We are excited to announce the release of Classic Commerce 1.0.0-alpha.1 which is now available for testing and feedback. The Classic Commerce project was initiated in the early stages of the ClassicPress development process, when it became clear that a reliable e-commerce solution would be a definite requirement. It was decided to fork WooCommerce 3.5.3 and over the past year much work has been done on removing various dependent services and plugins, with consequent trimming of the initial setup wizard and other dead weight.
In addition to that huge task, there was also the job of archiving the functions and classes for easier and better tracking of the future development of the software. Excellent contributions were also made by many members of the ClassicPress community to rebrand colours and logos and create a new look.
The result is a cleaner, lighter and truly independent e-commerce solution that still retains all of the features that made WooCommerce such a powerful and versatile plugin.
What has been changed?
All connections to Jetpack and WooCommerce Services have been removed. This means there will be no “nags” or “upsells” at any stage when you are using Classic Commerce. You won’t find any plugins or products that are promoted or pushed in any way. The developers feel that it should be up to individual users to decide what they need, so that they can create their own e-commerce solution with Classic Commerce providing an independent core.
What hasn’t changed?
There have been no changes to any functionality hooks. All actions and filters are intact as before.
There has been no changes to the functionality of the software as forked, so all the extensions compatible with WooCommerce 3.5.3 should still be usable provided they do not rely on Jetpack or WooCommerce Services.
However, many plugins and extensions check for the existence of woocommerce/woocommerce.php in the plugins folder prior to their activation. To circumvent this issue we have created a special compatibility plugin called “CC Compatibility for Woo Addons” which can be downloaded from the link below. This plugin cannot run on the same site along with WooCommerce, so you will need to delete WooCommerce completely before installing the compatibility plugin.
If you are not using the compatibility plugin then you can have both Classic Commerce and WooCommerce installed together. You will just need to deactivate one before activating the other. Both programs share the same data, so you will find all your products and settings and records will remain intact when switching between them.
Updates:
Updates for the Classic Commerce plugin will occur in the usual way and are being handled by CodePotent’s Update Manager.
Testing and Feedback:
We do not recommend testing this on a live site… but if you must, please ensure you have taken adequate backups.
You can report any feedback, issues and suggestions here, or raise an issue on the GitHub Classic Commerce repo using the link below.
Github links:
Classic Commerce repository: https://github.com/ClassicPress-research/classic-commerce
Classic Commerce download: https://github.com/ClassicPress-research/classic-commerce/releases
CC Compatibility for Woo Addons download: https://github.com/Classic-Commerce/cc-compat-woo/releases/download/v9999.0/woocommerce.zip