Over the last 11 years, we’ve assembled quite the collection of plugins that enhance or augment the Genesis Framework experience.
We’re not the only ones! The WordPress plugin repo currently has 21 pages of search results for “Genesis”!
But as Genesis, and the ecosystem around it, has evolved, some of those plugins are no longer necessary parts of the Genesis experience.
For instance, we recently integrated the functionality of the Genesis Simple Edits plugin into Genesis Framework core.
Likewise, Genesis Simple FAQ is no longer necessary in a world where the Gutenberg editor and Genesis Blocks exist, since the Accordion block does the exact same thing that Genesis Simple FAQ does.
Because of this, we’ve been considering options for what to do with these plugins. We know many of you still use them, and have no reason to invest the effort to switch, regardless of the availability of better alternatives. It’s just not worth your time!
So we made the decision to do what we call a “soft deprecation” of these plugins.
But what does that mean?
Soft Plugin Deprecation
With soft plugin deprecation, we put a notice in the plugin description that says the plugin is no longer actively maintained, because its functionality is available elsewhere.
But long term, this isn’t a great solution. Mainly because, despite the notice, the plugins still get downloaded a lot. Sometimes hundreds of times per day.
WordPress.org has a solution for this. They allow you to “close” a plugin. Users can’t download and install the plugin, but they are still able to install updates to the plugin, as we release them. This is to prevent a potentially vulnerable plugin from receiving updates after “closure”.
But there’s a big problem with that. WordFence starts throwing warnings to users who have a “closed” plugin installed on their site. This can be scary to see!
We don’t want to scare people, but we also don’t want to keep these plugins open forever, steadily gaining new users when superior options are available.
So, we want to give everyone plenty of time to prepare for the closures.
What Happens Next
As of Monday, May 3rd, we will be permanently closing the following plugins:
As time goes on, we will likely add other plugins to the list of closures as well. But we will give plenty of notice before doing so, to give ample time for preparation.
Of course, as long as WordPress.org will allow us to do so, we will monitor these plugins for security vulnerabilities, and patch them whenever they are reported. Users will still be able to install these patches, as before, without interruption.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. We’re here to help!