Richard's blog

Tag: classicpress

  • A Possible WordPress Implosion

    A Possible WordPress Implosion

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    WordPress and WordPress engine are fighting at the moment. Mullenweg wants WP-Engine to pay its fair share, or contribute more developer hours to keep improving WordPress as a whole. To be more specific “a significant percentage of its revenues for a license to the WordPress trademark.” source

    “The abbreviation ‘WP’ is not covered by the WordPress trademarks, but please don’t use it in a way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not. They have never once even donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress,” the updated page reads.

    source

    What surprised me is that more than one hundred and fifty nine people left automattic over this. From what I read Mullenweg wants 32 million from WP-engine which is valued at between 500 million to a billion dollars. This seems a clash between two titans.

    I think that WordPress is right to fight to get more from a company like WP-engine, especially given the possible name and brand confusion but also because of the time and effort. He did speak about how WP-engine could devote many more hours to helping to develop WordPress rather than riding in the wake without contributing its fair share.

    Free and Open Source software are possible because of the community that they are built by and around. I have been using WordPress for almost as long as it has been around. It made webmastering, to use the old term much easier. Instead of writing a page, and updating SSI pages (Server side include pages) I could write a post and things would update automatically. Now I use Hugo and I switched to ClassicPress today, temporarily, to see how it has changed, or remained the same.

    And Finally

    WordPress has gone from powering 30 percent of websites a few years ago to powering over 43 percent of websites and is now on its way to becoming a monopoly. They’re right to fight to protect theirtrademark but I don’t like that they are so dominant. I prefer to use Hugo and ClassicPress to have a static site that is fast to load, but also to move away from a monopolistic open source project.

    I switched from ClassicPress to WordPress today out of curiousity, not necessity. Within a week I might be back on WordPress, if I see that spam or other issues are too time consuming via ClassicPress.

  • A Pi5, WordPress and ClasssicPress

    A Pi5, WordPress and ClasssicPress

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    Last night I started to install wordpress on the Pi5 and I got it to work. I then started to install ClassicPress via the ClassicPress switchtoclassicpress plugin and got blocked. I was blocked because in order for WordPress to update plugins, themes and wordpress it needs to have access to itself via FTP. That’s when I stopped for the night.

    ## VSFTPD

    This morning [I installed vsftpd](https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-ftp/) and the first part went well. Within a few minutes I had access to the Pi via FTP, and then changed from the default tutorial directory to the wordpress directory where apt install wordpress places WordPress. I was able to navigate the directories and see the files.

    ## Missing Permission to Create Directoriess

    I then went to my wordpress instance in browser, added the FTP credentials and told it to switch from WordPress to ClassicPress and that’s when I encountered difficulties. The difficulty is that I need to use sudo to have permission to create directories so for every directory I need to run a sudo command.

    I tried changing directory permissions from the command line and an FTP client and neither workded. Specifically neither option allowed me to create new directories. That’s where I got trapped.

    I decided to create a new directory within my /home/user/ directory but I haven’t been able to get apache2 to see this directory. It gives me a forbidden error. The same is true when I created a directory for classicpress in /usr/share.

    ## User Permissions

    In the end I think that it’s because the tutorial that I was following from the Ubuntu site forgot to mention that we need to [add our ftp user to the www-data group](https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-apache/). Once I did this I was able to update wordpress plugins, themes, and translations. I think that this has resolved the issue.

    ## And Finally

    Now I have a critical error with wordpress but that should be quite easy to resolve so I think I have learned how to do what I want. The next step is to fix the critical error, and then repeat this process flawlessly.

  • The iOS Astronomy Wallpaper and Seasons

    The iOS Astronomy Wallpaper and Seasons

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    If you’re wondering why one of the tags in my post is “Day 388” it’s because I shifted from WordPress to ClassicPress once again. In so doing I lost access to Akismet and Jetpack. By losing Akismet I lose comment spam filtering. I also lost access to the Jetpack app so I lost access to my streak info. That’s why I included it as a task.

    ## Astronomy Wallpaper

    If, like me, you’re using the Astronomy Wallpaper on your mobile phones you will have noticed that the shadow over the Northern hemisphere has shifted. It has gone from being a south to North shadow to an East to West shadow from the top of Europe. You can see how parts of Norway, Sweden England and Finland are now in the dark for longer and longer parts of the day. It’s rational that we would see it, but it’s interesting that we can see an illustration of how seasons change the pattern of daylight on earth.

    With the Astronomy app on the Apple Watch you can see the same thing, but you can also see cloud cover over the part of the world where you are. In my case it’s Europe.

    ## Gradual change

    The changes are so gradual that if you look at your watch or phone every single day you wouldn’t notice unless you’re looking at the right time of day. If we went up to Kiruna now we might see that we’re in constant darkness according to our phones and watches. If we had a Garmin or Suunto device that displays sunrise and sunset we would see that the day may just be a few minutes long, at this time of year. We see this wherever we are, but to be in the arctic circle would be an extreme demonstration of the seasonal change.

    ## And Finally

    if you have an iphone play with the app and see what the pattern is like for your part of the world.

  • More Experimenting with ClassicPress

    More Experimenting with ClassicPress

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    Although I didn’t achieve what I set out to achieve I have been experimenting with ClassicPress and the Fediverse, but rather than do it from my main blog I have decided to experiment within a subdomain and so far I have achieved much. I see that activitypub and webfinger can be installed on ClassicPress.

    I checked that a webfinger was created and displayed correctly but this took trial and error. The biggest error is that to create a webfinger that is valid you must come from an https hyperlink. If it is not secure you get a "socket not secure error". I found a solution, by creating classicpress.main-vision.com for the sake of testing.

    In so doing I achieved two things. The first is that I found a way to experiment with ClassicPress without destroying my website but at the same time I found a way to experiment with other things too. By a similar setup I could get WordPress and webfingers, where a few accounts are possible, rather than just one.

    The Stumbling Block

    I have hit a wall. I created the ClassicPress instance. The webfinger works when I test it and the account is visible on the Fediverse. The problem, at the moment, is that posts do not appear in Fediverse timelines. I don’t know why that is yet. I also noticed that if I follow from mastodon instances, I can, but from Firefish I can’t. It’s not meant to work, so my experimentation is out of curiousity.

    The Next Step

    The next step will be to create a subdomain and experiment with a wordpress blog. I expect this to work flawlessly, but what I really want to see, is whether I can get the webfinger to work so that it displays several users for a single instance. If I succeed then I will have demonstrated that WordPress can be a full-fledged Fediverse instance.

  • ClassicPress and the Fediverse – Not Quite Ready

    ClassicPress and the Fediverse – Not Quite Ready

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Yesterday I experimented with migrating my blog from WordPress to ClassicPress to see whether ClassicPress plays nicely with the fediverse. It does but there is room for improvement.

    If you want instructions on how to migrate from wordpress you can find the instructions here. Summarised, you download the switch to ClassicPress plugin, you run it, it checks that you’re ready to migrate, you fix what needs to be fixed, and when ClassicPress sees that you’re ready it will allow you to start the migration. The migration takes a second or two. It felt almost instant in my case. You know it has succeeded because you see the "ClassicPress" message at the bottom of the admin section.

    Wanting to Quit WordPress

    I want to dump WordPress for two main reasons. The first is that it has become bloated and slow. It offers an enormous amount of functionality, but at the cost of speed, and efficiency. The second reason is that it uses React and I am deeply opposed to anything developed by Facebook. Instead of connecting single people, it reminds single people of their isolation. It gets caught playing with emotions, and facilitating genocide, and never, ever apologises. By using React WordPress is closer to Facebook than I would like.

    How Well ClassicPress plays with the Fediverse

    If you want to write a blog post, and for it to show up on the fediverse via the Activity Plugin then it’s ready and work well. As soon as you post from ClassicPress it shows up in the fediverse streams. If that’s what you want to do then it works seamlessly.

    Comments Unseen

    With WordPress if someone comments to a post on the fediverse then it shows up in the wordpress comments section. With ClassicPress the comments are only visible on the fediverse. The quick fix to this, is to write a comment in wordpress that shows up on the fediverse. At this point communication is two way.

    Why This Matters

    If you’re writing blog posts, and people comment on the fediverse, but you can’t see the comments, then you won’t know to thank, ignore or react. You will be posting into a vacuum with no dialogue taking place. By having two way commenting we have a way of having the blog as an integral part of the fediverse, and vice versa. Now that I know what’s possible I don’t want to go back.

    The Side Track

    Aside from experimenting with ClassicPress I also noticed that there are plugins that allow you to provide a summary of content headings at the top of the page, as well as a markdown parser or two to choose from. The final one was an estimated reading time. The last one isn’t that intereting, but it’s a curiousity worth knowing about.

    And Finally

    When I can get the exchange of comments to be from the Fediverse to my blog, and vice versa withput having to comment first I will be happy because then it will be seamless and I will be able to dump WordPress and focus on ClassicPress.

  • What Do The Logs Show

    What Do The Logs Show

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Joke: I was on the phone with tech support when I walked by these and I was asked “What do the logs show?” I had a double take before I understood he meant the web logs and other server logs. I then continued walking

    A pile of logs waiting to be transported by train
    A pile of logs waiting to be transported by train

    I am getting somewhere with my studies. I feel that I am now starting to understand ideas and contexts and that as a result I can start working towards reaching and getting stuck on the next plateau, and the next one after that. In short, I am making progress.

    Today the Steripen adventure opti arrived and I tested it in a container. Testing such a device on clean water is useless. I did learn that it is not dead on arrival.

    I heard about ClassicPress while listening to a podcast so I downloaded the files, copied them to the htdocs folder, entered a few bits of information and it was up and running on my local machine. ClassicPress is a fork of WordPress.org. It aims to provide those who do not like Gutenburg with an alternative solution where they keep control of how posts are formated and displayed.

    For now you can download wordpress plugins and use them on ClassicPress but I don’t know for how long this interoperability will last. There is an explanation about how to use shims to use incompatible apps.