Woothemes Canvas is no longer being developed

Woothemes Canvas is no longer being developed

How we migrated to a new themeΒ 

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.Β  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 β€” 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 theΒ 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.


Comments

19 responses to “Woothemes Canvas is no longer being developed”

  1. I was hoping to see a little more information on migrating away from Pootle Page Builder and all the other Canvas plugins by Pootle.

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi Craig,

      Moving to a new theme like 18tags will mitigate the need to migrate away from our Canvas extensions, because we built 18tags to replicate much of the functionality that we put into our extensions.

      Pootle pagebuilder is designed to work on all themes so there’s no need to worry about this πŸ™‚

  2. does 18tags have the same shortcodes as canvas like tab layout and content toggle? column layout
    I have used a pootle pagebuilder in the past and found a few problems with the older version 1 being slow load times and when it was turned off- fast load times
    what shortcodes do you get with 18 pro- I can’t sit around and test out the free theme just have a list please

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi Dave – we haven’t included any shortcodes in 18tags pro – it’s better to use a plugin for these, like this one https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/shortcodes-ultimate/ so your theme can be changed with no issues πŸ™‚

      We’ve just released pagebuilder version 5 , and had no reports of any slow load times.

  3. is there a demo of 18tags pro like a live example that I can at least look at

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi, yes pootlepress.com is using 18tags πŸ™‚

  4. Will the Canvas- Menu and Page customizer plugins and woo commerce work on 18tags?

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi Nicola

      18tags has it’s own menu customizer and page customizer built into it πŸ™‚

      yes it works great with woocommerce

      kind regards
      jamie

  5. I’ve bought 18tags pro and downloaded 18 tags. When I preview my site in customise there is nothing there except the site title. When I choose the navigation the menu does nt show.

    When I try and activate 18tags as a theme I have no visible customise options or live edit options – the black top WP admin menu is missing.

    I have tried logging in to get a support ticket, but my e-mail is not recognised.

    What do you suggest I do next?

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi Edward,

      This was caused by another one of your plugins – 99.9% of the time this is the case πŸ™‚

      good news, that things are now working
      jamie

  6. Paul Cobb Avatar

    Just had the notification from Woo re the phasing out of Canvas today.
    I would welcome anything that would smooth the transition from Canvas – I’m happy to use 18tags (free version initially). Any help along the way would be welcomed especially in the way of migration option. Hope to hear more soon.
    Paul

  7. Jamie, I will have to migrate several sites from Canvas to 18tags. I’ve used one of your plugins before and it worked very well. Are you going to continue to update 18tags and not abandon it down the road like what happened to Canvas? I assume 18tags will be the simplest to migrate to from Canvas? If you are going to create a migration option, that would make this less painful for those of who have used Canvas on multiple sites. Thanks!

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi Kathy

      Yes 18tags would be a great choice to migrate away from canvas – 18tags is being continually developed πŸ™‚

      jamie

  8. I have canvas on 8 sites and each with a heck of alot of css tweaks any migration tips would be great-

    or like if I currently have a page with 3 columns via the canvas shortcode generator- how to do that in 18 tags pro for example
    things that canvas does and how to duplicate the effect in 18 tags pro would be ideal- I don’t look forward to the day I have to migrate to a new theme
    woo slider- how to duplicate these if you have a method etc

    woothemes has gone downhill over the last few years – service and their support has gone out the window

  9. Leo Tran Avatar

    Hi
    I bought from Woothemes:
    1. All themes: Lifetime license but, 1 year later they changed policy and had 2 years license only
    2. Canvas theme: Lifetime lisense too. After nearly 2 years, they changed Policy and abandoned this them.

    Very disappointed with Wootheme (Woocommerce now).
    I don’t who can I believe in?

    Regards

  10. polizeros Avatar

    > “You’ll probably need to assign your menu items in Menu settings.”

    Not sure what you mean by this. I’m testing free 18tags and me nus are showing the page title name, not the title in Menu settings and continues to show a menu option that I deleted from menu settings. Hmm.

    Any help appreciated!

    1. Jamie Marsland Avatar
      Jamie Marsland

      Hi, this sounds like it might be caching issue – are you running any caching plugins on your site?

      jamie

  11. 18tags look great. Gonna try it out on my photography blog.

  12. Hi – since you posted this article have you produced any documentation on how to migrate a site from Canvas to 18 tags please?

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