Josepha 8:54 pm on June 3, 2021  

Announcing make.wordpress.org/project

When the Make WordPress network was created back in 2012, every team that existed at the time got its own blog to use for transparent communication, collaboration, and coordination. An Updates blog was also created to be a place each team could use to report on their activity to other teams, and beyond.

The number of contributors and teams has grown in the nearly-ten years since, along with the user base of WordPress itself. As organizations expand, more coordination and communication work becomes necessary to keep everyone connected and working together. We’ve always used the Updates blog for this, because it was our only contributor-focused, cross-team space. 

As more contributors get involved in cross-team efforts, I have heard complaints that it’s distracting or confusing when the Updates blog is used for announcements (like this one) and discussions (like these).

The last thing that I want is to create confusion or distract from the way teams keep each other informed, so I think the best solution is to create a new blog for all-project communications and cross-team collaboration. This blog should make it easier to host and find discussions that affect all teams, and make WordPress project “back-office” work more transparent.

This blog is not associated with any one team but rather with all the teams, and may be used for topics ranging from short-term initiatives to long-term maintenance work. User permissions will be closed-selection, with the list of people who can author posts listed on the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme.. Since the work accomplished on this blog exists across all teams, contributions won’t receive an additional profile badge. Once the work on make.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//project feels more settled, we can all take a look to see if a specific badge is needed.

P.S. – From an open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. perspective, this idea might sound pretty “business-y.” A simpler explanation might be that this is similar to the work done by our MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team: creating and maintaining the tools, infrastructure, safety, and processes that make contribution possible and more successful.

Josepha 6:22 pm on October 22, 2021
Tags: nominations,   

Team Rep Nominations

If you haven’t done so already, it is time to start the process to select new reps for your teams!

The Role

Each team has one or two representatives, abbreviated as “reps”. Team reps are responsible for communicating on behalf of the group to the other contributor groups via weekly updates, as well as occasional chats.

As a reminder, it is not called “team lead” for a reason. While the people elected as team reps will generally come from the pool of folks that people think of as experienced leaders, the team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. role is designed to change hands regularly.

The Process

The process generally just has three steps:
1. Make a call for nominations.
2. Vote on the people who accepted the nominations.
3. Announce and rejoice!

If you have any questions, please ask in the comments!

#planning #nominations

Boone Gorges 5:20 pm on October 10, 2014
Tags:   

Plugins team update, October 9, 2014

Repository stats for the week:

Plugins requested : 187
Plugins rejected : 28
Plugins closed : 25
Plugins approved : 132

61 items currently in the queue, 39 unanswered and 3 older than a week.

4631 commits to the repo (1004819-1000188). @otto42 is our one-millionth customer, with a well-earned changeset: https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/1000000

We currently have 19 open support tickets, with 3 older than a week.

#plugins

Emil Uzelac 9:13 pm on February 10, 2014
Tags: ,   

Theme Review Team Update: 02/10/14

Quick 411:

The Theme Review Team selected Jose Castaneda (@jcastaneda) and Srikanth Koneru (@tskk) as our new  Team Reps. We have WordPress 3.9 Guidelines Revisions Proposal in place, please don’t forget to share your thoughts.

Our weekly stats are:

Currently

  • 6 new tickets are waiting for review.
    • 0 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 0 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 0 tickets are older than 3 days
  • 83 tickets are assigned.

In the past 7 days

  • 142 tickets were opened
  • 226 tickets were closed:
    • 165 tickets were made live.
      • 39 new Themes were made live.
      • 126 Theme updates were made live.
      • 10 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 56 tickets were not-approved.
    • 5 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

N.B. Still unclear weather or not our new reps have the access to make posts, that’s why I am stepping in.

#themes, #trt

Josepha 10:47 pm on January 21, 2021
Tags:   

Big Picture Goals 2021

During 2020’s State of the Word, Matt reminded us of our overall roadmap for GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/. Much of that roadmap is on a multi-year timeline, and it can be hard to know what’s next with such a distant North Star. This post contains some near-stars for the year, but there are some things you should know before you read them.

These are intentionally broad

There is more to WordPress’ success than the code we write, or the open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. freedoms we share. While the goals below are focused on shippable projects, I understand that there are supporting contributions (translations, testing/triage, accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), support, etc) that are part of these project goals.

These are intentionally incomplete

There are always small projects that arise over the course of our year. And there are big projects that we move forward in pieces over the course of multiple years. This project is too big for me to see everything all the time, and I rely on the information from team reps and the vision from project leadership to help navigate any surprises.

Just because a project isn’t written here, doesn’t mean it is forgotten or has no value to our overall success.

The Big Picture

  1. Full site editing: Bring into the Gutenberg pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, and subsequently WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., the ability to edit all elements of a site using Gutenberg blocks. This will include all in-progress features designed to help existing users transition to Gutenberg as well. Scope/Timeline: MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia in the plugin by April 2021, v1 in Core by WordPress 5.8.
  2. LearnWP: Enable WordPress skills-leveling by providing workshops, pre-recorded trainings, and self-serve learning opportunities on learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/. Scope/Timeline: regularly publish new workshops and lesson plans, maintain a high pass rate on workshop quizzes to establish learner success and comprehension.
  3. Contributor tools: Decrease the manual overhead of maintenance work for teams through better tooling. Scope/Timeline: Varied, and pending additional testing.

How can you help?

As I mentioned above, I know that our code isn’t the only measure of our success. If you already know what sort of contribution you’d like to make, you can check out this list of teams (with links to their community sites) and team reps. If you’re not yet sure, here are the areas that each team falls into:

  • Development, Technology, Code: Core/Editor, Mobile, CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress./Tide, Security
  • Design, Product, UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it./UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing.: Design, Accessibility, Test, Triage
  • Community, Extending WP, Education: Community, Themes, Plugins, Polyglots, Training
  • Contributor Experience: MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress., Docs, Hosting, Privacy
  • Communications: Marketing, Support, WPTV

A Note on Specialized Groups

There are a couple of coordinated efforts that provide essential support to the progress of multiple teams.

  • Triage: The triage effort happens across multiple teams and has two purposes. One purpose is to make sure tickets are sorted and have all the elements needed for someone to work on them. The second purpose is to determine priority. Not everyone has the information to set priority, but anyone can help sort and replicate reported bugs!
  • Test: The testing effort also happens across multiple teams and has two purposes. One purpose is to try out features before they get to our users. The second purpose is to bring high quality feedback into our process early. A lot of that coordination happens on make.wordpress.org/test, but there are also frequently calls to participate on make.wordpress.org/core.

#goals

Josepha 12:30 am on March 12, 2021  

Full Site Editing Pre-Merge Overview

Full site editing is where the promise of GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ gets proven—the technical aspects meet the philosophical aspects as a user-focused tool meant to empower the user to create, and express, and sustain themselves online. Community readiness should be higher for full site editing than for the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor, but there are known (and unknown) gaps in knowledge we still need to bridge. 

The following is an outline of the communication work needed in the pre-merge period for Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project. This will put us in a position to merge Full Site Editing later this year while raising awareness and increasing the skills of our community as we go.

Some Context for Where We Are

Phases of The Full Site Editing Project

  1. 2019 – Throughout 2019, Gutenberg project leads explored the necessary interactions and potential technical implementations of full site editing.
  2. 2020 – Early in 2020, technical leaders (Matias et al.) worked publically on full site editing based on the learnings from 2019.
  3. 2020 – Throughout 2020, CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. developers built and refined full site editing tools and interactions.
  4. 2021
    1. Jan 2021 – Josepha posted a proposed timeline for the merge to Core.
    2. Mar 2021 – WordPress 5.7 release and follow up iterations
    3. Apr 2021 – Go/no go dates (Apr 13, 27)
      1. If go – Jul 2021 full site editing in WP5.8
      2. If no go – Dec 2021 full site editing in WP5.9
    4. Apr/May 2021 (ASAP) – Finalize teams for WordPress 5.8
    5. Jul 2021 – WordPress 5.8 release and follow up iterations

Communication of This Project

As in the pre-merge time period for the block editor, there are four genres of content to provide:

  • Updates and progress content to WordPress contributors—all contributor teams including theme and pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party authors—so that there is confidence in the process.
    • Where – SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., Make network, WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//news/, social media, events
  • Training and explanation content to WordPress users—end users, agencies, theme authors, plugin developers—so that there is confidence in exploring full site editing.
    • Where – WordPress.org/news/, WP publications (newsletters, blogs, podcasts, etc), events
  • Aspirational and inspirational content to WordPress users’ and their clients—site maintainers, account executives, business owners—so that there is confidence in choosing full site editing.
    • Where – WordPress.org, WordPress.org/news/, events
  • Awareness raising and broadcast content to the WordPress users outside the contributor community—new users, users who aren’t aware of the community, etc—so that there is confidence in the choice of WordPress as a CMS.
    • Where – WordPress.org, WordPress.org/news/, events

The Communication Work Ahead

Who Communicates and What Do They Share?

We’ve got a lot of excellent voices ready to help us share important information, as well as many who can help promote and disseminate it. I want to make sure that we can identify which type of content is most important for each group to create or share. (Note that some people can/will float from group to group, depending on the context.)

  • Leadership
    • Who – Project lead, Executive Director, technical and product leads.
    • Message – Clarify the project’s North Star; the “why” behind the vision. Remind what we stand to gain, and the short-term wins.
  • Product
    • Who – Design, development, and others who are at the front of defining what blocks are and how they improve WordPress.
    • Message – Share what is changing. Remind what’s at the end of this journey, wayfinding footholds, and clarify where we are in the journey to Full Site Editing.
  • DevRel
    • Who – Community voices that developers look to for updates, training, and general Gutenberg insights.
    • Message – Training and awareness among our various developer communities, and testing/feedback between “co-developers”/users and product folks. Remind where we are in the journey to Full Site Editing.
  • Marketing
    • Who – Further the existing messaging with the tools and experience marketing folks can offer.
    • Message – Raising awareness about Full Site Editing.

Known Challenges

Here are a few things that might make this communication more difficult. If you can think of other communication challenges (or solutions to the ones below), please share them in the comments!

  • We don’t have established communication channels with theme and plugin authors.
  • Communication on the Make network, Slack, and WordPress.org/news/ is only in English, and there are no established methods of translating non-English language feedback for Core designers and developers. 
Emil Uzelac 6:00 am on September 23, 2013  

Theme Review Team Update: 09/23/13

Theme Review Team stats are:

Currently

  • 17 new tickets are waiting for review.
    • 0 tickets are older than 2 weeks
    • 0 tickets are older than 1 week
    • 2 tickets are older than 3 days
  • 20 tickets are assigned.

In the past 7 days

  • 112 tickets were opened
  • 129 tickets were closed:
    • 107 tickets were made live.
      • 19 new Themes were made live.
      • 88 Theme updates were made live.
      • 1 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 21 tickets were not-approved.
    • 1 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.
Tonya Mork 4:11 pm on September 27, 2021
Tags:   

Test team update for 27 Sep 2021

Test Ticket Queue

(change: N) represents changes from last week = this week – last week

Current totals:

  • Needs reproduce issue: 1490 (change: 0)
  • Patches needing testing: 211 (change: -1)
  • Unit tests for patches:
    • Need unit tests: 127 (change: +1)
    • Have unit tests & need review: 131 (change: 0)
  • Tagged as needs testing info: 7 (change: 0)

New/changes In last 7 days:

  • Needs reproduce issue: 5 (change: -5)
  • Patches needing testing: 5 (change: +1)
  • Unit tests for patches:
    • Need unit tests: 6 (change: +6)
    • Have unit tests & need review: 7 (change: +4)
  • Tagged as needs testing info: 0 (change: 0)

Closed in last 7 days:

  • Could not reproduce issue: 13 (change: +11)
  • Patches needing testing: 0 (change: -2)
  • Unit tests for patches:
    • Need unit tests: 0 (change: 0)
    • Have unit tests & need review: 3 (change: +1)
  • Tagged as needs testing info: 0 (change: 0)

Highlights

  • Week in Test => curated guide to point testers were they could contribute this week; also includes posts for awareness and learnings
  • Modernize to Latest PHPUnit project is now complete 🎉
    • Dev Note published
    • Huge kudos to cross-team, cross-component, and cross-(open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL.)project effort to solve this hard hard problem and each challenge! 👏 Showed the best of our collaborative spirit 🎉
  • Core e2e working strategy session happening this week (i.e. for 5.9 testing roadmap)

Help needed:

  • Need help broadly reaching extenders who are impacted (i.e. those who run their integration tests using coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.’s test framework)

    • #test

    KafleG 2:33 am on September 21, 2021
    Tags: ,   

    Themes team update September 21, 2021

    Theme directory stats

    Currently,

    • 0 new tickets are waiting for review.
      • 0 tickets are older than 4 weeks
      • 0 tickets are older than 2 weeks
      • 0 tickets are older than 1 week
      • 0 tickets are older than 3 days
    • 29tickets are assigned.
      • 1 tickets are older than 4 weeks
      • 5 tickets are older than 2 weeks
      • 7 tickets are older than 1 week
      • 16 tickets are older than 3 days
    • 1 are approved but are waiting to be made live.

    In the past 7 days,

    • 314 tickets were opened
    • 308 tickets were closed:
      • 296 tickets were made live.
        • 15 new Themes were made live.
        • 281 Theme updates were made live.
        • 0 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
      • 11 tickets were not-approved.
      • 1 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

    Number of reviewers: 6

    HelpScout Stats

    In the past 7 days,

    Email Conversations 29Messages Received 29
    Replies Sent 0Emails Created 0
    Resolved 0Resolved on First Reply 0%

    #themes, #weekly-updates

    Stefanos Togoulidis 10:50 am on September 21, 2021
    Tags:   

    Mobile Team Update – September 21st

    WordPress iOSiOS The operating system used on iPhones and iPads. and Android version 18.3 is available for testing. Sign up here to join the betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. program on iOS or follow this link on your Android device, tap on “Become a beta tester”.

    Highlights for the last two weeks:

    • BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Editor: Inline embed previews for WordPress, Instagram, and Vimeo. Fixed a regression in the Image block where the rounded corners setting was not applying inside the editor.
    • Other projects: We fixed an issue on iOS that was preventing media library images and videos to be shared.
    • Infrastructure: We continued to work on CI migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies., iOS UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. Tests shared infrastructure and Gradle upgrades.

    #mobile