I really want to build a Woo-commerce shop with Cwicly! the tutorials are in Cwicly Classic–not using Tailwind. Has anyone built a Woo-commerce site in Cwicly Classic or in Tailwind? I believe there are blocks or sections that Cwicly has provided us in the library for Ecommerce. Are there? If so, I don’t believe they are Tailwind. Is it possible to convert them? Any advice on building an e-commerce site in Cwicly will be appreciated.
Thank you in advance!
Joseph Rosenstock
Guth-Rosenstock Art
Pardon my frankness but… would you really entrust a project potentially even a few million dollars, to a technology as interesting as it is has not heard from its sole developer in several months and has probably been abandoned?
Honestly, I would immediately look at other solutions.
For a quick response, please see my answer here:
In summary, Tailwind is not required and we have built many Cwicly WooCommerce sites over the last few years.
You’ll unfortunately waste countless hours if you build it with Cwicly. It’s an abandoned project. While it’ll likely be an enjoyable experience now, you’ll probably end up having to rebuild it in the near future.
Cwicly is still one of the most polished block-based tools for WordPress, and it remains functional despite Louis’ absence. For building a WooCommerce store, its ability to create lightweight, performant, and customisable designs with minimal bloat is still a major advantage over some other tools.
Unless WordPress or WooCommerce introduces major breaking changes, the current version of Cwicly is unlikely to cause immediate issues. A well built plugin or theme can remain viable for many years without active development and a small dedicated community should be able to mitigate any minor issues that may arise.
For someone building a WooCommerce store with it, the question really becomes: can I build a store that functions and looks great now? If the answer is yes, then that may outweigh potential risks down the line. Most of the heavy lifting will be done in woo and any extensions used so if a rebuild were needed in the future, many elements (e.g., content, product setups, etc.) would still be reusable and I suspect as more themes move to FSE it would be fairly painless moving to a new tool. It’s certainly not a “waste of time” even if there’s a pivot down the road.
If Louis has abandoned cwicly, and we don’t actually know for certain that’s the case, that doesn’t automatically equal its demise. I think that depends if there’s enough of a community willing to keep using it. Obviously there are risks, but there are risks with any tool, including wordpress.
Personally, I quite like the idea of being part of a small but dedicated community.
Cwicly has required an update to remain compatible with a number of the major WordPress updates. Unlike a traditional plugin, it’s heavily intertwined with WP core and will require updating at some point. Personally, I don’t think that point is ‘many years’ unless you choose to not update WP as well.
It’s great to support each other and we can do that all we want, but at the end of the day there needs to be someone who can actually make changes to the code.
Until that happens, I’m not sure why this is a path you’d willingly choose to go down - especially if you’re just getting started with a site.
It is unfortunate that the Cwicly open source plans haven’t proceeded as smoothly and quickly as we’d all have liked.
Many of us have Cwicly sites that we need to maintain and as such, we are prepared to contribute in regards to WordPress compatibility until Louis is able to respond.
While we can’t guarantee there won’t be some code (such as minified JS) that is very tricky to update without a lot of work and debugging, we are willing to step up and make compatibility updates and minor fixes where possible until he returns.
So far there is only one compatibility issue worth addressing with the latest WordPress version and I am already investigating it. When I have found a solution I will share it with the community and Louis so it can be added officially to the next Cwicly version.
I have said many times that I am prepared to do what it takes to help Cwicly’s legacy continue and that is still the case.
I truly hope that Louis is able to return soon and continue where he left off, in the meantime, we’ll have to do what is required to keep things working.
Definitely. After what had happened last year, making it open source should have been priority #1 before anything else. Honestly, I was a little skeptical right away that it would ever actually happen.
And nice. I don’t envy the position you’re in - having already invested so much into Cwicly. I’m sure others will find that incredibly helpful as well.
Obviously that will likely be a difficult task, but at least we live in a time where AI would be super helpful in breaking things down.