the
project in a new direction. If enough
developers get together and agree on a
common fork / name, they can actually
veer the entire project off course or,
back on course.
- ClassicPress (CP) – A recent yet popular
fork of WordPress attempting to reclaim
the community from the decisions that
brought the world Gutenberg
WordPress &
ClassicPress

15. Why people like WordPress
- Advanced CMS without complex management
- Plugins area
- ”Pages” and “Posts” the two “types”
of content
- Ease of migration even though it should
be a complex process.
- Every WordPress site is compatible w/
any older version for all of time
meaning no “API breaking changes” since
the platform began
- Easy to teach someone how to edit content
well... Sorta..
WordPress &
ClassicPress

16. Every WordPress site is compatible w/
any older version for all of time
- Great news for site builders
- Plugins might not be so friendly to this
but largely are from what I’ve seen
- Great news for small sites
- Means things like “Autoupdate” can be
enabled and updates can come down from
a central source and “safely” update
everyone, forever.
- Contrast that with Drupal..
WordPress &
ClassicPress

17. WP vs Drupal code methodology
- WordPress conventions from 2003 are still
prevalent
- Code / standards / conventions have
dramatically improved since 2003.. Yet
WP code remains in a stasis
- WP is hacked a lot historically because
of it’s ”autoupdating” nature
- Each Drupal major version is an API
breaking change. Meaning Developers have
to rewrite / update all plugins each
release and are responsible for
making the changes themselves
WordPress &
ClassicPress

18. WP vs Drupal code methodology
- This means Drupal’s code can improve
in convention and coding style over time
- This leads to easier to read, more secure
and better conventions over the life time
- This means nothing to you if you’re a
small scale site builder that just wants
things to work
- It also means Drupal is vastly more
expensive to operate over the life time
but also dramatically more powerful and
flexible
WordPress &
ClassicPress

19. HAXcms 2019 < 10 Experimental
Edu
GravCMS 2014 < 100 Docs
Edu
WordPress 2003 > 10,000,000 Small / Mid
NGO
EDU
Drupal 2000 > 100,000 Top level
Gov, EDU
Marketing
Name Age Community Industries

20. HAXcms 💰 🦑 < 0.0000001%
GravCMS 💰 💰 🦑 🦑 < 0.5%
WordPress 💰 💰 💰 🦑 🦑 🦑 33%
(of top 10 mill)
Drupal 💰 💰 💰 💰 💰 🦑 🦑 🦑 🦑 🦑 4% - 6%
Name Cost Complexity Popularity

21. WP Key concepts
- Plugins – Extend functionality, search
directly in context of the site (like Grav)
- Themes – Layout, theme, design and
customizations of these variables all
happen through one interface which are also
installable via the UI
- Page vs Post – Pages are more static in
nature (Store Hours) while Posts are more
blog / river of news method. Themes and
plugins dictate how these are used though.
WordPress &
ClassicPress

22. What WP is great for
- Single or small team user publishing flow
- Marketing, branding, websites that have
more complexity then Grav
- Themes and designs, there’s a great
visual design community in WP bc of it
having a smaller scope / scale
(Drupal is a mess in this area)
- Blogs bc of the “posts” and “pages” core
conventions it ships with
- SEO / basic shopping carts
WordPress &
ClassicPress

23. What WP is not great for
- Complex publishing flows / lots of users
- Security (sorry, it just isn’t)
- Complex content types
- Shops will claim otherwise
- it CAN do ”content types” but its not
what it was intended for
- Accessibility / Forms
- No Core way of creating forms
- Requires plugins to do this
- Coding Standards
WordPress &
ClassicPress

25. My bias in this situation
- HAX began being discussed ~2017 the
same time as Gutenberg.
- We have philosophical differences that
will never be resolved unless they
effectively gut the platform
- They are a powerhouse and I expect / wish
better of their decision making from an
open web perspective
- What I will frame / tell you is true
but it’s also not going anywhere. The
corporation is backing it so it will
continue onward as is forever.
WordPress &
ClassicPress

26. My bias in this situation
- I’ve written 100s of modules for Drupal
- Drupal, for being difficult to use for
site builders, is WAY easier to work w/
for developers
- It’s difficult for me to get over this
gap given that I’ve been doing Drupal
for 13+ years
- WordPress is great for what it’s great
for, it’s why it powers 33%+ of the web
- Drupal is dramatically,
technologically superior. No question.
WordPress &
ClassicPress

27. Editorializing explained
- Gutenberg is effectively a way to ensure
WordPress.com is turned into a more legit
competitor to Wix, Squarespace, etc
- It is a ”block editor” (as is HAX, sorta)
so they are by their nature controversial
- The review, blogs and concerns of many
in the community have been largely
ignored and they are plentiful
(Not just BS’ing this out of my dislike)
WordPress &
ClassicPress

39. Page editor / layout in WordPress
- Gutenberg included out of the box
- “Classic Editor” is built on TinyMCE
which has been VERY popular since 2004
- “Divi” another page builder
- “Short codes” heavily used by WP users
(and Drupal) for the last decade.
Gutenberg broke much of these
integration methods which is what lead
to bulk of the strife w/ Gbug
- Many others, can search the directory
WordPress &
ClassicPress

40. FORK FORK FORK FORK FORK FORK
ClassicPress

41. https://rianrietveld.com/2018/10/09/i-have-resigned-the-wordpress-accessibility-team/
Among several ”last straws”

42. ClassicPress
- Gutenberg REALLY made people mad
- A lot of those people are the community
that made WordPress great
- They’ve seen the too much control in the
hands of too few w/o wider community
interests at heart
- So, they’ve forked the project and remove
Gutenbug in order to maintain the future
viability of WP as a business centric
platform that’s owned by the community,
and not Automattic.
WordPress &
ClassicPress

51. What we’ll do now
- Setup a WordPress site in cPanel
- Explore the WordPress UI and create pages
using Gutenberg editor it provides
- Add plugins to WordPress to do things the
“Classic” way and add some pages that way
- Change the theme as it has MANY nice ones
- Customize the theme / menus to add links
out to resources and other things we’ve
made.
WordPress &
ClassicPress

52. Lab Context
- You are the project manager that sold
your team and CEO on using Grav
- Grav’s going great, but there are rumblings
from clients and team members used to
WordPress user experience
- You are facing questions about what platform
should be used when as it relates to future
projects in the portfolio
- Your clients are also concerned about this
“New editor” they keep hearing about. Some
want to try it out, others like things the
way it is now because of staff training
WordPress &
ClassicPress

53. Lab Scenario 1 – Soaps R Us
- Mom’n’Pop store “Soaps R Us” wants to sell their famous
soap online. They need an attractive website with high SEO
that has a shopping cart and a small blogging area for their
“Hot Soap!” newsletter.
- They’ve heard great things about WordPress but are
concerned about the new editor as they don’t have time to
learn something new
- What plugins would you recommend to get their WordPress
site off in the right direction? Install them in the site to
test
- Pick out a theme and then customize it and the menu items
appropriately as a mock site to market their business

54. Lab Scenario 1 – Soaps R Us Deliverable
- Create a WordPress site on reclaim hosting
- Select plugins to improve SEO, provide a shopping cart, and
simplify content editing beyond the default editor
- Pick a nice theme and customize it with a few links to make
the site look real (typical small business has Home, News,
Hours, Location, Reviews, etc).
- Edit 1 page in Gutenberg and 1 pave with the Classic Editor
- Record a video explaining the difference and justify why
you think they should either use Classic, Gutenberg, or Both

55. Lab Scenario 1 – Soaps R Us Remember..
- Remember, they are concerned about this “new fancy editor”
because of learning curve, evaluate, is it that hard for a new
person to learn? Does the quality of output outweigh training?
Your task is then to frame your response as one of the
following:
- Either your selling them on the new editor by allaying these
concerns and showing high quality output
OR
- Your agreeing with them and showing them how easy it is to
use Classic Editor and why you recommend not using Gutenberg
by demonstrating complexity / learning curve

56. Lab Scenario 2 – Scope to nowhere
- You won a contract from the Alaska state government to build
a website to market: Alaska’s ”Bridge to nowhere”
- This site was originally built in Grav because you thought
it was a one off, but now the client is mad because they heard
a word other than “WordPress” and are instantly concerned
about having to support two different applications.
- You need to build a website and QUICK to convince them to
stay with you, either on a new website or the existing. This
website needs turned around in 1 week (shocking).
- Pick a theme for a brochure style website and show them what
a site in WordPress would feel like relative to Grav

57. Lab Scenario 2 – Scope to nowhere Deliverable
- Create a WordPress site on reclaim hosting
- Select plugins to improve SEO, help ensure accessibility, and
simplify content editing beyond the default editor
(enable classic editor)
- Pick a nice theme and customize it with a few links to make the site
look like a real brochure style website (typical parks and rec site
has History, News, Hours, Location, Reviews, etc).
- Modify the homepage, be as snarky as you like, this is a real bridge
project so meme it up. Under History make a Pros and Cons list of
WordPress vs Grav. Make sure to list at least 3 advantages and
disadvantages of each platform (links can help prove this).
- Record a video demonstrating some of the similarities and
differences between Grav and WordPress in order to allay their concern

58. Lab Scenario 2 – Scope to nowhere Remember..
- The client is PRO WordPress because of other projects. You
like making money but want to cover your butt. Make a Pro
argument for why you agree they should migrate from Grav to
WordPress. After all, billable hours are billable hours.
OR
- You sell Grav over WordPress; if your going to get paid,
might as well do it based on work you’ve already done rather
then need to scrap it all and build them a new website. This
might seem more difficult but remember... Governments LOVE
security and WP is hacked... A lot. Let’s exploit that fear.
(You don’t have to build a new Grav site, you can point to
features in the existing one you made though your welcome to
make a new one if you so desire)

59. Submitting the Lab
- Create your WordPress site with the scenario you want to
cover and the solution you want to propose
- Record a video making the case either way based on the
scenario selected and solution selected
- Put on the homepage of your WordPress site which scenario and
case you are making
- Embed a link to your YouTube video in the homepage of your
site
- Post your link to your site in:
#lab6-wordpress

60. Grading the Lab deliverable
- Did you create a WordPress site in Reclaim
and post your link to the channel (1pts)
- Did you create the site for either scenario 1
or 2 and does it look like a legit site? (4pts)
- Did you record a video that makes the case
for or against the decision in question? (5pts)
10 point lab
WordPress &
ClassicPress

61. Questions?
Let’s build a WordPress
site on Reclaim hosting
Log into
reclaimhosting.com
WordPress /
ClassicPress
reclaimhosting.com
Bryan Ollendyke
[at]btopro