Dropping support for the plugin version of Timber

[Levdbas]

Hi from the development team of Timber!

We are in the final stretch to release Timber 2.0. 🎉

Timber 2.0 is a complete overhaul to the latest coding standards, fully supports PHP 8.2 and overall is a great step forward to make interacting with the Timber API's a lot more consistent across all functionalities.

With that being said, we also decided to say farewell to the plugin version of Timber.

What does this mean

• Timber 2.0 will not be released as a plugin anymore, so if you want the shiny new stuff, you will have to upgrade to Timber 2.0 in the near future.
• Since Timber 2.0 will be our new main branch we will not actively maintain the v1 branch anymore and will not release updates for the plugin version.
• We will release one more plugin update soon that will add a notice in the plugin screen about to inform the Plugin users about this exact change.

Why we are dropping plugin support

There are many reasons why we have decided to not release Timber as a plugin anymore, but to highlight the main reasons:

• Under the current guidelines of the WordPress plugin theme, Timber wouldn't be allowed as a plugin.
• Plugins are meant to be upgradable. But since Timber 2 is a complete overhaul, clicking the "update" button without making the necessary theme changes would crash your website.
• Timber is meant for developers and thus we will always recommend modern development tools like Composer.

We fully understands that this change will come as a surprise to many of you. We understand that this will give you additional work, but we do think this is the best way moving forward. We hope we can count on your support on this.

How to switch to the Composer-based install
If you are still using the Timber plugin we will encourage you to switch to the Composer-based install of Timber v1 as soon as possible.
We have an extensive guide on how to switch from the plugin version to the composer based one.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

[jarednova]

Below is an extensive list with guides and the reasons why we are not going to release Timber 2 in plugin version anymore:

• Backstory: Why we are dropping support for the plugin in the first place
• GitHub issue: Roadmap for Timber 2.0
• COMING SOON: Guide: How do I switch over from the plugin version to the Composer based version of Timber?

[Levdbas]

And we are live everyone!

[jarednova]

Woooooooohoooooooo!!!!!!

[Fordefound]

Can I ask, for those using the existing plugin of Timber v1 - will the plugin be deleted when the Timber plugin is no longer being supported (ie will the theming currently being used on sites disappear or crash if you have not moved to composer?)

[rmens]

If you installed a plug-in it won't magically delete itself from your server. So no sites will break.

It's up to the maintainers to remove Timer v1 from the WordPress plug-in directory. However it would be a bit too soon to do this imho. Even if they delete if from the WordPress plug-in directory, that won't delete it from your site.

[claudiugubernu]

I have a few sites using the Timber plugin version on WP and today i found the time to transition on my local env. one of them from the plugin to using composer. I can say it wasn't such a big task, but i guess that depends on your own implementation. So far all runs as before, but too early to really commit all this to the staging then live env.

The rest of my sites that are deployed run fine with the plugin version of Timber so unless i delete the plugin they will work fine. I do have the latest version of the plugin somewhere safe just in case.

[Levdbas]

Hi @claudiugubernu , did you directly update to v2 or to did you move to the composer v1 version? I would recommend to move to the composer version and in the long run update to v2.

[claudiugubernu]

Hi @Levdbas , initially i have moved to composer v1, but after the comment spent a few hours and updated to v2 on a different branch.

It was a bit of a search&replace but so far ( for the site i have chose to migrate and update to composer Timber v2) all works as before.

Had some issues with CPT that mixes ACF with native thumbnail image but i managed to resolve that by doing the following:

changed this :
{% include 'atoms/image.twig' with { 'image' : TimberImage(services_post) } %}
to:

{% for services_post in services_posts %}
  {% set post = get_post(services_post.ID) %}
  {% services_post.title %}
  {% services_post.description%}
  {% include 'atoms/image.twig' with { 'image' : get_image(post.thumbnail) } %}

{% endfor %}

thinking of adding this into php where i set the $context['services_posts];

Not brave enough to go live with all this so will test furthure on a staging env. but must reiterate this project is a brochoure car valeting site. Thank you

[Maffsie]

ah that's a little bothersome. I'm using Timber because I already had a blog theme written using Twig templating, and did not want to write any PHP in service of switching from my old blog engine to Wordpress. Since you state that Timber is for developers, is there an alternative for someone who just wants to specify how a website should be laid out without having to write anything other than HTML and CSS?

[jarednova]

@Maffsie you are good to keep doing exactly that. With the supported version of Timber (2.x) we will continue development, issue resolution and patches changes in Twig, WordPress and PHP versions — this is what we mean by "support."

Version 1.x and the deployment to WordPress.org still exist and we intend to keep them there as long as the good people at WordPress.org will allow it (indefinitely, as we understand) so you are good to keep using it for both existing and new sites.