This is the home of the Make Community team for the WordPress 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. project!
Here is where we have policy debates, project announcements, and assist community members in organizing events.
Everyone is welcome to comment on posts and participate in the discussions regardless of skill level or experience.
Get Involved
If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!
There has been a lot of talk and momentum lately about WordPress in the education space. From the development of the WordPress Campus Connect event series and its affiliated WordPress Student Clubs, to the new WordPress Credits initiative, there is so much the community can offer the youth in education now in a way that is more recognized by the WordPress FoundationWordPress FoundationThe WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org.. This post will break down the current initiatives, how you can get involved as a volunteer, contributor, or organizer, and how sponsors can also get involved.
WordPress Campus Connect
WordPress Campus Connect events aim to educate and empower the next generation of WordPress users and developers by providing accessible, hands-on learning experiences. They are one or multiple day events that aim to introduce students to WordPress capabilities, equip them with essential skills like website building and SEO, and expose them to diverse career opportunities within the WordPress ecosystem.
Goal and Purpose:
To educate and empower the next generation of WordPress users and developers by providing accessible, hands-on learning experiences.
Introduces students to WordPress’ capabilities, highlighting its versatility.
Equips students with essential WordPress skills (website building, theme/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 usage, basic SEO).
Exposes students to diverse career opportunities within the WordPress ecosystem (web development, design, content creation).
Fosters networking and mentorship opportunities with industry professionals.
Aims to make WordPress education inclusive and widely available, promoting a free and open web.
How to Get Involved:
Organizers: If you’re a contributor or member of an educational institution interested in organizing this kind of event, fill out this form.
WordPress Student Clubs allow students to sustain on-campus activities and events, encouraging ongoing engagement and education around WordPress. They provide opportunities for students to learn more about WordPress and empower student organizers to grow their local, on-campus community group.
WordPress Student Clubs allow students to sustain on-campus activities and events, encouraging ongoing engagement and education around WordPress. These clubs can be formed by campuses that have hosted a WordPress Campus Connect event, or by those that have not.
Key Benefits:
Provides opportunities for students who missed initial events to learn about WordPress.
Empower student organizers to grow their local, on-campus community group.
Student Clubs may host various types of events like monthly 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. and support recurring WordPress Campus Connect events.
WordPress Credits program integrates students from universities and other educational institutions into the WordPress open-source project by providing structured guidance and real-world experience. It aims to eliminate barriers to entry, foster transferable skills, and nurture the next generation of contributors, creating connections between academic institutions, students, and companies.
While the name includes “Credits,” participation is open to institutions that do not use a credit-based system, as long as they formally recognize the completion of the contribution program as part of the student’s curriculum.
The coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. activity of the program is contributing directly to WordPress, meaning students work on projects that help maintain, grow, and make WordPress more accessible to users worldwide.
Goal and Purpose:
To integrate university students into the WordPress 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. project by providing structured guidance and real-world experience.
Aims to eliminate barriers to entry for students and newcomers (lack of guidance, practical experience).
Participants develop transferable skills and actively engage with the WordPress community through structured onboarding and personalized contribution projects.
The program’s core activity is WordPress contribution: students work on projects that support the maintenance, growth, and global 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) of the WordPress ecosystem.
Seeks to nurture the next generation of contributors, ensuring WordPress remains innovative, inclusive, and sustainable.
Fosters connections between academic institutions, students, and companies within the WordPress ecosystem.
How to Get Involved:
Universities and Educational Institutions: If you are interested in participating in the WordPress Credits program, please reach out by filling the interest form.
Students: If you’re a student and find this project interesting, please share it with your professors or academic advisors, as applications must be submitted by your institution.
Companies: We invite companies in the WordPress ecosystem to support this initiative by:
Sponsoring 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. to guide new contributors.
Providing tools and resources that help students succeed.
From community hugs in Basel to first-time talks and 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://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. buzz, 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 brought unforgettable joy and connection. If you joined us, we hope you left inspired. If not, you can still catch the magic on WordPress.tv!
As we look ahead to WordCamp US this August, now’s the perfect moment to bring that global spirit to your local 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.. Whether it’s a cozy gathering or a summer celebration, it helps keep our community thriving throughout the year.
🎟️ Don’t Miss WordCamp US 2025!
Get ready for an unforgettable experience filled with learning, connection, and the spirit of the WordPress community.
Reminder: Planning is key to a successful event! To allow ample time for review and preparation, we encourage teams to apply for events at least six months prior to the event date. This ensures a smoother process and a well-organized experience for everyone involved.
WordPress Event Ideas
WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. 2025 Recap & Reflections – Host a discussion or watch party featuring your favorite WCEU sessions. Share learnings and brainstorm how to apply global insights locally.
Showcase Day – Get inspired by WCUSWCUSWordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. and showcase examples of websites powered by WordPress, featuring new features.
Summer Photo Contest – Help your local community join the WordPress Photo Directory’s global contest by organizing a photo walk and sharing their favorite summer moments!
These events help maintain momentum while reinforcing the value of learning and collaboration within your community. 🚀
Tip for Creating More Sustainable Events:
When organizing an event, make sure your venue is big enough to host all the events under the same roof and that it is well-connected via public transport. See more venue suggestions here.
📚 WordPress LATAM Organizer Course Ends, New Leaders Rise ✨
@sion99 shared that the course was a great success, offering valuable knowledge from the WordPress handbook in Spanish and helping build a stronger, more coordinated community across Latin America. A major highlight is that over four participants are now planning to organize or reactivate WordPress 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. in their local areas — an actual achievement in growing the Latin American WordPress community.
🌸 Quiet Work, Big Impact: Chiba WordPress Meetup Grows Stronger
@atsuo0475watanabe shared that the Chiba WordPress Meetup in Japan hosts monthly hybrid mokumoku-kai sessions—quiet co-working meetups where attendees focus on WordPress-related tasks, such as writing, translating, or contributing to the photo directory, with opportunities for discussion and Q&A. These events help organizers better understand the needs of beginners and reconnect with foundational knowledge.
These kinds of events demonstrate that it’s possible to organize hybrid events to facilitate attendance.
WordPress Event Organizers, We Want to Feature You!
We love highlighting WordPress events from around the world in our newsletters. Want your Meetup to be featured? Share a picture with the Community team! Post it on the #community-eventsSlack channel. Remember to ask permission from your group members before taking and sharing photos.
Need Support or Guidance From the WordPress Global Community TeamGlobal Community TeamA group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps.?
If you have any questions, Community Team Supporters are here to help. Please email us at support@wordcamp.org or join the #community-eventsSlack channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow and support the WordPress community — let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions!
This recap is a summary of the Community Team monthly meeting. It will cover the discussion points, ideas, and decisions that came up during the meeting. The aim of this recap is to provide a quick overview for those who were unable to attend, as well as an overview for everyone. These meetings were based on the Agenda for April and are held in our #community-teamSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel on Make WordPress.
Please leave your comments if you have any feedback.
Additionally, each agenda item discussed may have its own Make post related to its topic with more information, and you can add to the discussion directly to that post.
Chat Summary
Here are some discussion points from the meeting.
Highlights to Note
Here are a few things everyone should be aware of:
The Incident Response Team is looking for new members The Incident Response Team (IRT) is seeking new contributors! If you have experience in community moderation, conflict resolution, or DEIB practices, consider applying. Applications are open until July 6, 2025.
A Little (Late) Spring Cleaning A major audit reviewed outdated GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repos, plugins, and Slack channels – 20 GitHub repos, 11 outdated plugins, and 30 Slack channels archived to reduce clutter and improve focus.
🎟️ Proposal: Prioritizing CampTix Improvements for a Better Organizer and Attendee Experience A new proposal suggests prioritizing enhancements to CampTix to improve the experience for both organizers and attendees. Ideas include better ticket management, smoother refund handling, and improved data exports. Feedback is invited from past and potential 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. organizers.
🤝 Five for the Future WCEU25 Chat recap – Big conversation on the future of contribution, funding, and recognition. Discussion on the future of contribution, funding, and recognition. Topics include redefining “5ftF”, supporting non-code contributors, addressing burnout, transparent governance, and using AI for onboarding.
Next Meeting
Community Team Meetings are held the first Thursday of every month. There are two meetings to support different time zones. The meetings will take place on #community-team on Slack.
The Community Team Monthly Meetings happen on the first Thursdays of every month. These meetings can be facilitated and run by any member of the community team and are a great opportunity to engage with the rest of the community and team.
If you are interested in facilitating any of these meetings in the future, please feel free to comment or get in touch with any of the Community Team Reps.
The Community Team chat takes place on the first Thursday of every month in the #community-team channel on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. This month it will be on 3rd July 2025.
This meeting is meant for all contributors on the team and everyone who is interested in taking part in some of the things our team does. Feel free to join us, even if you are not currently active in the team!
You will find a preliminary agenda for the meeting below.
If you wish to add points to discuss, comment on this post or reach out to one of the team reps: @adityakane, @Arthur, @Shusei, or @webtechpooja. It does not need to be a blog post yet, the topic can be discussed during the meeting nevertheless. We use the same agenda for both meetings.
Call for meeting host and notetaker If anyone is available to host this month’s or next month’s Community Team meetings and/or write the recap notes, please reach out to one of the team reps: @adityakane, @Arthur, @Shusei, or @webtechpooja.
Check-ins: Program and Event Supporters / Contributors
What have you been doing, and how is it going?
What did you accomplish after the last meeting?
Are there any blockers?
Can other team members help you in some way?
Highlights to Note
Here are a few things everyone should be aware of.
This is your chance to discuss things that weren’t on the meeting agenda.
We invite you to use this opportunity to share anything that you want with the team. If you currently have a topic you’d like to discuss, add it to the comments of this post and we will try to update the agenda accordingly.
Hope to see you on Thursday, either in the Asia-Pacific / EMEA (12:00 UTC) or Americas-friendly version (21:00 UTC) of the meeting!
We’re expanding the Incident Response Team (IRT) and are looking for new contributors to join us.
The mission of the IRT is to provide a clear channel for community members to report and address incidents that may violate the WordPress Community Code of Conduct, ensuring a safe and respectful environment for all participants.
If you’re committed to fostering a respectful community and have experience in community moderation, conflict resolution, or DEIB practices, we’d love to hear from you.
You can also open the application form using the following link: Applications will remain open until July 6, 2025.
Selected members will receive dedicated training and onboarding.
To create more opportunities for involvement and bring in fresh perspectives over time, we’re also planning to introduce a rotation system. So if now isn’t the right time or you’re not selected, there will be more chances to join in the future.
This topic was raised during the 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 2025 Q&A session, where I highlighted the growing limitations of the CampTix 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. In response, Matt Mullenweg expressed support for exploring improvements to the tool and encouraged us to take steps toward making CampTix more effective for WordCamp organizers and attendees.
Overview
CampTix is the official WordCamp ticketing plugin used for events across the WordPress ecosystem, including WordCamp Europe (WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event.). While it has served the community for years, its capabilities have not kept pace with the evolving needs of organizers or the scale of flagship events. As a long-time organizer involved in WCEU for over 9 years, I believe it’s time to prioritize improvements to CampTix to ensure it remains a reliable, central tool not just a payment gateway. Yes we use it mainly as a payment gateway.
This proposal aims to:
Raise awareness of the current limitations of CampTix.
Highlight use cases and pain points shared by many event teams.
Suggest practical short-term wins and long-term improvements.
Open a conversation around how we can collaboratively move the project forward.
What Is CampTix?
CampTix is a WordPress plugin designed to handle ticketing for WordCamp events. It enables attendees to purchase tickets, organizers to collect information, and teams to manage event registration and invoicing. It is released as open-source software.
CampTix is a coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. part of the WordCamp infrastructure, but its current feature set and development support are limiting its usefulness:
Many flagship and small WordCamps have turned to third-party tools (e.g., Eventora, Tito, Eventbrite) for attendee management, while using CampTix only for payments.
Organizers rely on manual spreadsheets, custom workflows, and one-off hacks to manage data that could and should be part of CampTix.
Features like visa letters, check-in tools, reports, and attendee role management are either missing, hard to use, or entirely externalized.
Data Protection: Currently anyone with Administrator access to a WordCamp website has the ability to download all ticket information which includes (but not limited to) names, nationalities, email addresses and confidential items such as dietary requirements, allergies and any custom fields added to the registration form. This CSV file can be downloaded anytime from current and previous WordCamp editions where users are still listed as Administrators, and could therefore breach privacy regulations (such as GDPR, CCPA).
We are missing a huge opportunity to improve efficiency, consistency, and data quality across events.
Common Challenges for Organizers
These are challenges echoed by many organizing teams over the years:
Visa Letters: No built-in option; handled manually or through third-party tools.
Reporting: No way to generate comprehensive reports during or after the event (e.g., demographics, ticket types, attendance breakdown, swag/T-Shirt sizing, catering requirements).
Attendee Management: Limited options for updating or assigning roles, checking in, filtering by ticket types, or seeing complete user history.
Shortcodes: Cannot filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. specific ticket types for events like 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://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/., Social Dinner, or Workshops.
Bulk Ticket Issues: Bugs when multiple tickets are purchased under one order but need to be edited individually.
Data In/Out: Poor integration with 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 and no real data liberation. Tickets require a WordPress.org login, but the system doesn’t leverage or connect that data usefully.
Partial Refunds: Currently only full refunds are possible where a user purchases more than one ticket, resulting in having to re-purchase tickets again – this is a poor customer experience.
Payments: A number of additional gateways have been added as ‘standalone plugins’ to support various payment providers (countries where Stripe or PayPal is not common or supported), and most of these individual plugins are no longer maintained.
Why We Should Act Now
The plugin has no roadmap, active maintainer, or visible plan for growth. Yet CampTix remains a required component for WordCamps. If left stagnant, more events will abandon it entirely, fragmenting the ecosystem and increasing the workload for volunteers.
This is not a complaint, it’s a call to action.
Proposal
1. Short-Term Improvements (“Quick Wins”)
Add Visa Letter generation, similar to how invoices are generated.
Fix known bugs with bulk tickets and editing tickets associated with unknown email addresses.
Extend shortcodes to allow filtering by ticket type (Contributor Day, Social Dinner, etc.).
2. Long-Term Improvements (Roadmap)
Partial Refunds: Allow for per-ticket or percentage-based refunds.
Data Liberation & 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. Access: Create an open, privacy-conscious method to import/export data for organizers.
Better Reporting Tools: Dynamic reports that don’t require exporting to spreadsheets.
Organizer Sandbox Environment: Provide a sandbox/demo version of CampTix for testing and training.
Modular Roles: Assign roles (attendee, speaker, sponsor) from within CampTix, with better 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..
Better Permissions for Organisers: Only Administrators can edit specific areas (e.g. budget) but are automatically given access to all functions (speakers, sponsors etc) which is not appropriate for their role.
Improved API: Enable external tools and dashboards to interact with CampTix programmatically.
How We Can Make Progress
We understand that resources are limited and that there is currently no dedicated maintainer for CampTix. However, that should not 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. community contribution.
Here are some suggested approaches:
Appoint a Dedicated Maintainer or Gatekeeper
Someone with access to review PRs and deployDeployLaunching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. updates.
Open Access to Contributors
Provide a sandbox or mirror repository for the community to submit improvements, roadmaps, and test features.
Form a Community Working Group
Contributors from different WordCamps (WCEU, WCUSWCUSWordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event., WCAsia, local camps) can collaborate to identify and prioritize improvements.
Opportunity to have a specific dedicated table at Contributor Days at flagship events to proceed with further developments, onboard new contributors, etc
Transparent Roadmap
Use GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Projects or a Make blog post series to share upcoming changes, bugs, and ideas.
Closing Thoughts
CampTix deserves more attention not only because it’s central to WordCamp organization, but because it reflects how we as a community build tools for ourselves.
Let’s invest in it.
I am personally committed to:
Contributing to development and testing.
Engaging other organizers to identify priorities.
Helping build a roadmap with the Community Team.
Let’s stop reinventing the wheel for every WordCamp. Let’s make CampTix better together.
