Events Group Update for 11/29/2012

Past week:

  • 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. organizing teams were approved in Mexico, Nicaragua, Bhubaneswar, and Seoul. Asked 9 other applicants to start by organizing a 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. first.
  • The WordPress.tv subcommittee published 3 WordCamp videos and met on Skype to start planning their roadmap.
  • The Events Planning Training Materials subcommittee has started gathering materials from WordCamp and Meetup organizers.
  • The Multi-event Sponsorship Program subcommittee is still trying to set up a first meeting.

Coming week:

  • WordCamp Orlando, the last of the year, happens this weekend.
  • Respond to incoming WordCamp organizer applications.
  • Publish the membership for additional Events subcommittees.
  • Recruit some 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. testers to design their WordCamp site using TwentyTwelve/Eleven/Ten and test the new 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 for the session/sponsor/speaker CPTs.
  • Get some basic (for now) WordPress stickers printed up and arrange a system for shipping them to WordCamps/Meetups.

Notes:

Andrea was on vacation last week.

 

Mobile group update for Nov 26 I missed…

Mobile group update for Nov 26

I missed that our update day is Monday (was not defined earlier) so this update is a little late. These updates will most likely be written by other mobile contributors as well as myself in the future.

Here’s an update of our projects (key: WPPlatformName):

WPiOS

Sounds release is wrapped up and submitted Monday. This is version 3.3 and features bug fixes and sound effects. Should go live by the end of the week or early next week. Announcement is being drafted.

Notifications release is in the works and features a Notifications panel for 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/ users and Jetpack-enabled blogs. This release doesn’t have a version number yet but is a few weeks out.

WPWindowsPhone

We’ve spent a lot of time updating the Windows Phone app lately to make it compatible with and work well on Windows Phone 8 devices.

Version 1.7 (and 1.7.1) features Local Drafts, Post Formats, Windows Phone 8 compatibility. We had some initial issues with getting the update to run properly on Windows Phone 8 releases but these issues should be resolved shortly. Version 1.7.1 features bug fix updates and is currently pending approval.

Version 1.8 is in the works and should be ready within a week. It features a better comments list and better bulk moderation.

WPAndroid

No updates currently in progress.

WPBlackBerry

No updates currently in progress.

WPwebOS and WPNokia

These projects are not in active development and will not be reported on in these updates unless this changes.

Mobile Handbook

Over the last few weeks we’ve been learning more about what is expected from the upcoming Mobile Handbook and are getting started on writing it – we’ll split the work in between us since each app requires a little different instructions and documentation.

Dev blogs and app site’s migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies.

No progress since the last update, still planning on moving resources over bit by bit. Each app currently has it’s own landing page, official blog, download page, twitter feed, contribution page, support section (FAQ, forums), and dev blogs. At WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. it was decided that these would be moved over to the 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/ headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. and merged where possible (dev blogs, forums)

More info

Last week’s dev chat summary (and since it already happened as of writing this, this week’s dev chat summary)

Progress reports and discussions regarding mobile WordPress are happening on Make/Mobile.

#mobile

Support Team Update for 11/27

Support is gearing up for 3.5 as well. The Master List Draft Post is up, and I would love to see more people commenting on plugins/themes they know have issues. Please-please-please check your themes and plugins especially if you’re offloading jquery! We told you not to, remember? 😉

In the hopes of inspiring people to contribute more to the forums, I’ve started in on giving people who are ‘official’ in their roles new titles. So if you see people with titles like ‘DreamHost Support’ that’s why. If you think you should have one, leave a comment with your forum ID and what title you want. Since a lot of them are silly (Half-Elf Support Rogue, I’m just saying) you don’t have to be all officially, but the idea is to help recognize people who are working the forums for work 🙂

(You’ll also see “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 Author” as a big green label for people when they work in their plugin sections. Thank you @coffee2code for that! It’s awesome!)

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.: @raggedrobins – Docs can stay with the Support Chat 🙂 I like you guys and there isn’t enough for either of us to go solo.

Docs Team Update for 11/26

It’s been a pretty quiet week for the docs team. However, there are a few things to note:

WordPress 3.5 Codex Updates: I’ve created a task list of things that need to be updated in the Codex once 3.5 arrives, and will try to encourage people to work through the items. It’d be great if someone from the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team could tell me if you use the needs codex tag in tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. to flag things that need to be updated in the Codex, or is there another way that you communicate what needs to be updated?

Handbooks: Work on the handbooks is slowly ongoing. I’m going to the mobile chat this week to chat to Isaac and the mobile team about what they need. If anyone else wants me to to that just email me or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me on Skype. We have around 43 volunteers so far, with people from most of the main contributor groups. The real work with start in the New Year. There’s not a huge amount of point starting before Christmas.

I’m not sure if we need a separate docs chat so unless @ipstenu wants rid of us, we’ll keep in with the support chat. This should help to encourage discussion between support and docs, which is important.

#docs

Plugins Directory Team Update for 11/26

The 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 Directory’s day-to-day mission is fairly consistent. It’s largely what we’ve done this past week and what we’ll continue to do in the coming week:

  • Process incoming plugin requests and get through as many as possible
  • Respond to as many incoming support email requests as possible
  • Monitor security exploit databases and announcements for any that relate to plugins in the repository and then helping authors rectify those security concerns.

Here are stats from the last week.

Plugins Directory:

  • Requested : 167
  • Rejected : 59
  • Closed: 15
  • Approved: 187
  • Commits by plugin authors: 3,151
  • Currently in the request queue: 34

Plugins support emails:

  • New: 123 (119 closed, 4 still open)
  • Currently open: 11 (2 older than 1 week, both awaiting 3rd party feedback)

#plugins

Theme Review Team Update for 11/26

Two main things to report for the Theme Review Team.

First, we have begun discussion of the periodic Guidelines revision that takes place with each major WordPress release. All revisionsRevisions The 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. take effect 30 days after final release of the new WordPress version.

Second, I am working with a few people on some initial communication/planning for creating a review checklist, and other improvements to the Theme review workflow/information, to help lower the learning curve for performing reviews.

Also, a question for the Docs team about the Theme Review Handbook: just to clarify, what will be the intended use of the handbook? Is it going to be a “here’s how to get involved” guide, or is it intended to replace the existing Guidelines or other TRT material? I want to make sure that we’re supporting your efforts to the best of our ability.

Please let me know what additional information you would like to see included in these updates. I used to publish Theme review stats, but they ended up not being particularly enlightening or useful, especially considering the time and effort involved in compiling them.

#themes, #trt

Community Team Intro

Community (outreach, building, etc) is another new contributor group. I and Andrea Rennick are the team reps. The goal of this group is to create programs that will help bring in new contributors, and to keep contributors engaged so that casual contributions can be a stepping stone to longer-term involvement. Under that umbrella we’ll be looking at starting a number of programs, including:

  • A “welcome wagon” to let first-time contributors know they are appreciated and make sure they have the information and support they need to grow their contributions
  • Cross-group mentorship programs
  • Contributor retention and recognition programs
  • Diversity program to try and make our contributor pool less homogenous
  • College and school initiatives
  • Partnerships with other groups/orgs/etc to take advantage of existing programs (Open Hatch, Summer of Code, etc)
  • Improvements to 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/ to support these initiatives and goals
  • Stats so we can track our progress in these areas

I want to start with a small focus and expand over time, rather than trying to start a lot of things at once, to make sure we don’t bite off more than we can chew. Right now we’re doing introductions over on the group blog for potential members, and general brainstorming, so that we don’t start something now and then get distracted by the 3.5 launch and then and then lose momentum the holidays. So far Amy Hendrix and Cátia Kitahara are signed on to help.

Contributors to this group should have experience contributing to WordPress and a solid understanding of the ecosystem. While we will also reach out to new contributors and non-contributors at times, in terms of having people who’ll take responsibility for creating programs, for this group a certain level of experience and trust is necessary. Alternately, people who are not experienced contributors to WordPress, but have experience with similar programs elsewhere, would be useful additions to the group.

We will most likely have a lot of collaboration/crossover with the events, training, 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., and documentation groups. Our weekly updates will be posted by me on Fridays. My first goal for this group is to have a prioritized list of projects by the end of the year, with people assigned to the top 3, and to have worked with the other team reps and Otto/Meta on getting some stats around our contributor pool as a baseline. Let the games begin!

#community, #intro

Events Team Intro

Since @andreamiddleton is on vacation this week, I’m acting as her backup and posting the Events group intro.

This is a new official contributor group, though people have been contributing to WordPress by organizing WordPress events for more than 6 years. The group is newly formed, but there are already quite a few contributors, made up of pre-existing 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. and 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. organizers. Andrea and I posted a laundry list of projects that should fall under the group’s aegis, and people volunteered to work on the ones that inspired them the most. Andrea is currently in the process of posting “assignments” to these projects based on a combination of expressions of interest and required skills and/or backgrounds.

The projects are numerous, which is a risk; keeping track of so many actions at once can be difficult, especially in a mostly-volunteer environment where deadlines may have to be set aside on occasion as the day job requires it, so keeping things moving but manageable is the top priority right now.

Here are the areas where “subcommittees” of contributors will be working on putting together recommendations, or will be getting trained in how to maintain things:

  • WordPress.tv event video management
  • Multi-event Sponsorship Program
  • Event planning training materials
  • Meetups program
  • WordCamp guidelines review
  • Translation of event guidelines and/or materials
  • New organizer mentorship
  • WordCamp base theme templates
  • Speaker mentorship
  • Event type inventory

There will be natural areas of overlap with the Training and Community Outreach groups. Regular updates from this group will be posted on Thursdays by Andrea moving forward.

#events, #intro

Mobile Team Intro

I’m Isaac, acting rep for make/mobile.

Mobile WordPress is: 6 open source native apps under the WordPress umbrella that interact with WordPress installs through the XML-RPC APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. We also help contribute to coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. to extend and enhance the API. Over time, we hope we can lend a hand for any mobile/responsive pushes in core for the web admin.

Current team (apps):

  • Isaac Keyet (@isaackeyet)
  • Eric Johnson (@aerych)
  • Robert/Beau Collins (@beaucollins)
  • Danilo Ercoli (@daniloercoli)
  • Brad Angelcyk (@irbrad)
  • Jorge Bernal (@koke)
  • Dan Roundhill (@mrroundhill)

Guest stars:

  • Marko Heijnen (@markoheijnen)
  • Max Cutler (@maxcutler)

Goal
Or goal is to create the best mobile WP experience, no matter what mobile device, WordPress host, or user environment. The apps are focused on short-form blogging and other tasks that you’re more likely to do while on the go.

IRC & Dev Chats
We have weekly dev chats in #wordpress-mobile on Freenode at 16:00 UTC Wednesdays. Join the channel at any time to talk directly to the contributors. Weekly dev chat summaries here.

WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. Action Items (please add if I missed any):

  • Migrate all app’s landing pages, blogs, dev blogs, forums/FAQs to live on 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/. @aerych is helping on our side for this, looking for next steps.
  • Create a page on the make/mobile blog that clearly explains what Mobile does, what gaps the mobile apps fill, and what their target use case is.

#intro, #mobile

Team Reps We still have to finish getting…

Team Reps: We still have to finish getting #wpcs session notes published. I’ve reached out to some session leaders to review the notes of their sessions so we can get them up, but a number of them were written by and/or heavily involved team reps, so if the following team reps could log in and edit/scrub/publish the following session notes, that would be awesome.

@nacin:

  • Plugin API – https://make.wordpress.org/summit/wp-admin/post.php?post=811&action=edit

@ipstenu:

  • Non Code Contributions to WordPress – https://make.wordpress.org/summit/wp-admin/post.php?post=799&action=edit

@markjaquith:

  • WordPress for Publishers (and other special cases) – https://make.wordpress.org/summit/wp-admin/post.php?post=898&action=edit
  • Q&A Notes – https://make.wordpress.org/summit/wp-admin/post.php?post=915&action=edit
  • WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook.: WordPress Deployments

@chipbennett or @emiluzelac:

  • Commercial Plugins and Themes: Code Quality and Review
  • Notes from Eliminating Pain when Changing Themes discussion
  • Theme Quality and the Repo

@koopersmith:

  • The Future of the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.
  • JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. with Koop

@andreamiddleton:

  • Notes from Foundation Transparency discussion

@isaackeyet:

  • 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. Websites

@vanillalounge:

  • WordPress international communities

@helenyhou:

  • Education and Training Discussion

I pinged a few trusted community members on other sessions.

#session-notes