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Having seen the architecture of [frankly] too many WordPress sites—I'd bet that it's not so much of a choice, as it is a requirement to remain on the old editor

Having seen the architecture of [frankly] too many WordPress sites—I'd bet that it's not so much of a choice, as it is a requirement to remain on the old editor because of incompatibilities with business- or, at least, editorially-critical plugins. Sometimes even worse—some plugins have cross-dependencies and so updating becomes a rather complex matter that most businesses relying on WordPress do not have the interest in or capital for managing.

partiallypro 6y ago
Wordpress recently dropped jQuery Migrator from their builds and it broke a lot of websites. It's a tricky path they have. They even made a plugin that is supposed to remedy that but I have found it often doesn't address the problem of jQuery just breaking.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
You're describing the reasoning behind the choice, not the choice itself. Behind this choice is the choice to use those mature, not old, plugins which work for the user. In another system, those well-aged plugins would themselves not be a choice, because they would be incompatible with the new centrally-mandated editor.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  No, again from experience—updating WordPress to the version required for Gutenberg would break the sites. It's not just a matter of preferring a plugin. It's a matter of the plugin being essential, or quite literally wound into the architecture of the site. You have to realize that a lot of sites relying on WordPress have been in production for close to 20 years. I've worked close to such sites. Any major version changes would break them. And the kinds of organizations that tend to rely on WordPress for their editorial don't always have capital to expend on the top-bottom rebuild that would be required to separate them from their legacy architectures including those incompatible plugins. I've had the task of importing legacy data (over 15 years worth) into new WP sites, and it is not trivial when the site has used plugins to do any kind of transforms on the data, custom field re-mappings, tag/category mappings, and any other content munging. Especially when one plugin goes out of date and a new one is pulled to replace it. Then you're left with multiple versions of each of those situations, while other plugins become the base for any other number of plugins. I'm starting to digress, but point being that in many cases it's not simply a choice of one editor over another, but a practical inability (technologically, financially, or otherwise) to adopt the new editor because of the nature of legacy WP and plugin architecture.
  - marc_io 6y ago
    Updating to a major version is not mandatory, as they support older versions as early as 3.7. The real problem is the plugin ecosystem, which does not do the same.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      This is true, and a major reason those sites still function as-is, and continue to use WordPress.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    I operated a site like this, minus the WordPress. Then PHP changed something and it broke. I now design in such a way that PHP is not required component.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      To your point, it's definitely not just a WordPress issue for sure. The WP ecosystem just enabled that kind of development and architecture over time, even if it was not advisable. C'est la vie, and all that.

partiallypro 6y ago

Wordpress recently dropped jQuery Migrator from their builds and it broke a lot of websites. It's a tricky path they have. They even made a plugin that is supposed to remedy that but I have found it often doesn't address the problem of jQuery just breaking.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

You're describing the reasoning behind the choice, not the choice itself. Behind this choice is the choice to use those mature, not old, plugins which work for the user. In another system, those well-aged plugins would themselves not be a choice, because they would be incompatible with the new centrally-mandated editor.

52-6F-62 6y ago
No, again from experience—updating WordPress to the version required for Gutenberg would break the sites. It's not just a matter of preferring a plugin. It's a matter of the plugin being essential, or quite literally wound into the architecture of the site. You have to realize that a lot of sites relying on WordPress have been in production for close to 20 years. I've worked close to such sites. Any major version changes would break them. And the kinds of organizations that tend to rely on WordPress for their editorial don't always have capital to expend on the top-bottom rebuild that would be required to separate them from their legacy architectures including those incompatible plugins. I've had the task of importing legacy data (over 15 years worth) into new WP sites, and it is not trivial when the site has used plugins to do any kind of transforms on the data, custom field re-mappings, tag/category mappings, and any other content munging. Especially when one plugin goes out of date and a new one is pulled to replace it. Then you're left with multiple versions of each of those situations, while other plugins become the base for any other number of plugins. I'm starting to digress, but point being that in many cases it's not simply a choice of one editor over another, but a practical inability (technologically, financially, or otherwise) to adopt the new editor because of the nature of legacy WP and plugin architecture.
- marc_io 6y ago
  Updating to a major version is not mandatory, as they support older versions as early as 3.7. The real problem is the plugin ecosystem, which does not do the same.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    This is true, and a major reason those sites still function as-is, and continue to use WordPress.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I operated a site like this, minus the WordPress. Then PHP changed something and it broke. I now design in such a way that PHP is not required component.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    To your point, it's definitely not just a WordPress issue for sure. The WP ecosystem just enabled that kind of development and architecture over time, even if it was not advisable. C'est la vie, and all that.