Just over 18 months ago, the first alpha version of Classicpress was released to the world. At the time it was essentially a copy of WordPress 4.9 with the word “WordPress” changed to “ClassicPress” wherever it could be found in the code. Crucially, being a fork of the pre-5.0 WordPress codebase, it was free of the controversial Gutenberg editor – and in fact this was the main reason the project was started.

Between then and now quite a lot has happened. The ClassicPress codebase has matured, there are many live websites using it (including this one), there is a growing online community, and a committee has been elected to govern the project and ensure it moves in the right direction.

Many developers (including ZigPress) have seen ClassicPress as a way to continue working on a solid, familiar platform that works they way they like, and to be part of a collaborative community rather than being at the whim of the dictatorial commercial agenda that is now driving WordPress.

And over the last year, despite the fact that many WordPress Plugins still work on ClassicPress, a number of Plugin developers (again, including ZigPress) have started to create plugins specifically for ClassicPress. There isn’t a repository yet, or even a directory, though a directory should be launched later this year.

For now there is just word of mouth along with a post in the community, and so we’d like to offer a roundup of some of the plugins already available for ClassicPress. Every single plugin mentioned here is both open source and free to use.

Official ClassicPress plugins

These plugins are regarded as official by the ClassicPress project since they represent vital functionality that must be available for ClassicPress to become a serious contender in the crowded CMS market.

Classic SEO
Classic SEO is the first SEO plugin built specifically to work with ClassicPress. A fork of Rank Math, the plugin contains many essential SEO tools to help optimize your website.

Classic Commerce
A simple but powerful e-commerce platform, forked from WooCommerce.

Independent Plugins

These plugins are not “official” but represent the start of a plugin ecosystem for ClassicPress. Each developer owns their own plugins and is completely responsible for developing, hosting and supporting them in whatever ways they choose.

Below we have listed a selection of the more interesting ones from the more prolific developers, to give you an idea of the diversity already available. And since this is a ZigPress article we’re listing ours first!

Developer: ZigPress

ZP Disable Users
Allows administrators to disable user accounts, preventing users from logging in and logging them out if they are already logged in.

ZP Honey Trap
Invisibly reduces comment spam. ClassicPress rebuild of our retired WordPress plugin ZigTrap.

ZP Image Control
Allows you to control the maximum size and quality of uploaded images, and to retroactively process the media library to resize existing images.

ZP Media Taxonomies
Adds categories and tags to your media library, with bulk actions to make organisation easier.

ZP Multiple Roles
Allows administrators to allocate multiple roles to users.

ZP Remove Customizer
Completely removes the customizer from an installation.

ZP Widget Classes
Allows individual widget instances to have custom CSS classes

Developer: Code Potent

Update Manager
Painlessly push updates to your ClassicPress plugin and theme users. Serve updates from GitHub, your own site, or somewhere in the cloud. 100% integrated with the ClassicPress update process.
Editorial: this is currently one of the most important ClassicPress plugins since it lets plugin developers keep their plugins updated without using the WordPress respository and without requiring users to install anything extra.

PHP Error Log Viewer
Bring your PHP error log into your ClassicPress dashboard with beautiful style. Color-coding and filterable results make your error log a super quick skim.

Utility Plugin
The Utility Plugin provides a safe space to hold custom code and allows you to activate and deactivate your code snips just like a plugin.

Carbon Copy
Allows you to duplicate any ClassicPress post, page, or custom post type item with one click, including taxonomy and meta data.

Shortcodes Everywhere
Quickly enable or disable shortcodes ClassicPress posts, pages, excerpts, widgets, category and tag descriptions – even user comments – you decide where you want shortcodes to run and the plugin takes care of the rest.

Developer: azurecurve

Add Open Graph Tags
Add Open Graph Tags to attach rich photos to social media posts to Facebook or LinkedIn, helping to drive traffic to your website.

Avatars
Change the default avatar and allow users to upload their own.

Markdown
Options to enable conversion of markdown in posts, pages or wrap markdown in the [markdown] to have it parsed and converted into HTML markup.

Sidebar Login
Adds a useful login widget which can be used to login from in the sidebar of your ClassicPress powered blog.

Theme Switcher
Allows users to easily switch themes (ideal for allowing light/dark mode).

Developer: Gieffe edizioni

Stats For Update Manager
Add statistics (with GDPR protections) to Update Manager ClassicPress plugin.

Disable Any Comment
Allows administrators to globally disable comments on their site.

Vars
With Vars you can define name-value associations from the admin.

That’s not all of them

There are more plugins available – notably, azurecurve has developed over 30 – so do click the developer names above to explore.

If we do another roundup later in the year, we predict that the number of plugins and the number of prolific authors will both have grown exponentially. And maybe the planned official directory will be available!

Are you a ClassicPress plugin author without a mention here? Let us know so we can add you.