At the beginning of September, Matt Mullenweg already announced that WordPress would continue to support the Classic Editor for years to come. But for how long, it was not clear yet. Last week, Gary Pendergast announced that the Classic Editor plugin would be officially supported until December 31, 2021. The plugin facilitates the transition for sites or themes that are not yet compatible with Gutenberg and offers WordPress users the option to add a few more to their existing workflows.
Classic Editor plugin
Because the Classic Editor is essential to this development, we are considering to include the plugin in the upgrades to WordPress 5.0. New WordPress installations would still add the plugin manually, and we put it in the Featured Plugins list to increase visibility. – wrote Pendergast.
What is “Officially supported”?
Pendergast made it clear, that “officially supported” means that the plugin will “work guaranteed as expected in the most recent WordPress version, and the version before it.” He also said that the project would evaluate the continued maintenance of the plugin in 2021, and then possibly extend the date.
The blog post has already received a lot of feedback. The main positive reaction is the possibility of the Classic Editor for existing websites with 5.0 updates will be included.
Behind closed doors?
From the reactions to Pendergast’s blog post, it appears that a number of people have noticed something. Many important decisions about the Gutenberg project seem to be taken behind closed doors recently, without input from the community. An excellent example of this is Matthew MacPherson’s proposal for an independent accessibility study. His plan had broad support from the community, but, nevertheless, it was invisible. When MacPherson was asked about the reason why he could not continue, he did not want to respond to this question. A murky decision-making process is, of course, not very common for an open source project.
When to expect WordPress 5.0 Release?
The WordPress 5.0 release date was first scheduled on November 19 but has now moved to November 27th. The plan that was published earlier showed the possibility of a so-called ‘slip date.’ Therefore the initial release date could be postponed by eight days, if necessary.
WordPress 5.0 is a significant update, in which Gutenberg will be integrated as the new standard editor and for me personally. “As discussed during the Core dev chat this week, the initial release date on November 19 is a little too early,” Gutenberg tech lead Matias Ventura wrote in the announcement on the make.wordpress.org/core blog.
After listening to a lot of feedback – and looking at current issues, ongoing requests, and general progress – we take an extra week to ensure that everything runs smoothly. The release date is now scheduled for November 27. – Ventura
Ventura outlined a new plan in which the beta 4 and beta 5 versions coincide with Gutenberg 4.3 and 4.4. Contributors will post updates daily on the # core editor channel about the current status.
Not enough time?
Given the recent criticism from prominent WordPress developers and other stakeholders, the new WordPress release date may still not offer enough time for finishing everything up before the deadline. More time is needed to solve the remaining problems concerning Gutenberg and give the WordPress community the opportunity to prepare training materials that reflect the latest changes to the user interface.
Secondary release date..?
If it is not possible to release the WordPress new update by November 27, it will be moved to the subsequent release date on January 22, 2019. Yes, another delay. And I think that many WordPress users (especially those running a WordPress web shop ) do not mind at all. Who would? In this period we were already busy without having to worry about a critical WordPress update with a brand new editor that still needs some changes.