WordPress.tv Moderator Squad Update

“I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, for the money – has turned himself into a slave.”
– Joseph Campbell

Videos from WC Atlanta were submitted this week with a few more from WC Paris and WC Hamburg.

WC Lancaster – WC St Louis – WC Dayton – WC Seattle – WC San Diego videos are still in process.

In the Mod Chat we talked about:

  • a 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 by @brashrebel that uses tags to bring relevant videos from WPTV into the wp-admin.
  • feedback and input needed for the WPTV plugin from mods. Link to plugin https://github.com/brashrebel/wptv
  • @brashrebel has submitted a patch to make the WPTV theme responsive.

In The Last 7 Days

We published 29 videos from 5 WordCamps and WordPress Related Events around the world.

The Top Three Most Viewed 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. Videos Last Week

Christina Fuchs: Was sind Mitgliederseiten und wie lassen sie sich in WordPress realisieren?

Heather Solos: 5 Plugins For List Building

Jenny Munn: SEO for 2015 – What’s In, What’s Out and How to Be In It to Win It (For Good)

#moderator-update, #wordpress-tv

WordPress.tv Moderator Squad Update

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Alice in Wonderland

WC Paris, WC Hamburg and WC Atlanta submitted videos this week.  WC Lancaster – WC St Louis – WC Dayton – WC Seattle and WC San Diego videos are still in process.

In the Mod Chat we talked about:

  • moderating the videos in the Pending queue
  • editing and updating the handbook
  • making contact with 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. Lancaster about progress on their videos

In The Last 7 Days

We published 13 videos from 3 WordCamps and WordPress Related Events around the world.

The Top Three Most Viewed WordCamp Videos Last Week

Christina Fuchs: Was sind Mitgliederseiten und wie lassen sie sich in WordPress realisieren?

Kyler Patterson: Paid Social Advertising on Twitter and Facebook. Basics for Beginners

Richard Archambault: Faites décoller votre site avec Jetpack

#moderator-update, #wordpress-tv

Community Chat | April 16, 2015

Slack Log (Requires SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account.).

We heard updates about a new project (WPCD) and 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. site improvements. Here are the team highlights:

From CommHub (@miss_jwo)

  • Discussed post about Rosetta + CommHub
    • Thinks there aren’t any points of overlap that will have major impacts on the CommHub project.

New Project: WPCD (@hlashbrooke and @miss_jwo)

  • This is a proof-of-concept project that would aggregate upcoming WordPress Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor 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://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. information in one place for people who specifically attend WordCamps for the Contributor Days.
    • http://dev-wpcd.pantheon.io/
    • Purpose is to encourage new contributors to the project, empower people to run a contributor day with or without a WordCamp, and allow 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/ teams to know when a contributor day is coming up so they can be prepared.
    • Currently data is manually entered, but would be nice for it to be more automated in the future.

From Improving WordCamp.org (@iandunn)

  • Final discussion (about themes and templates) is underway. It would be nice to get more discussion and feedback on the topic.
  • Survey will be published next week and after the results come in we can start moving forward on implementing some of the changes.

From MeetupMeetup Meetup 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. Chapter Program (@chanthaboune)

  • A 3 or 4 Meetup groups have been added and have had successful kickoff events.
  • Five Meetup groups have had a “Retire or Restart” discussion initiated.

For more information on this and other meeting times, check out the 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. and the Welcome box on https://make.wordpress.org/community/.

#agenda, #community-management, #meeting, #team-chat

CommHub Meeting Reminder

A friendly reminder that CommHub meeting starts in just over 2 hours on #outreach in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Up for discussion:

See you then.

 

#commhub

WordPress.tv Moderator Squad Update

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.”
– Thomas A. Edison

We are starting to publish videos from WC Atlanta. We have videos that will be submitted from WC Lancaster – WC St Louis – WC Dayton – WC Seattle and WC San Diego.

In the Mod Chat we talked about:

  • getting the handbook in shape and making instructional videos as part of the handbook.
  • getting some testing done on the handbook to catch any errors.
  • names for WPTV, the consensus was “moderators” and “reviewers”.
  • getting the videos in the Pending queue moderated.
  • new chat time is Thursday 17:00 UTC

In The Last 7 Days

We published 15 videos from 5 WordCamps and WordPress Related Events around the world.

The Top Three Most Viewed 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. Videos Last Week

Christina Fuchs: Was sind Mitgliederseiten und wie lassen sie sich in WordPress realisieren?

Steve Zehngut: Build a WordPress Theme with Foundation and Underscores

Sara Cannon: Smart Design

#moderator-update, #wordpress-tv

Improving WordCamp.org: Adding More Themes and/or Page Templates

This post continues the previous discussions we’ve had on the project to improve WordCamp.org. If you’d like some background information, you can check out the notes from the 2014 Community Summit and the discussion on the CSS Editor.

* * * *

 

One of the most common pieces of feedback has been that, when organizers are building their sites, they want more themes and/or page templates to choose from. The goal of this post is to start a conversation on that topic and hash out the details of what we want and how to move forward.

Right now organizers can only choose from the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. themes (TwentyTwelve, TwentyFourteen, etc) plus the 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. Base theme, a custom theme that was written specifically for WordCamps. Organizers can’t edit the PHPPHP PHP (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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php., HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. and 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/. of the themes due to security and maintenance concerns, so customizing the CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. is the only way to create a new design. There’s a lot that can be done with just CSS, but sometimes organizers still wish they had more options.

Define the Problem and Goals

I think it’d help to have some specific examples of limitations, and to describe what the goals are in having more choices. These questions should help start the discussion, but feel free to ask/answer others too.

  • Have you run into limitations customizing your site? If so, can you describe them?
  • Do you find that it takes too much work to transform the design of the available themes into your custom design?
  • Do you run into situations where you can’t achieve the design you want without modifying the theme’s HTML?
  • Are there other major problems that you run into?
  • What do you think would be good solutions to the problems you found?

Potential Solutions

So far two potential solutions have been discussed: making more themes available to choose from, and providing a way for organizers to submit custom page templates for any available theme.

They’re not mutually exclusive, so we could possibly do both, but we have limited resources, so I think it’d be best to pick the one that will make the most impact and focus on that first. After the first round of improvements are made, we can reassess where we are and what to do next.

Other than those two, are there any other solutions that should be considered?

Adding More Themes

The first potential solution would be to simply make more themes available to organizers. This would save time in some cases because you could start with something that is closer to your custom design.

It would also provide a wider variety of layouts and templates, which could solve some of the problems related to needing a specific layout in order to achieve a particular custom design. If a developer did run into that problem, though, they would still be stuck because they wouldn’t be able to edit the HTML.

Just like with plugins, we have to be careful about security, performance, etc when adding more themes, but those concerns could mostly be mitigated by picking themes that are available in both the WordPress.org directory, and on WordPress.com. Those themes have passed an exhaustive review by trusted developers, so we would be able to assume that they’re safe without having to audit them ourselves.

Do you think this is a good solution? If so, which specific themes would you choose?

Are there any problems with it?

Accepting Custom Page Templates

Another potential solution would be to allow organizers to write custom page templates, so that they could create custom layouts for the content area if their design required it. The templates wouldn’t affect the 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., 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. or footer, though. In order to use the templates, we’d need to create child themes for the existing themes, and add them there.

The templates would have to meet certain criteria, and be reviewed for security and other concerns before they could be added to WordCamp.org. We wouldn’t want to end up with dozens of templates that are only relevant to a single camp, or to have to review new templates for every site, so I think we’d have to require that the templates be generic enough to be reused by other camps, and that they only be created when there is a significant need that can’t be accomplished with CSS alone.

What do you think about this solution? Are there any specific page templates that you think would be useful?

Are there any problems with it?

 

Do you have any other thoughts or comments?

 

Everyone is encouraged to particpate in the discussion, but I’m pinging the people who took part in the previous discussions to make sure they don’t miss the post: @ryelle, @harbormark, @chanthaboune, @nvwd, @kovshenin, @rafaehlers, @davidjlaietta, @dimensionmedia, @mj12982, @iandstewart, @miss_jwo, @topher1kenobe, @jenmylo, @georgestephanis

#community-summit, #improving-wordcamp-org, #official-websites, #page-templates, #themes, #wordcamp-org

WPTV Moderator chat moving to Thursday

As discussed in our meeting last week, the Mod Squad will now be meeting on Thursdays at 17:00 UTC (1pm EDT/10am PDT) in #WPTV in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Convert to your timezone

That is one day later (and one hour) later than our normal meeting time. See you there!

#wordpress-tv

WordPress.tv Moderator Squad Update

“I don’t think people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”
– Joseph Campbell

The Pending queue and the S3 account are clearing out, getting ready for all the new videos from WC Lancaster – WC St Louis – WC Dayton – WC Atlanta – WC Seattle and WC San Diego.

In the Mod Chat we talked about:

  • moving the chat time – new chat time is Thursday 17:00 UTC
  • the new handbook is now ready for editing and updating at https://make.wordpress.org/themes/handbook
  • update on processing videos for all the 6 WordCamps held in the last few weeks

In The Last 7 Days

We published 18 videos from 5 WordCamps and WordPress Related Events around the world.

The Top Three Most Viewed 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. Videos Last Week

Christina Fuchs: Was sind Mitgliederseiten und wie lassen sie sich in WordPress realisieren?

Sara Cannon: Smart Design

Michael Schroder: Contributing to Core – Hassle to Hobby

#moderator-update, #wordpress-tv