Welcome to the MetaMetaMeta 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!
The Meta team is responsible for maintaining and managing WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ websites. Our work is mostly done on the meta trac. If you see a bug, file a ticket!
This week’s meeting will be held at 21UTC on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, and @courane01 will be hosting.
👋🏻 Intro/Welcome
🆕 News
MetaMetaMeta 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. news
GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ & TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.
Accessing make.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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//systems
^ This glowing dot cannot be clicked since it’s just an animation.
During the tour, that element of the web page will be highlighted like this:
Since the Polyglot contributors got good feedback about this tour and its potential applicability to other areas of Make WordPress, they then collaborated with MetaMetaMeta 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. contributors @psrpinto and me (@akirk) to convert this tour into a dedicated plugin, simply called Tour, and added an easy way to create such tours (similar like you might know the Inspector of browser developer tools).
In order to restart a tour that you already completed (or dismissed), and for better accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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), there is also a Masterbar menu to start the tours that are visible on the current page:
There is also a shortcodeShortcodeA shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site. and an “Available Tours” GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/blockBlockBlock 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. that allows you to embed the list of tours in a place of your choosing on the website so that there is also an additional path of starting a tour for people who are not logged in (and thus don’t see a Masterbar).
Demos
To demo this, we created two videos, one to show what it’s like to go through a tour, and one to show how to create a tour. Finally, a screenshot to show what updating a tour looks like.
Taking a Tour (Video)
Creating a Tour (Video)
Updating a Tour (Screenshot)
You can update each step separately (title, text and CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. selector) and HTMLHTMLHTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. is available in the description.
Also note that tours are a custom post typeCustom Post TypeWordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. with revisionsRevisionsThe WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision., so you can undo any changes. While creating, testing, and editing a tour, you can keep it as a draft so that it won’t be visible to users who cannot see drafts.
The Tour plugin is not yet in the pluginPluginA 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 directory but you can download the ZIP file from Github and install it on any WordPress site.
On Make WordPress, we have activated the plugin on the Meta and the Polyglots P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. and we’d be happy to activate it on other Make teams if they want to use it on their own P2 for whatever they feel it could be useful.
Accessibility
I’d like to give a special invitation to the +make.wordpress.org/accessibility/ team to try the tour and let us know which improvements we’d need to make to make it more accessible. We think that an important aspect to start with is that it doesn’t open up automatically and gets in the way of people who were trying to do something different in the first place. The underlying driver.js library had in the past made some strides to make it accessible and per suggestion from @joedolson, we have added alternative ways (such as the Masterbar or Gutenberg block) to start tours.
Try It On this P2
We have created a first tour here on the Meta P2 (see the logo in the blue bar at the top of the page, or start it using the Masterbar). It is just a very quick demo, we’ll probably expand it in future. You can take it to get an idea of how such a tour could work and if you’d like to discuss with your own Make team whether you’d like to try it out as well. Please reach out in the comments!
The community.wordpress.org Matrix server is kept “in sync” with the Make.WordPress slack. Messages sent on Slack (in public channels) are automatically posted to a corresponding Matrix room. Newly-created public Slack channels automatically get a new Matrix room.
The Matrix rooms contain the complete history of the Slack channels, as if those rooms had existed since always.
We’re looking for community feedback on what tooling is needed to address administrative tasks on Matrix, like GDPR erasure, moderation, etc.
We’re in the process of migrating Slack integrations to Matrix (e.g, “slash commands”, Welcome Bots, RSS feeds, etc), but there is still quite some work to be done on this front. We’ve started with making an inventory of all Slack integrations.
We have created documentation to visually explain how to join rooms via Matrix:
Shared progress on import of private Slack channels. Mentioned users who wish to migrate the history of private channels should get in touch with @akirk@ashfame or @psrpinto.
Shared documentation on how to join the community.wordpress.org Matrix server, and on available Matrix clients.
A Community member asked about how Matrix administrative tasks will differ from Slack (e.g. GDPR erasure requests).
How will the administration differ from Slack? For example Slack has procedures for data erasure requests, that is very important that gets carried over.
Clarified Matrix administration needs (e.g.GDPR erasure requests) are on our radar, but we would like to understand the kind of administrative operations that are more common, so that we can provide necessary tooling for those needs.
Shared update on a minor production incident that caused some “noise” in Matrix rooms (users’ names and avatars being changed)
Mentioned Slack channels created after the initial migrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. were now available on Matrix, and that new Slack channels would be automatically created on Matrix without human intervention, from now on.
Shared documentation (also linked from the main Chat with Matrix page) to visually explain how to join rooms via Matrix:
Over the past few months, contributors have been working on a new design for the Developer Resources section of WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/, which includes the official Code Reference, BlockBlockBlock 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 Handbook, Theme Handbook, and much more.
This project aims to refresh the aesthetics of the Developer Resources section, convert the site to a block theme, and improve the overall developer experience. While this redesign includes few functional changes and virtually no content changes, the size of the site makes this project one of the largest we have tackled so far.
All development work is taking place in the wporg-developerGitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository, and you can view the staging site here: developer.wordpress.org/redesign-test.
Design
The Developer Resources redesign follows the new WordPress.org aesthetic that debuted with the Showcase redesign last month. Given that this is developer documentation, the design takes a slightly more minimalistic and content-first approach. You can view the comprehensive design, as well as all previous iterations, in Figma.
The internal page design takes inspiration from other popular documentation sites, such as React and MDN Web Docs. Visitors are presented with the familiar layout of a chapter list on the left, content in the middle, and a table of contents on the right.
Here’s a sample page from the Block Editor Handbook.
A redesigned single page layout versus the current site.
Development
While the new design is the most apparent change, Developer Resources will soon be powered by blocks. Specifically, it’s a custom child theme that sits atop the WordPress.org parent block theme. Much like the newly redesigned Showcase site, this structure allows us to take advantage of CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. functionality like Group and Query blocks as well as custom blocks explicitly built for WordPress.org.
As we continue to migrate sections of the WordPress.org network to block themes, each subsequent project will become easier and build off prior work. For example, we completed the standardization of layout and spacing variables as part of the Showcase redesign last month.
Content
The content and existing content management processes for all internal sections of Developer Resources will not change as part of the redesign work. The one minor exception is the homepage, as can be seen in the screenshot above.
The content for the new homepage was based on the existing site but now uses a “card” layout. This new design is highly adaptable, and additional cards can be added easily. The one new addition is a listing of the latest Developer Blog posts.
The Developer Blog posts list on the homepage
In the last year, the Blog has become a valuable community-driven resource for content that complements the official developer documentation. Surfacing the latest posts on the homepage will increase its visibility.
The Developer Blog is also being redesigned to match the new look of Developer Resources. The goal is for developers to navigate fluidly between blog articles and official developer documentation without feeling like they are visiting two completely different sites.
How you can help
First, thank you to everyone who has contributed so far to this new Developer Resources redesign, whether in Figma, GitHub, or the #website-redesign channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. However, we need additional help.
Given the scope of this section, more testing is needed as we look toward launching the new design in early December. While functionality might have moved around, there should be parity between the current site and the staging site.
Here are the major sections of Developer Relations. Each link will take you to the relevant section in the staging site.
If you would like to propose a change or report an issue, please do so in the wporg-developer GitHub repository. Please ensure your issue has not already been reported before opening a new one. The goal is to wrap up all testing and quality assurance by the end of next week (12/1).
As with all changes to WordPress.org, this redesign is just a single iteration, with many more to come in the future. So, if you have suggestions for larger functional changes, feel free to propose those as well.
Also, make sure to join the #website-redesign Slack channel if you are interested in additional updates coming to WordPress.org and want to contribute. Thanks!
Based on feedback about our first attempt at testing a plugin preview feature, we have an improved version ready to go. This version builds on feedback and suggestions, and in particular is designed to give pluginPluginA 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 developers the opportunity to safely experiment and test the preview experience for their plugins before making them public.
About Plugin Previews in the Playground
If you haven’t noticed it yet, the WordPress Playground is an amazing feature that lets anyone safely run a temporary WordPress install within their browser. It uses WASM to run a complete WordPress install – PHPPHPPHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php., database, and all – entirely from within your web browser. No server needed, nothing to install.
For a while now Playground has supported loading any plugin or theme from the plugin directory; here’s how.
About the new Plugin Preview button
As with the last attempt, the new Plugin Preview feature simply adds a convenient button to plugins in the plugin directory. The button takes the user to Playground with that plugin installed. It’s right beside the Download button, like this:
The important differences this time around are:
1. The button is double-opt-in. It’s not shown by default for any plugins. 2. It’s now possible for plugin developers to configure the preview environment and install dependencies (other plugins and themes). 3. Plugin developers can test the preview before making it available to the public. 4. Most php extensions are now supported. 5. Remote network requests are now supported.
I’ll explain these in more detail below.
Opt-in.
There are two things required for a plugin preview button to appear to all users:
1. A valid blueprint.json file must be provided in a blueprints sub-directory of the plugin’s assets folder. 2. The plugin preview must be set to “public” from the plugin’s Advanced view by a committer.
Note: Part 2 is intentionally not yet deployedDeployLaunching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors., meaning no plugin preview buttons are yet available to the public. This is intended to give a grace period for plugin developers to experiment with blueprints, customize the experience, and decide if they want to use it.
If a valid blueprint.json file is present, then the Preview button will be present for plugin committers only. In which case it will look like this:
 It’s called Test Preview because that’s why it’s there: to allow plugin committers to test their plugin in the Playground environment and decide whether or not to make it easily available to the public.
Blueprints.
Blueprints are jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. files used to set up a WordPress Playground instance.
They can be used to specify things like PHP and WP versions, the landing page, and (most importantly) a series of automated steps such as logging in, and installing and activating plugins and themes.
The blueprint for your plugin should be committed to the assets folder with subversionSVNApache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/. as assets/blueprints/blueprint.json. Initially only the one blueprint file is supported, but we expect to allow multiple in future.
Here’s an example of a simple blueprint.json file that you could use as a starting point:
landingPage, which specifies the URLURLA specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org of the page that the user will land on when the preview loads.
preferredVersions, which specifies versions of PHP and WordPress.
phpExtensionBundles, which in this case specifies that we want most common PHP extensions to be available (kitchen-sink).
steps, which tells Playground what to do before displaying the landing page. In this case, it will simply log the user in to wp-admin.
Here’s an example of a more advanced blueprint.json that demonstrates some more features you could use to create a rich demo environment for users:
Almost any of the documented Blueprint features should work. There are some particular caveats to blueprints as used by the Plugin Preview button feature however:
Your blueprint.json file must validate as per PHP’s json_decode() function. If no Test Preview button appears, check that it’s valid. (Note that this means backtick quotes as used in this example are not supported as they are invalid in json) .
If you forget to install and activate your own plugin with an installPlugin step, the plugin directory will add that step for you when adding the blueprint to the Preview button.
The blueprint will be whitespace-normalized before use.
There is a 100kb size limit. This is an arbitrary limit necessary for tedious reasons; I expect we’ll increase or remove it in future.
What’s next
We expect to improve on the preview feature in a number of ways. In the short term:
We’ll take the preview button out of test mode and allow public use very soon, depending on your feedback.
A coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. patch will propose adding an identical Preview button to the plugin directory UIUIUI 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. in core. (Whether or not this is adopted will depend of course on core team discussion and process).
Better Blueprint validation and error reporting.
Support for multiple blueprint.json files.
UI/UXUXUX 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. design improvements.
In the longer term, we’ll collect and discuss ideas, and post proposals in MetaMetaMeta 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.tracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets and/or Make p2 posts.
Feedback, questions, and support
You’re welcome to post suggestions, ideas, and questions in comments on this post.
Over time we’ll direct support questions and requests to other forums as available.
This week’s meeting will be held at 21UTC on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, and @courane01 will be hosting.
👋🏻 Intro/Welcome
🆕 News
MetaMetaMeta 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. news
Projects
Are there any new projects in Meta currently being worked on?
TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.
PluginPluginA 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 Repo
CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. / GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/
This week’s meeting will be held at 19UTC on Wednesday, November 1, 2023.
🆕 News
MetaMetaMeta 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 news
Projects
Are there any new initiatives or projects Meta members are working on?
GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ & TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.
PluginPluginA 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 Repo:
@coffee2code@harishankar This never received any further decisions. Can we work together with Marketing to close the ticket (ideally by sorting out the badging)
In a recent meeting with the PluginPluginA 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 Review Team, it became evident that there are gaps in our communication between the Plugin Review Team and the MetaMetaMeta 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, particularly concerning the addition of new features to the Plugin Directory.
This can lead to problematic situations. We indirectly represent the directory — even if our focus is primarily on the review process — and people contact us with questions, relying on us to assist with such matters. It would be helpful for the Plugin Review team to have the opportunity to review, test, provide feedback, and (when appropriate) communicate this to plugin authors.
To improve this situation, we’d love help from the Meta team. Would the Meta team be able to adapt some workflows to facilitate better communication between our teams?
An example was the WordPress Playground preview ticket, which had to be reverted. I’m confident the situation would not have escalated as it did if a better process had been in place.
Some examples of things that could be done:
Send a notification on the #pluginreviewSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel or on our P2 a few hours before implementing changes (ideally at least 24 hours for major changes).
If someone has the bandwidth to build a complete feedback process, we could create something to add a delay for new feature commits for a set period or maybe test betaBetaA 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. versions of changes on a staging site.
MetaMetaMeta 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. news
Projects
Are there any new projects in Meta currently being worked on?
TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. & GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/
@coffee2code@harishankar This never received any further decisions. Can we work together with Marketing to close the ticket (ideally by sorting out the badging)