Technology & modernization

UnysonPlus is a modern continuation of the Unyson framework. The old "Unyson is outdated" reputation predates this fork: the parts users and their visitors actually touch have already been modernized, and the remaining legacy is isolated to one place — the admin builder UI — which is where our roadmap is focused.

This page is a straight, verifiable account of what the framework is built on today, and where it's going next.

A modern foundation

The front end is jQuery-free

Every visitor-facing script the framework ships is vanilla JavaScript — no page-builder element declares a jquery dependency. Carousels and sliders run on Splide (vanilla), and elements like ratings render as inline SVG rather than an icon font. This is the single biggest rebuttal to the "outdated" perception: a UnysonPlus page never sends the visitor a jQuery-dependent script.

Current vendored libraries

The bundled front-end libraries are on their current major lines:

Library	Version	Role
Splide	4.1.4	Carousels / sliders (vanilla)
Leaflet	1.9.4	Maps
noUiSlider	15.8.1	Range sliders (vanilla)
Air Datepicker	3.6.0	Date/time pickers (replaced the jQuery UI datepicker)
Font Awesome	6.7.2	Icon library
Bootstrap	5	Grid & utilities (the BS3 grid is opt-in legacy)
Lottie · Rive	current + WASM	Animation runtimes
GSAP · Lenis · three.js	current	The Animation Engine (scroll, smooth-scroll, WebGL)
Plugin Update Checker	v5	GitHub-based updates

PHP is modern and 8-ready

The whole framework (1,200+ PHP files) is clean under PHP 8.2 — none of the PHP-4/5-era patterns that plague old forks (create_function, ereg, each(), mysql_*, eval, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING, …) appear anywhere.

Being precise about the rest, because a claim you can grep should survive being greped: the codebase is procedural and convention-loaded, not namespaced — typed signatures and declare(strict_types=1) appear only in the newest files, and there is no Composer autoloader yet. Adopting PSR-4 and namespaces for new code is the first item on the modernization plan.

Layouts are stored as structured data

Builder content is saved as a JSON tree in post meta, not as nested shortcodes in post_content — so deactivating the plugin leaves no bracket residue, and rendering starts from parsed data rather than by scanning markup. This is the criterion usually used to define a modern builder, and it is measurable on any install: see Storage model: JSON, not shortcodes.

CSS is layout-modern

Styling is flex/grid-first with CSS custom properties — the Components preset system compiles into --color-* / --font-size-* tokens and modern utility rules (see Components). Floats survive only inside the opt-in Bootstrap 3 grid, which is off by default.

The stack, layer by layer

Layer	Built on
Front end (visitor)	Vanilla JS, Bootstrap 5 CSS, CSS custom properties; Splide / Leaflet / noUiSlider; GSAP / Lenis / three.js / Lottie / Rive for motion
PHP core	The options-framework engine, the extension system, the manifest/updater — PHP 7.4+ (8.2-clean), typed & namespaced in the newer code
Admin builder / options UI	Server-rendered PHP enhanced with jQuery. No Backbone and no Underscore anywhere in the framework as of 2.16.19 — the options modal and the page-builder canvas both run on the framework's own fw.Class / fw.Collection / fw.View / fw.ModalFrame, and core ships fw.template / fw.escapeHtml / fw.throttle / fw.debounce / fw.clone / fw.isObject / fw.isEmpty. jQuery remains, deliberately — see the roadmap below

For exactly how that layer works — the _render() + fw:options:init contract, and the measured footprint of what was removed — see The admin JavaScript layer.

Extension authors

'fw' no longer declares 'underscore'. Any script that uses _ must list 'underscore' in its own wp_enqueue_script dependency array — it is no longer inherited.

Modernization roadmap

Modernization is actively underway, layer by layer. The front end and PHP core are already there; the work now is the admin UI. We ship these as they're ready rather than on fixed dates.

• A React admin UI. New admin surfaces are built on React, using the copy WordPress already ships in wp-admin (wp.element) rather than bundling another. The same React controls drive UnysonPlus's Gutenberg block inspectors, so the two efforts compound instead of duplicating.
• Retiring Backbone. ✅ Complete. Core in 2.16.11, two stragglers in 2.16.16, the builder canvas in 2.16.19. The vendored backbone-relational library is deleted and its script handle unregistered. Backbone still loads on admin pages because WordPress's media library uses it — but nothing in UnysonPlus asks for it.
• Retiring Underscore. ✅ Complete. Core in 2.16.13, the remaining 36 files in 2.16.19. No script handle declares underscore.
• jQuery: deliberately not next. It is now the largest legacy dependency (92 handles, ~116 admin files), but wp-admin loads jQuery unconditionally, so converting admin code saves users nothing. It is opportunistic work — done while a file is open for another reason — not a project.
• Vanilla admin controls. The remaining jQuery-based admin widgets (tooltips, enhanced dropdowns) are being replaced with dependency-free equivalents, continuing the front end's jQuery-free story into wp-admin.
• More REST, less ad-hoc AJAX. New admin/data endpoints favor the WordPress REST API over classic admin-ajax handlers.
• A leaner admin bundle. Unused vendored libraries are being retired so the admin ships only what it uses.

The principle throughout: modernize where it changes the experience, keep what already works, and never break saved content or a live site to do it.

The detailed, measured version of this roadmap — what the audit found, why React is adopted as a second renderer rather than a rewrite, and the order the work happens in — is The modernization plan.