Core team update

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay in hearing from coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. here. We’re gonna participate in this whole new-fangled updates thing on schedule for now on. Your core team representatives are me and Cristi Burcă (@scribu). I expect future updates for core on make/updates to be a bit more focused on “this week” and “next week”, per the established pattern. For now, here’s a broad overview.

General timeline of events from the past month or so:

  • WordPress 3.5 development came to a close on December 11.
  • Mark Jaquith announced he was leading WordPress 3.6 on December 19. Aaron Campbell was chosen as his backup.
  • Development of WordPress 3.6 started on January 2.
  • WordPress 3.5.1 was originally targeted for as early as January 2. It slipped about two weeks because of the complexities of some of the bug fixes, then slipped further while the security team worked on some issues. Final release date was January 24.

Additionally, Helen Hou-Sandi and Sergey Biryukov were granted guest commit access for the 3.6 cycle. Helen has a focus on UI, Sergey on bugs. Jon Cave was also granted permanent commit access, after serving as a guest committer for three cycles over the course of a year. (Those two milestones have been and will continue to be the rule of thumb the lead developers follow.)

WordPress 3.6 development has been broken into 5 main feature teams:

  • Revisions, led by Peter Westwood with Erick Hitter
  • Autosave, led by Andrew Ozz with Mike Schroeder
  • Post Formats, led by Helen Hou-Sandi with Pete Mall
  • Editorial Flow, led by Daniel Bachhuber with Konstantin Kovshenin
  • Nav Menus, led by Dave Martin with Drew Jaynes

Also, Sergey Biryukov is running maintenance and bug gardening, and working with me, Ryan Boren, and others on architecture. Lance Willett is running a Twenty Thirteen team that is expected to start working publicly come February.

Each team currently has twice-weekly office hours in #wordpress-dev to discuss and plan out their features. Personally, I like the feel of this and it reminds me of the rapid-fire discussions and decisions that needed to happen during 3.0’s development, with a new theme, post types, and of course the multisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core.https://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network. MU merge.

Because each team is mostly still scoping out features and making decisions, actual development has been fairly light so far. Mark has recognized that things are a bit behind based on the 3.6 schedule. Yesterday’s meeting went through a number of major issues with regards to post formats and nav menus, which was very helpful to set direction for both projects. And so, over the next week, feature development is expected to ramp up significantly.

#core

Didn’t hear back from everyone but thinking we…

Didn’t hear back from everyone, but thinking we may have too many for a hangout. Let’s start out in IRC, on freenode, #wordpress-teamreps.

#chat

Mobile Group Update for Jan 30, 2013

TL;DR: WPiOS Notifications release is imminent, continue/wrap up work on Previews for WPAndroid+WPiOS, working on 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. update for WPAndroid, submitted WPWinPhone bugfix release.

Last week

  • WPiOS bug fix/low hanging fruit update: keep the iterations coming and resolve any issues quickly once v. 3.4 is out.
  • Wrapped up the WPAndroid bug fix update and submitted to Google Play.
  • Continued working on WPAndroid and WPiOS Previews updates
  • Started working on WPAndroid UI update release
  • Worked on a WPWinPhone bugfix release to address some crash reports we’ve received.

This week

  • Release WPiOS  v. 3.4 once a server-side issue is resolved (Wednesday). Post and tweet announcement.
  • Submit WPWinPhone 1.9.2 to Microsoft.  Prepare WPWinPhone 1.9.3 for a quick follow up.
  • Continuing/wrapping up work on WPAndroid + WPiOS Post Previews.
  • Submit WPAndroid 2.2.7 to Nook and Amazon app stores.
  • Being work on WPAndroid UI improvements.
  • Reach out to polyglots about French WPiOS translations awaiting verification.

More info

This week’s dev chat summary.

#mobile

Not much changed from the last week We’re…

Not much changed from the last week. We’re getting more reviewers on board and the overall interest is growing.

  • Approved: 62
  • Not-Approved: 21

#themes, #trt

It’s been a quiet week 3.5.1 rolled out…

It’s been a quiet week. 3.5.1 rolled out, but as expected, was much calmer than a full blown upgrade.

Subjects being bandied about right now:

  • Mentoring, how best to help new volunteers
  • Getting help when you’re in over your head
  • Avoiding the GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. drama

If you’ve got common WP problems you’re noticing, we’d love to hear about it on wp-forums or the make/support site 🙂

#tag-it

Plugins Directory Team Update for 01/28

Highlights from the week:

  • Posted some internal team documentation for the purposes of facilitating transfer of knowledge to new team members and as fodder for future public documentation.

Plugins Directory stats for the last week:

  • Requested : 201
  • Rejected : 49
  • Closed: 21
  • Approved: 148
  • Commits by 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: 3,980
  • Currently in the request queue: 51 (7 older than one week; 9 with no replies)

Plugins support email stats for the last week:

  • New: 163 (158 closed, 5 still open)
  • Currently open: 11 (2 with no activity in the last week)

#plugins

A couple of days late due to travel…

A couple of days late due to travel 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. Norway, sorry!

Past Week:

  • First training for women will be weekend of March 1st in DC, will confirm venue this week.Second training will be end of March in SF.
  • Gathered a Support/Dev brain trust of WordPress women (Christine Rondeau, Mika Epstein, Andrea Rennick, Amy Hendrix, Kailey Lampert) to work on training curriculum in proposed format.
  • Set the first team reps chat for Jan 31st at 20:00 UTC.
  • Massive time suck due to community upheaval over GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples./WordCamps issue. Need to address this with all team reps.
  • Jen at WC Norway.
  • Worked on improvements to 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/ landing page with Isaac.
  • Set 1st contributor drive for Support team (20 Questions) for weekend of February 15th.
  • Began Aaron Jorbin’s orientation for spearheading the meetups program.

Not Done Yet, Oops:

  • Create volunteer schedule for staffing #wordpress-contribute.
  • Add profile fields to capture diversity data.
  • Make calendar of events we’ll time community projects around: WordPress’s 10th birthday, SXSW, GSoC, Software Freedom Day, etc.

Coming Week:

  • Hit the Not Done Yet list.
  • Nail down workshop venues, put up registration site.
  • 1st team reps chat!
  • Publicize 20 Questions.
  • Get the make.wordpress.org design approved.
  • Set up a weekly team chat.

#community

Mobile Group Update for Jan 23, 2013

TL;DR: WPiOS Notifications release is pending, working on Previews for WPAndroid+WPiOS, planning 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. update for WPAndroid.

Last week

  • Submitted WPiOS Notifications release (will be v. 3.4)
  • Started working on WPiOS bug fix/low hanging fruit update (tentatively v. 3.4.1)
  • Worked on a WPAndroid bug fix update that would also use the new “Holo” style Android UI where applicable, not submitted yet
  • Discussed UI improvements for an upcoming WPAndroid update (to better conform to Android’s new “Holo” UI and make for better unity across our apps)

This week

  • Announce v. 3.4 of WPiOS (Notifications)
  • WPiOS bug fix/low hanging fruit update: keep the iterations coming and resolve any issues quickly once v. 3.4 is out.
  • Wrap up WPAndroid bug fix update
  • Keep working on WPAndroid and WPiOS Previews updates
  • Start working on WPAndroid UI update release

More info

This week’s dev chat summary.

#mobile

Support Team Updates for 1/22

No Stats. Sorry, don’t got 🙂

We’re working on troubleshooting WP training and Tools to make the forums better

Chat is on for Thursdays, 2100 UTC. Bring your favorite IRC client and cookies 🙂

Themes Team Update for 01/21

Stats!

There are 119 new tickets waiting for review. 64 themes were reviewed in the last 7 days.

Of those 64 reviews, 44 were approved, and 20 were not-approved.

What we’ve been up to:

First, we’re trying something different with Make/Themes. Due to some community feedback regarding the ease (or lack thereof) of finding the official communication channels for the Theme Team, we’re testing out a static front pageStatic Front Page A WordPress website can have a dynamic blog-like front page, or a “static front page” which is used to show customized content. Typically this is the first page you see when you visit a site url, like wordpress.org for example. for Make/Themes, that includes more information about the Theme team, and prominent links to our communication channels.

We’ve been discussing support for Themes, which has led to a Support Team-led discussion about tools needed for Theme developers to provide better support on the WPORG forums.

We also had a discussion on clarifying the guidelines with respect to screenshot images for Themes designed to use a custom/featured static front page.

Things we’re slacking on:

I’m behind on drafting a review checklist. I’ll be on top of that, shortly

We owe Siobhan a response on what to include in the Theme handbooks regarding Theme review. Emil and I are still discussing that one, and we’ll follow up this week.

The admins are struggling with finding a consistent way to ensure that the manual TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/./Extend synchronization takes place in a timely manner. So, that’s something that we’ll continue to work on.

#themes, #trt