Woothemes Canvas is no longer being developed
How we migrated to a new theme
We received confirmation this week that WooThemes Canvas is no longer being developed and that WooCommerce (formally WooThemes) are advising customers to start looking at moving their sites across to a new theme. My assumption is that this spells the end for Canvas. It’s been a great theme, but it’s time to move on.
From Woo Support:
“Regarding Canvas we’ve recently taken a close look at Canvas and the way the theme fits within our future plans for our products. We came to the conclusion that Canvas isn’t well-suited for continued development: it’s not ready for the WordPress Customizer, nor for the forthcoming Gutenberg project. We’ve decided not to invest more in the theme beyond making sure it runs smoothly. The theme is functioning great, but we will not be adding new features to it.
While Canvas is still a robust theme, we encourage you to start looking around for other theme options soon. Gutenberg is coming to WordPress Core next year, and to experience its power, we advise you to opt for a theme that will be ready for it. We highly recommend looking at Storefront or its child themes, as those are the ones our team is focusing on right now.
We’re working on several measures that will help our users make a smooth transition to another theme — so stay tuned for more updates. Rest assured that if you choose to stick with Canvas, we’ll continue to provide support and bug/security fixes for the duration of your active subscription.
Cheers,
Michael K – Woo Happiness Engineer”
How we migrated to the 18 tags theme
There are some steps to think about in moving to a new theme
- Find a theme that offers the same flexibility as Canvas. Here are two great alternatives, 18tags, and Make. Both 18tags and Make come with free versions so you can try them out risk free. Indeed, we built 18tags as a modern replacement for Canvas.
- WooFramework – you’ll need to remove all Woo shortcodes. We are thinking about creating a migration option for existing Woo customers to 18tags, so that Woo Shortcodes continue to work but more on this later.
- Here’s a plugin that might help keep your WooThemes shortcodes working (please not it hasn’t been updated for a few years. Woo Framework shortcode plugin.
- Woo Widgets – remember your Woo Widgets will vanish when you switch to another theme. However these can be replaced with plugins such as this tabs plugin
- You’ll probably need to assign your menu items in Menu settings.
Let us know what you think
We are still thinking about about how we can help customers with the transition, so please feel free to leave any thoughts and comments below.
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