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What we’ll work on: the handbooks restructure proposal, picking up the audit work and moving pieces of it forward together.
Format: short kickoff to align on what we’re tackling, then a focused work 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., then a quick wrap-up on what got done and what’s still open.
This is a first test of the new format, so expect some rough edges, and feel free to just show up even if you haven’t been involved in the handbooks proposal before. All you need is some available time and curiosity.
We’ll follow up here with a short recap after the session.
Welcome to the Monthly Education Buzz Report, your go-to source for highlights and updates on the WordPress Campus Connect, WordPress Credits, and WordPress Student Club education initiatives within the WordPress community. This report aims to celebrate, promote, and inform individuals across the WordPress community and beyond about the diverse educational endeavors underway.
WordPress Campus Connect
WordPress Campus Connect (WPCC) had a busy July, with new campuses joining the program on four continents. If you would like to help shape one of these events, join the conversation in #campusconnect on the Make WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
Bangladesh saw two more campuses join WPCC Kishoreganj 2026, organized by Muhibul Haque (@devmuhib). The first event, held at Kishoreganj University, brought speakers Nasim Miah (@muddassirnasim) and Mehraz Morshed (@mehrazmorshed) together with volunteer Mehrab Morshed (@mehrabmorshed). for a session on the WordPress ecosystem, careers, and open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. contribution. Students there built 38 websites. Two weeks later, the series moved to Kishoreganj Polytechnic Institute, where speaker Shipon Karmakar (@shiponkarmakar) traveled more than 80 kilometers to join as a guest expert and students built nearly 70 websites. Across the two campuses, the success stories page now lists more than 200 participating students and over 100 published sites, with two more institutions, Government Mohila College and Pouromohila College Kishoreganj, still to come.
Japan held its second Campus Connect event of the year at Kyoto University of Advanced Science on July 4. The session was organized entirely by students from the campus’s Open Source circle, with Kaito Hanamori (@kaitohm) sharing the recap and thanking staff members Hiroshi Sato and Shohei Tanaka for their support.
In Spain, Josep Morán (@josepmoran) led a Campus Connect at Escola Pia Sta. Anna in Mataró for 100 higher-level vocational students studying network management and marketing. Over two four-hour sessions, students compared WordPress.comWordPress.comAn 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/ and 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/, learned about WordPress Credits and WordPress Student Clubs, and used Playground and AI assistance to build a functional 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. that calculates the best time for shore fishing in the city. Students and faculty alike called out the career opportunities tied to the WordPress ecosystem and the official certificate they received.
Uganda’s Central and Eastern Uganda schools series added Bulamogi College Gadumire on July 29, and the full recap is worth reading in full. Organizer Moses Cursor Ssebunya (@mosescursor) and his team lost power on arrival, so they scrapped the planned demonstrations and instead opened the floor to questions from more than 100 learners. Fellow organizer Stephen Dumba, national coordinator of the ICT Teachers Association of Uganda, stepped in to keep the group focused once the power went out. The room, in the organizers’ words, “exploded” with curiosity, and first-time volunteers Mariam Nairuba and John Wayera helped carry the day. The school’s governing body received a Certificate of Appreciation in return for hosting.
A few more campuses are moving through planning, including a first-ever event proposed for Penang, Malaysia, by Ben Leow (@surf7net) ahead of WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Asia 2027, and an event at UVG Guatemala coordinated by Lidia Arroyo Vargas (@lidarroy). If you have a connection to a college or university and want to help bring WordPress to campus, the #campusconnect channel is the place to start.
Kyoto University of Advanced ScienceKyoto University of Advanced ScienceWPCC Kishoreganj 2026WPCC Kishoreganj 2026Campus Connect Escola Pia Sta. Anna MataróCampus Connect Escola Pia Sta. Anna Mataró
WordPress Credits
WordPress Credits kept building on its first-half momentum in July, with two new pilot projects, a call for a developer track, and a preview of what the program will bring to WordCamp US.
July was the strongest month of the year so far by several measures, according to an update from Maciej Pilarski (@gomp). Partner institutions grew from 28 to 38, up 10 in a single month and now spanning 16 countries, with 18 more institutions entering the pipeline, the strongest intake month of 2026. Active mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. reached 91, up from 83 in June, on the strength of 11 new mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. applications, while 62 new students started their WordPress Credits internship, the second-largest monthly intake of the year after May. Graduates reached 226, up from 199 in June, with 26 more students in pending graduation. Two applications that came out of the WordCamp Europe Education Table in Kraków, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Finland and SAE Athens in Greece, are now confirmed partners, and Institut Teknologi Tangerang Selatan in Indonesia became the first Campus Connect host school to convert into a WordPress Credits partner institution, signing on July 20 after hosting a Campus Connect event on June 18. That signing also gave Indonesia its first spot on the partner map. Separately, CUNY City Tech signed on as the program’s first partnership with a public university system in the United States, arriving just ahead of the WordCamp US Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/ push.
Rita Robles Loaiza (@roblesloaiza) shared the first two pilots she has been running as Program ManagerProgram ManagerProgram Managers (formerly Super Deputies) are Program Supporters who can perform extra tasks on WordCamp.org like creating new sites and publishing WordCamps to the schedule. for WordPress Credits in Latin America. The first grew out of Patrones Hermosos, an international camp run by Tecnológico de Monterrey and MIT that came to Costa Rica for the first time this year. Three students from the second WordPress Credits cohort at Universidad Fidélitas designed and delivered a three-session WordPress workshop for 40 high school students, who each built and presented their own website by the end, with a 100 percent satisfaction rate. The team turned that experience into a fully replicable guide that any student, university, or local community can reuse. The second pilot brings Liceo Experimental Bilingüe José Figueres Ferrer, the first high school in the Americas to join WordPress Credits, into the Polyglots contribution area, where 13 students are working with the Costa Rican Spanish Polyglots teamPolyglots TeamPolyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ to localize WordPress.org into es_CR as part of their community service program.
Universidad FidélitasUniversidad Fidélitas
The program is also looking ahead to a developer-focused track. A US college has expressed interest in WordPress Credits but needs a path built around real, job-relevant development work, and the call for input is open now. The team is looking for ideas on what a beginner-to-advanced tier structure could include, with the first tier needed by the end of August to keep the pilot on schedule. You can weigh in through the GitHub issue or in #wpcredits on Slack.
Looking toward WordCamp US, the Education working group announced a dedicated table at Contributor Day on August 16 in Phoenix. Isotta Peira (@peiraisotta) and Maciej Pilarski (@gomp) will be on hand throughout the event to talk through WordPress Credits, Campus Connect, Student Clubs, Faculty Training, and the new AI Literacy through WordPress course on Learn WordPress. The group is looking for US-based mentors, connections to local meetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. for students, introductions to colleges and universities, and companies interested in sponsoring the programs.
July also brought a steady flow of new students into the program, joining from Nepal, Costa Rica, Spain, India, and the US, including a professor at Drew University in New Jersey who found the program through a WP Tavern Jukebox episode featuring Ivana Ćirković. Among them, Víctor Rodríguez of Universidad Fidélitas in Costa Rica wrapped up his internship with the Polyglots team, submitting 386 translation suggestions for WooCommerce in Spanish (Costa Rica) and documenting his progress along the way. Anne McCarthy (@annezazu), the WordPress 7.1 release leadRelease LeadThe community member ultimately responsible for the Release., kept up her behind-the-scenes updates for students so they can shadow the release process firsthand.
WordPress Student Clubs
A Student Club at Ahmad’s Education in Dhaka, Bangladesh, used its weekly session to dig into how WordPress works as an open source project, discussing how the platform has grown through the contributions of millions of people and how club members can start contributing themselves. Organizer Atikur Rahman shared that the group is now preparing for an upcoming WordPress Campus Connect event at the same institution, with members working to bring in more classmates and build on the momentum from the discussion.
When I stepped into the role of Program ManagerProgram ManagerProgram Managers (formerly Super Deputies) are Program Supporters who can perform extra tasks on WordCamp.org like creating new sites and publishing WordCamps to the schedule. for WPCredits in Latin America, one of the goals I set for myself was to explore new ways of bringing students and educational institutions into the WordPress ecosystem.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a growing interest in contributing, but we’ve also identified a common challenge: many institutions want to participate but simply don’t know where to begin. While WordPress already offers well-established contribution areas, integrating an educational community requires clear processes, supporting materials, guidance, and methodologies that make that first contribution experience approachable.
With that in mind, over the past few months we’ve been working on a series of pilot projects. The goal is not to create new contribution areas, but rather to develop replicable models that make it easier for educational institutions to sustainably engage with the contribution opportunities that already exist within WordPress.
Today, I’d like to share the first two pilots we’ve been working on.
Pilot 1: A Replicable Methodology for Introducing New Users to WordPress
The first pilot emerged from a very special opportunity.
During Patrones Hermosos, an international camp organized by Tecnológico de Monterrey and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which came to Costa Rica for the very first time and was hosted at Universidad Fidélitas, we had the opportunity to introduce WordPress as part of the camp’s learning experience.
Three students from the second WPCredits cohort at Universidad Fidélitas took on the challenge of designing and delivering a complete WordPress workshop for 40 high school students participating in the camp.
Across three sessions, they guided participants through creating their first WordPress website using 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/ while introducing key concepts such as website structure, the difference between pages and posts, content creation, digital privacy, 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), and responsible publishing practices. By the end of the workshop, every participant had built and presented their own website, and the workshop achieved a 100% satisfaction rate.
My role in this pilot focused primarily on the educational side of the project. I worked alongside the team to design the learning experience, define the learning objectives, and develop the guides, templates, checklists, and supporting materials needed to both facilitate the workshop and document every stage of the process.
However, delivering a successful workshop was never the ultimate goal.
From the very beginning, we wanted the entire experience to become a reusable community resource. As a result, we developed a fully replicable guide that documents the methodology, roles, planning process, materials, recommendations, checklists, and evidence needed, so that any WPCredits student, university, or local WordPress community can organize a similar experience without having to start from scratch.
More than just a workshop, this pilot aims to demonstrate that an educational activity can also become a meaningful community contribution when it leaves behind open documentation and a methodology that others can adopt, improve, and reuse.
Pilot 2: A Replicable Model for Integrating Educational Institutions into WordPress Contribution Areas
The second pilot starts with a different question:
What does an educational institution need to successfully integrate into a WordPress contribution area and enable its students to contribute in an organized and sustainable way?
To answer that question, we selected Polyglots as the first contribution area where we’ll validate this methodology.
It’s important to clarify that this pilot is not simply about translating 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/. Translation is the environment where we’ll test a much broader process.
Our goal is to document the entire journey an educational institution follows – from deciding to participate in WPCredits to having students make meaningful contributions to the WordPress community. This includes preparing teachers and students, developing supporting materials, creating guides and templates, coordinating with the community, providing mentorship throughout the process, tracking progress, and documenting lessons learned.
This pilot will be carried out in collaboration with the Costa Rican Spanish Polyglots teamPolyglots TeamPolyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ to contribute to the translation of WordPress.org into Costa Rican Spanish (es_CR).
The first institution selected for this pilot is Liceo Experimental Bilingüe José Figueres Ferrer, the first high school in America to join the WPCredits program.
Thirteen students are participating in WPCredits as part of their Community Service Program, creating a unique opportunity to connect academic learning with real contributions to the WordPress project. Because the school is bilingual, students will also be able to leverage their English and Spanish language skills while contributing directly to the Polyglots community and supporting the localization of WordPress for Costa Rica.
As with the first pilot, the objective extends far beyond completing a single contribution. We want to document every step of the process and build a methodology that other educational institutions can reuse when integrating WordPress contribution areas into their own academic programs.
If this model proves successful, it can later be adapted to other contribution areas, reducing the learning curve for new institutions and making it easier for more students to begin contributing to WordPress.
First meeting with students from José Figueres Ferrer Experimental Bilingual High School as we kick off our second pilot program. 🚀
What We Hope to Learn
Although these two pilots focus on very different experiences, they share the same purpose.
We want to better understand what helps educational institutions become active participants in the WordPress ecosystem and how those experiences can be transformed into open, well-documented, and easily replicable models.
Each pilot will help us identify what works, what can be improved, and what resources can help universities, schools, and communities avoid starting from scratch when introducing WordPress into their educational and contribution initiatives.
As both pilots continue to evolve, I’ll be sharing the results, lessons learned, and resources we develop, with the hope that they can serve as a starting point for many other educational institutions around the world.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or similar experiences. I truly believe that one of WordPress’s greatest strengths is that our best ideas grow when they’re built collaboratively.
WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. US is almost here, and the Education working group will be there with a dedicated table at Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/ on August 16. If you are curious about how WordPress is entering classrooms, campuses, and student communities around the world, come find us, we would love to talk.
What you will find at our table
@peiraisotta and @gomp will be there throughout the event to share an overview of the current community Education programs and answer any questions:
WordPress Credits: partnering with schools and universities so that students earn academic credits (or the equivalent academic recognition) by contributing to WordPress.
Campus Connect: WordPress events hosted on campuses, bringing the community directly to students and faculty.
Student Club: student-led groups that keep the momentum going between events, where students learn, build, and contribute together.
Faculty Training: preparing professors and instructors to teach WordPress and integrate open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. contributions into their courses.
AI Literacy through WordPress: a brand new course on learn.wordpress.org to gain practical foundation in AI literacy built around real workforce goals.
Stop by to learn how each program works, what we have learned so far, and where they are heading next.
How you can help
A few things are top of mind for us at this WordCamp:
We are looking for mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. based in the US. We are about to onboard more students and more colleges, and the current group of mentors cannot stretch to cover the growth on its own. If you have experience contributing to WordPress and want to help a student find their way into the project, or if you are not an experienced contributor but want to learn how to support students, come talk to us at the table. Mentoring is one of the most direct ways to shape the next generation of contributors, and we will walk you through what the commitment looks like.
We want to connect our students to active local meetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.. A student’s first WordCamp or meetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. is often the moment the community becomes real for them. If you organize or attend a meetup in the US, we would love to map where our students are and introduce them to the groups closest to them, so that their contribution journey continues locally after the program ends.
We want to reach more institutions. If you have a connection with a university, a college, or a vocational school, whether you studied there, teach there, or simply know someone on the faculty, you can help us open a door. A warm introduction is often all it takes to start a conversation about bringing WordPress into a classroom, and we can take it from there. Come tell us about your institution and we will figure out together which program could be the best fit.
We welcome companies who want to sponsor the programs. Growing to more students and more colleges takes resources, and sponsorship is a concrete way for companies to invest in the future of the WordPress talent pool. If your company hires WordPress talent, cares about open source education, or wants visibility with the next generation of contributors, stop by the table and we will walk you through the sponsorship options and what your support would make possible.
Come say hi
Whether you are a longtime contributor, a meetup organizer, a professor, or someone who simply cares about bringing new people into WordPress, the Education table is for you. Stop by, ask questions, share ideas, or just say hi, we will be there with the table at Contributor Day on August 16, and between tracks and hallways until the last day of the event on August 19.
As we’re all thinking hard about reconnecting communities, a regular events roundup feels like something worth having again, and I’d like to help bring it back.
I’ve been getting more involved in community events (just got approved to organize a meetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. in my area 🙌🏻), and I want to lead the charge on getting a V1 out.
What I’m thinking for V1
Keeping it simple to start: a monthly post highlighting upcoming and recent events across meetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., WordCamps, Campus Connect, and the “next gen” formats, with the cool things organizers are actually doing front and center.
Keeping it sustainable
From what I understand, the old one lapsed partly because it was a lot to put together by hand each month, and that got hard to keep up. One thing I’d like to use is SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/’s built-in AI, Slackbot. It can search across our event channels and pull together a surprisingly solid first draft in minutes. The idea is to let it do the heavy gathering, then a human pass to polish, fact-check, and pick photos, so it never falls entirely on one person to write from scratch.
Next steps
I’m going to build a V1 and get a first issue out. To start, I’m planning to pull event updates from a few channels: #community-events, #campusconnect, #community-team, #student-clubs, and #contributor-day. I’ll share the first draft next week, and I’d love your input, now or once the draft is ready, on two things:
What made the old newsletter useful, or what you’d change.
Other channels or sources I should add.
And if you worked on it before, I especially want to hear from you.
Over the past months we’ve tried two meeting slots at different times, then a 12-hour open window, hoping to catch more people across timezones. Neither change moved the needle. Attendance and participation remain low, and, as we discussed openly in the April meeting, most of the value of these meetings can already be absorbed by reading the agenda or the recap afterward. If a meeting can be fully replaced by a P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org post, it’s not really a meeting anymore.
We (the 2026 Team Reps) have talked this through and want to propose splitting what today is a single monthly meeting into two separate, more focused things.
The proposal
1. A monthly written update (unchanged in spirit, clarified in purpose)
We’ll keep publishing a monthly post at the start of each month summarizing what the team has been working on: policy changes, WordCamps, meetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., Campus Connect recaps, education programs, and anything else worth surfacing for people who can’t follow every P2 post or SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ thread.
What changes: this stops being “the agenda for a meeting” and becomes its own thing: a monthly digest, written by a different volunteer each month. We think this is a great low-friction way for people to start contributing to team coordination without needing to run a live session.
2. Coworking sessions
Instead of a status-update meeting, we want to try live coworking sessions: blocks of 1–2 hours where a group works together, in real time, on an actual team task.
Rough shape:
Short kickoff (5–10 min): whoever’s hosting explains what we’re working on that session and why, and takes quick questions.
Focused work 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.: everyone works (same or related tasks) with the channel/call open for “does anyone know how…” questions as they come up.
Wrap-up (10–15 min): quick share of what got done, what’s blocked, and what needs follow-up.
Why we think this could work
The coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. insight from the discussion was that people don’t show up for information they can get elsewhere, they show up when there’s something to do together, or someone to ask in real time. A status meeting competes with reading a P2 post, and loses. A working session doesn’t have that competition, because you can’t “read” your way into having helped triage the backlog.
We’d love feedback before taking this further:
Does the split between “written update” and “coworking” make sense to you?
Any specific ideas about the coworking sessions format?
Any concerns about coworking sessions being harder to join for volunteers in less common timezones (worse than a single meeting would be, since we’re not proposing multiple slots yet)?
Should we pilot this for one or two months before committing, and if so, what would tell us it’s working better than the old format?
WP Credits has been growing steadily, and now that we’ve proven the model works, it’s time to look at what the next evolution of the program could look like to better fit students’ needs. You can catch up on where things stand in the latest update post.
A pilot opportunity
A college in the US has expressed interest in the program, but their students need a developer-focused track. This is a great opportunity to pilot a dev-specific path within WP Credits.
Where we need your help
This is where the community comes in. If you’re a developer or a WP teacher, we’d love your input on what specific contributions could make up a dev track — what should students be working on to build real, job-relevant skills?
Taking it a step further: if we structure this as a 2–3 level path (beginner to advanced), what contributions would you place in each tier?
We need at least the first tier defined by the end of August to stay on track for this pilot, so if you have thoughts, please share them soon.
Most WordCamps run free, capacity-limited extras alongside the main event – Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/, a Social Dinner, a workshop. Those seats are meant for confirmed attendees, but CampTix has no built-in way to enforce that. So organizers improvise: a separate signup form anyone on the internet can fill in, a spreadsheet cross-checked against the attendee list by hand, or an honor system that quietly oversells the room. Non-attendees grab limited seats, organizers spend hours reconciling lists, and no-shows leave chairs empty that a real attendee could have used.
We’ve built a CampTix addon that closes that gap, and before it goes to a pull request we’d like the community’s eyes on it especially from anyone who has run a Contributor Day or a side event and felt this pain firsthand.
This has been asked for before
This isn’t a new idea. Issue #1371 “Tickets: Add the ability to handle secondary event tickets” – opened by a WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. organizer in 2024 and discussed by CampTix maintainers – requests exactly this, and the addon meets all of that issue’s acceptance criteria. Along the way it also structurally resolves #598 (Contributor Day attendance stats – attendees of a side event become real CampTix attendees, so check-in and stats just work) and the side-event case of #623 (people no longer appear twice on the public Attendees page).
How it works
The working name is activity tickets (more on the name below – it’s one of the things we want feedback on).
An organizer creates the extras as ordinary CampTix tickets (price 0, quantity = capacity), then ticks which tickets are activity tickets under CampTix → Setup → Activity Tickets. Optionally, they can restrict which main tickets qualify. That’s the entire setup.
From then on, an activity ticket can only be registered by someone who is logged in with their 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/ account and already holds a confirmed main-event ticket from an earlier, completed order. Each person registers themselves, once per activity, and every activity registration is automatically linked to their main ticket.
What the attendee sees: buy a ticket → return to the Tickets page → register for the activities you want → done. Visitors who don’t qualify yet still see the activity tickets, with a notice explaining why they can’t register yet:
“Contributor Day can only be registered by attendees who already have an event ticket. Buy your ticket first, then come back to register.”
On a later visit, tickets they already hold show an “Already registered” label instead of silently disappearing, and a notice up top lists everything they hold – with a manage link per ticket and an “Email me these links” action for anyone who lost their confirmation email.
What the organizer sees: attendee records show the link in both directions, the CSV/XML export gains “Activity of (main ticket #)” and “Activity tickets” columns, and – if the Admin Flags addon is active – the main attendee is auto-flagged per held activity (e.g. activity-contributor-day) for filtering and integrations.
The rules, in plain terms
Scenario
What happens
Someone without an event ticket tries to register
Blocked, with a clear message to buy a ticket first. Activity tickets are never purchasable in the same cart as a main ticket.
A company account buys 5 main tickets
Each teammate confirms their own ticket, logs in, and registers their own activities. Nobody can bulk-grab limited seats.
Someone tries to register twice for the same activity
Blocked – one registration per person, per activity.
The main ticket is refunded or cancelled
All linked activity registrations are released automatically and the seats return to the pool.
A ticket changes hands (edited over to another person)
Activity registrations are personal – they’re released back to the pool, and the new holder registers themselves.
Contributor Day is capped at 50
Capacity is enforced per activity ticket, exactly like any other CampTix ticket.
The require-login addon is off
The feature fails safe: registrations are blocked and organizers see a notice explaining the dependency. (require-login is on by default for WordCamps.)
Where it stands
The addon is built and fully verified locally – not yet merged. It passes WordPress coding standardsWordPress Coding StandardsThe Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook.
May also refer to The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the PHP coding standards. cleanly, a 54-test automated suite, and a 40-check live end-to-end run against a real WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. site setup, including on the newest supported 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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php version. A pull request against wordcamp.org will follow this feedback round.
What we’d like from you
1. The name. “Activity ticket” is the current working name (an earlier round of feedback ruled out “Companion ticket” – it reads as a guest/plus-one ticket). Does “Activity ticket” read right to you, and does it translate well for your community? Suggestions welcome – the name is display-only and easy to change.
2. Your stories. If you’ve run a Contributor Day, a Social Dinner, or any capacity-limited side event: does this flow match how your event actually works? What edge cases have you hit – transfers, speakers and volunteers, walk-ins, waitlists – that we should think about?
Please share your thoughts in the comments here. Thanks for reading!
The WordPress Community Team handles a steady stream of repetitive, detail-heavy tasks: vetting event and organizer applications, reviewing budgets, and checking sites for licensing and trademark compliance. Each one requires careful research across many public sources, and each one takes time that could go toward supporting our community.
To help with that, we’ve built Community Agents: a lightweight, community-owned platform of AI assistants that handle the legwork of these reviews while leaving every decision in human hands.
How it works
Each agent lives in a single SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ channel and is triggered with a simple slash command (for example, /tm-audit). It runs its research, visits the relevant public pages, and reports back its findings, clearly labeling what it has confirmed, what is unconfirmed, and what it couldn’t verify. A reviewer then confirms or corrects each step before anything is finalized. The agents are built on Python, Slack Bolt, and the Claude APIAPIAn 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..
Two principles guide the whole platform:
Human-in-the-loopLoopThe Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. The agents gather and summarize; people decide. Nothing is auto-approved.
Privacy-conscious. The agents work only from what’s publicly available (names, 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/ profiles, public links) and deliberately don’t ask for personal data such as email or home addresses.
The agents so far
/wc-vet: vets WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. organizer applications.
/sc-vet: vets WordPress Student Club organizer applications.
/meetup-vet: vets WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizer applications.
/other-event-vet: vets other community events (Women WordPress Day, photo events, themed WordPress Days, etc).
/wc-budget-review: reviews WordCamp budgets, with live currency and cost checks.
/tm-audit: audits a website for GPLGPLGPL 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. and WordPress trademark compliance.
Want to use them, or have an idea?
If you’d like access to the Community Agents, or you have a manual, repetitive task you think an agent could help with, I’d love to hear from you: @clk87.
Welcome to the Monthly Education Buzz Report, your go-to source for highlights and updates on the WordPress Campus Connect, WordPress Credits, and WordPress Student Club education initiatives within the WordPress community. This report aims to celebrate, promote, and inform individuals across the WordPress community and beyond about the diverse educational endeavors underway.
WordPress Campus Connect
WordPress Campus Connect (WPCC) kept up a steady pace in June. The program has now completed 30 events in 2026 and 50 since it launched, reaching 6,343 students in total. Nine more events are on the calendar, and another 40 are moving through setup and planning. If you’d like to help shape one of those, join the conversation in #campusconnect on the Make WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
Four campuses held sessions during the month:
WordPress Campus Connect Cumilla 2026 at Comilla Victoria Government College, Bangladesh, organized by Asiful Islam Sohag with mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. Muhibul Haque (@devmuhib). It was the second Campus Connect event held in the city, covering the WordPress ecosystem, building a career with WordPress, and why the global community matters, with students creating their first 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/ accounts during the session.
WordPress Campus Connect at Universitas Muhammadiyah Purwokerto (UMP) in Purwokerto, Indonesia, on June 5, organized by Tri Hadianto with facilitators Supriyanto Soep and Arief Burhanuddin (@surip) from the Banyumas WordPress Community, and recapped by Devin Maeztri (@devinmaeztri). The session on building portfolios and careers with WordPress came with free .blog domains and hosting for attendees through the WordPress Education Initiative.
WordPress Campus Connect at Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University (HSTU) in Dinajpur, Bangladesh, on June 11. A full recap of the event hasn’t been published yet, so look for more detail in a future report.
WordPress Campus Connect at Institut Teknologi Tangerang Selatan (ITTS) in Tangerang Selatan, Indonesia, on June 18, led by organizer Taufik Iqbal Ramdhani and a team of student volunteers. The event ran four sessions covering WordPress fundamentals, AI-assisted blogging, career paths, and Full Site Editing portfolio building.
The Cumilla event was a personal one for Sohag, who organized it in his hometown. “Cumilla is my city, and seeing students here get genuinely curious about WordPress — it’s hard to put into words,” he said, describing how students asked questions that went well beyond the basics: how to get started, where to contribute, and how open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. actually works. He’s already preparing a second campus as part of WordPress Campus Connect Cumilla 2026, with plans for more universities and more students to follow.
Indonesia had its own milestone this month, too. Universitas Ciputra Surabaya hosted its first-ever Campus Connect event on May 22, and organizers shared the recap in June. “From Zero to Digital Hero” drew 76 registrations and 55 checked-in attendees for an afternoon of WordPress Fundamentals, Full Site Editing, and 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. Editor sessions, capped off with a mini website design competition. A seven-person organizing team led by indramaryati (@indramaryati) and Salman Alfarisi put the event together with six speakers and facilitators.
On the operations side, the community team deployedDeployLaunching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. the automated first-pass vetting system for new Campus Connect applications this month, building on the plan Rocío Valdivia (@_dorsvenabili) and Isotta Peira (@peiraisotta) outlined in May. New applications are now sorted into a simplified set of statuses and get an initial automated review before a human takes over, which should mean faster turnaround for organizers applying to host an event.
WPCC Universitas Muhammadiyah PurwokertoWPCC Universitas Muhammadiyah PurwokertoWPCC Comilla Victoria Government CollegeWPCC Comilla Victoria Government CollegeWPCC Comilla Victoria Government CollegeWPCC Universitas Ciputra Surabaya
WordPress Credits
WordPress Credits closed out the first half of the year with real growth. The program now counts 83 active mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. and 28 partner institutions, up from eight when the year began, with 275 students actively working on contribution projects and 199 graduates to date. That growth touched every part of the program in June, from a first high school partnership to a new leadership structure for mentors.
The program welcomed its first high school this month. Rita Robles Loaiza (@roblesloaiza) shared that Liceo HHC Experimental Bilingüe José Figueres Ferrer in Cartago, Costa Rica, launched a pilot with 13 tenth-grade students, who are using WordPress Credits to complete their community service requirement before graduation.
Mariano Sarmiento (@marianosarmiento) also gave an update on his pilot pairing students with a nonprofit. Working with Economistas sin Fronteras and UDIT, the students completed onboarding and the Beginner WordPress User course, then took on their first real case with Odón Solar. After a co-creation session to map out the client’s goals, audiences, and needs, the students are now turning that research into the site’s first 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. structure, with Sarmiento mentoring along the way. The plan is to document the process closely enough that it can be repeated as a model for future pilots.
The team also updated the 150-hour WordPress Credits course this month and is finishing updates to the 50-hour course. Students partway through a lesson won’t lose progress, though some may notice small changes to the content. Alongside that, a new Regional/Country Mentor Lead role is rolling out across the mentor structure, giving experienced mentors a way to lead recruitment, onboarding, and institutional partnerships within their own region or country.
WordPress Credits also had a strong showing at WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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 2026 in Kraków. The event hosted its first dedicated Education Track and Education Table, where students from Kraków University of Technology, Kraków University of Economics, and VIII LO high school presented projects, including WapuuGo, a gamified WordPress learning platform for younger students. At the Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/ Education Table, 21 contributors took part, three people applied to become mentors, and two institutions—Haaga-Helia University and SAE Creative Media Education—applied to join the program. Kraków University of Technology also formally recognized Matt Mullenweg during the event. That momentum builds on an earlier look at WordPress education in Poland, where universities and secondary schools alike are using the program for hands-on open source contribution.
Isotta Peira (@peiraisotta) wrapped up the first half of the year with a mid-year update on WordPress Credits, covering plans for a public program dashboard, new ways for students to contribute beyond the current course structure, and a more formal graduate retention program.
Finally, @annezazu will be sharing updates on the upcoming WordPress 7.1 release with students so that they can shadow the experience.
WordPress Student Clubs
A WordPress Student Club held its Introduction to WordPress workshop this month, organized by Lorna Murillo. The session covered what WordPress is, how it’s used to build websites, and foundational concepts like domains, hosting, and user management, along with a tour of the WordPress dashboard. Murillo said the turnout and curiosity from participants was a strong start, with more sessions planned as the club looks to keep the momentum going.
Other Happenings
WordPress Credits, WordPress Campus Connect, and WordPress Student Clubs got some outside attention this month, too. On the WP Tavern podcast, Destiny Kanno, Anand Upadhyay, and Maciej Pilarski talked through how the three programs work together to build a complete education ecosystem within WordPress, from a student’s first workshop through to becoming an active contributor.
