Author Archives: Siobhan

Siobhan 4:45 pm on November 28, 2013  

The Unsung Heroes

Great article about the benefits that active support forums/channels bring to on-line communities:

Community Forums the Unsung Hero in Customer Service #Infographic

Originally shared by @fabianapsimoes.

Siobhan 9:15 am on October 4, 2013  

Thank you!

My internship period is now over and I just wanted to take this chance to say a big thank you to everyone who supported me throughout. Special thanks go to my mentors @hanni and @ipstenu for their help and guidance, and to @jenmylo for organising WordPress’ involvement with GNOME’s OPW.

I was looking forward to meeting a few more of you in person at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe, however, unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, I will no longer be attending this weekend.

Getting more involved in the WordPress community has been wonderful, and I hope to continue contributing back to the community far beyond this internship. If you are, or if you know of a, woman interested in becoming more involved in open-source communities, please do consider the GNOME Outreach Program for Women: http://gnome.org/opw/. They are now accepting applicants for their next round, starting December 10th. Feel free to contact me if you want any more information on the application process.

Thank you again.

Siobhan 7:26 pm on September 23, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Last But One Week

Hey all. Not long left of my internship now. 🙂 Just a really, really quick update this week. I’ll mainly be spending my last two weeks helping @sabreuse with Troubleshooting documents. The outline for these can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/troubleshooting-workshop-outline/. More to follow next week. 🙂

Siobhan 7:50 pm on September 16, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 14

Hey everyone. This is the last week of the OPW internship period, however, as I took two weeks out for my backpacking trip, I’ll be hanging around a little longer than expected. 🙂 In my two week make-up time (next week and the week after) I’ve been asked to create some tutorials/documentation on troubleshooting problems in order to help newcomers to the forums.

Last week, I submitted my first two patches to coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. These were towards the 3.7 effort to add Inline-Docs to all the hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. in core (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//core/2013/09/05/add-inline-docs-for-hooks/.) Special thanks go to @kpdesign for encouraging and helping me to submit my first patch, and also to @DrewAPicture and @tierra for their help via the #wordpress-sfd IRC channel. Everyone was really quick to offer their time and help, it really made me happy to be a part of the WP community, so thanks everyone.

I’m hoping to submit some more Inline-Doc patches this week, in addition to helping out as much as possible on the forums. 🙂

Siobhan 7:24 pm on September 9, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 13

Hey everyone. So, it’s the second to last week of my internship. Time flies.

As always, I’ll be about on the forums this week and I am going to try to do some more theme reviews.

I’m currently getting my head around SVNSVN Apache 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/., PHPDoc standards, and the how to’s of submitting patches. I’m hoping to submit my first patch in the next few days for the Inline-Doc effort (https://make.wordpress.org/core/2013/09/05/add-inline-docs-for-hooks/). If anyone’s got any tips or feedback on any (inevitable) mistakes I make with my first patch, they’d be much appreciated. 🙂

Siobhan 7:49 pm on September 2, 2013  

Back from Backpacking, and Start of Week 12

Hey everyone. So I’ve been backpacking around Europe for the past two weeks! Thank you to my mentors, @ipstenu and @hanni, for allowing me to take this time out of my internship. I really had the best experience. The plan for this week is to catch up and get back on track with everything. I’ll be back on the forums as well as trying to see where I can contribute towards 3.7 and 3.8. As always, any tips, advice, or suggestions are welcome. 🙂

Siobhan 8:51 pm on August 12, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 9

Hi all.

So last week, things seemed to really get kicked off on IRC in regards to 3.7 and 3.8 planning. There’s some really exciting things being talked about and I’m really keen to help out where I can. For 3.7, I’m hoping to help improve the in-line docs throughout coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. I think this would fit in nicely with my Support internship, and could potentially lead to my first core contribution. 🙂

On the subject of contributing to core, Helen Hou-Sandí wrote a great blog post on “TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. Gardening” last week. Approaching Trac is pretty daunting for newcomers, but Helen’s outlined a good approach to take with this, and Trac curation is definitely another area of WordPress that I’m going to try and get involved with. For those interested, the blog post can be found here: http://helen.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/scared-of-wordpress-core-trac-but-want-to-give-it-a-shot-try-trac-gardening/

Aside from this, I aim to do some more theme reviews this week, and of course, keep replying to forum threads.

Next week, I’ll be backpacking around Europe, so there will be no blog posts from me for the next two Mondays. Thanks to everyone for all your positive feedback on my internship thus far. Speak to you again in a couple of weeks!

Siobhan 8:47 pm on August 5, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 8

Hello all. So, I’ve passed the mid-point of my internship and am still very much enjoying being part of the WordPress community.

As I’ve said before, providing support for other users is most definitely helping me to increase my own knowledge base, and helping to resolve problems for people is something that makes me feel happy in the process. Outside of the forums, I’ve started getting my head around the tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticketing system and am now an official part of the theme reviewer team too. 🙂

I’m grateful that I get to do something I enjoy so much full-time at the moment, and I’ll try my best to make the most of this last part of my internship.

Siobhan 5:40 pm on August 2, 2013  

Today everyone that’s interning as part of GNOME’s…

Today, everyone that’s interning as part of GNOME’s OPW received an email from Marina Zhurakhinskaya, the program’s organiser, to congratulate us on reaching mid-point of our internship periods. I can’t believe how fast the time’s gone! I’ve really enjoyed helping out on the forums so far, and would love to get more involved with other areas of support such as training or docs. If anyone has any tasks that I could help out on, then please do feel free to throw them at me during this second half of my internship. Thanks. 🙂

Siobhan 7:52 pm on July 29, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 7

A quick, quick update on my internship for you. This past week I:

  • Continued helping folks on the forums.
  • Reviewed and approved two themes for the WordPress theme repository. I learnt an unbelievable amount by doing so, and would recommend anyone who wants to learn more about theme development join the Theme Review Team.
  • Watched the live-streaming of WCSF. The presentations that I watched were of such high quality and I was able to take away something from each of them. I’ll be catching up with all the talks I missed out on through WordPress.tv. 
  • Had my volunteer application to WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe accepted. Very excited! Maybe see some of you there. 🙂