Andrea Rennick

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Need help with a WordPress issue? You can find help with your WordPress problem by posting in the support forums or asking on the #wordpress IRC channel.

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Weekly Meetings

As well as discussing support issues here on the blog, we use Slack for group communication.

Our weekly meeting is held fortnightly on Thursday at 20:00 UTC, with agendas published below. The next will be at Thursday, 20:00 UTC (your time zone) in #forums on 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/..

During our regular meeting in IRC we discussed some changes to the codex, based on the roundtable discussion at the WordPress Community Summit.

Before we started ripping things apart, I thought it would be good to look at some stats, if possible, and also to get community input. Because it’s one thing to come up with a good idea, but it’s another to make sure that’s what is needed based on numbers and user feedback.

So this is basically our gut check. 😉

To that end, here are the top 40 visited Codex pages in the last month or so:

/Function_Reference/
/Installing_WordPress,
/Template_Tags/,
/Version_3.4.2,
/First_Steps_With_WordPress,
/Class_Reference/,
/Editing_wp-config.php,
/Main_Page,
/Plugin_API/,
/Theme_Development,
/Using_Permalinks,
/Pages,
/WordPress_Lessons,
/Glossary,
/New_To_WordPress_-_Where_to_Start,
/Moving_WordPress,
/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory,
/Changing_File_Permissions,
/Child_Themes,
/WordPress_Backups,
/Getting_Started_with_WordPress,
/Using_Themes,
/Create_A_Network,
/Changing_The_Site_URL,
/Roles_and_Capabilities,
/Introduction_to_Blogging,
/The_Loop,
/Blog_Design_and_Layout,
/Conditional_Tags,
/Using_Custom_Fields,
/Formatting_Date_and_Time,
/Function_Reference,
/WordPress_in_Your_Language,
/Template_Hierarchy,
/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page,
/Post_Types,
/Writing_a_Plugin,
/Template_Tags,
/ExcerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox.,
/Updating_WordPress,

And for perspective, the top page (function reference) got over 1.9 million hits, while the second page was hit only 280,000 times.

To me this backs up our earlier conclusion of a divide between users and devs and where they go and what they look for. So the user handbook will likely be well received. Ipstenu made us a shortcodeShortcode A 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. for the Codex so we can start marking pages that will considered for removal and send users to the user manual instead.

The other thing we talked about, before we go too far, is to create a poll to get feedback on codex reorganization.

Some suggested poll items:

I like the codex just as it is, it need some love!
separate user docs from dev docs
something else

Your suggestions for poll options are welcome! Without it turning into an actual poll here… 😉

#chat, #codex

The awesome Jerry is taking on Gravatars because it fits with the user section he has just completed.

HTTPSHTTPS HTTPS is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The 'S' at the end of HTTPS stands for 'Secure'. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This is especially helpful for protecting sensitive data like banking information. is still up for grabs.

Some proofreading going on and we’re wondering if we can un-techie “install on your own server” for newbies. Maybe soften it to “your web host”.

Jerry has moved “your Profile” from chapter 7 and put it under “Managing Users on your WordPress Site” in Ch06.

Also we noted about being careful with internal linking in the manual, depending on final home.

Fastest meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. ever! There were only 3 of us.

Chat for this weekend is cancelled. See you next week!

We had our first ever IRC chat today at 1800 UTC in #wordpress-sfd. Since this was our first ever, we mainly clarified a few things and went over projects in progress.

For the post below about editing pages ported in from WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/, no one present was actively working on any specific pages. We should probably group them out somehow and assign or volunteer for those, so we know who is working on what, and so we’re not tripping over each other and duplicating work.

I suggested a mentorship drive at pretty much the same time Siobhan did, so look for a post about that soon.

Jane popped in and suggested that our two pages listed support might want to be tweaked. The page for the handbook on how to contribute for support personel is one, and the https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/ should maybe be renamed to current projects or just Projects, since it’s going to be moved anyway.

My apologies if I missed anything. The chat log can be accessed here.

We should probably get a conversation going not only about needed Codex work but *how* to approach a better structure and how to get the work done.

I’m leaning towards a re-org and maybe a bit of a division between users docs and programmer notes. A good example of this the Pages page. It starts out as a user doc then jumps right into code.

Things like Handbooks need to be sorted out and linked to as well.

I think if we could sort out the right approach first and focus on specific pages or topics later, then we’d start making big progress. Possible if we even approached it like a WP dev cycle, with clear targets and a deadline.

Possibly a mentorship program as well, wehre we could round up people to help and start handing out assignments and being there to keep people on task and for any questions they have.

All thoughts welcome here. 🙂

#codex, #docs

In order to get the ball rolling, how about we all chime in with our most-use responses?

Some tools you may wish to use to make answering posts easier/faster:
TextExpander
Popcrom
Lifehacker list of alternatives for Macs

Please feel free to use and adapt these to your own needs. Personally, I find it nicer for the users if each mod has a slightly different phrase. 😉 Otherwise, we’re just support bots. 😀

#advice, #responses

Want to get involved?

Weekly Meetings

Author Archives: Andrea Rennick

Codex chat

Again with a meetup

Chat for this weekend is cancelled See you…

Meeting recap

Codex work

Standard responses