This post shares the experience of Jos Velasco, a first-time mentorEvent Supporter Event 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. in the WordPress Credits program, and what his cohort revealed about how mentorsEvent Supporter Event 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 students navigate their first open-source contribution together. As the program grows, stories like this help us refine how we onboard, scope projects, and connect students to the wider community.

The WordPress Credits program pairs students with community contributors who guide them through their first open-source contribution. The framework is simple on paper: a mentor, a student, an immediate contribution opportunity, and a finish line. In practice, every cohort surfaces something new about what makes the program work.

This is a look at one mentor’s first cohort: three students, three different paths, and a few takeaways that other current and future mentors will recognize.

The cohort

Jos took on three mentees, all new to open-source contribution. Before choosing a contribution path, students complete an onboarding phase on Learn WordPress, with curated lessons, Playground sandboxes, and quizzes.

That onboarding phase is solid, but it can take longer than expected, both for students and for mentors. There’s a lot of material, and the schedule needs to flex around real lives. The trickiest part isn’t the curriculum: it’s the balance every mentor has to strike between enabling students’ potential and not doing the work for them. Open sourceOpen Source Open 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. isn’t an obligation. Part of mentoring is helping students want to contribute, by showing them why it matters and what they get out of it, rather than pushing them through a checklist.

Each of the three students landed in a different place.

Gabi: Photos as a creative outlet

Gabi Hawkins works as an IT technician moving toward web development. She chose Photos, which wasn’t directly tied to her career path but suited who she is: a visual person drawn to front-end work. Her submissions reflect that, a Japanese pagoda lit at night, jellyfish in deep blue water, koi beside a rock-lined path. Not test shots. Photos from someone with an eye.

A small, instructive snag: Gabi met her project requirements on time, but her certificate was delayed because she filled out the feedback form using a different email than the one on her WP Credits profile. The course system didn’t detect her completion. A small reminder for mentors and students alike to double-check that emails match across systems, especially when graduation is on the line.

T’Kai: Showing up async, on her own schedule

T’Kai Monet is a full-time student and a full-time mom of a newborn. Her schedule was, predictably, unpredictable. She originally chose Themes and switched to Photos when time was tight, a smart pivot. What stood out wasn’t her output, though, but how she participated.

She attended a WordPress 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. at 2:30 a.m., not because she couldn’t sleep, but because she was already up with the baby and decided to make the most of it. She wrote about it as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. And in a global, async community, it kind of is.

This is one of the most important things any new contributor can internalize: the conversation will happen across time zones, and showing up in the rhythm that works for you is showing up.

Noah: Finding a meaningful path, not just a completable one

Noah Mobes spent real time early on looking for a path that felt meaningful, rather than the easiest one to finish. After working on Good First Bugs for CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., he landed on WordPress Playground blueprints, small files that spin up pre-configured WordPress environments instantly, with no hosting required.

He created blueprints for Hello Dolly and Disable Comments, opened pull requests in the official GitHubGitHub GitHub 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository, and reached out to the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. authors. The PRs weren’t merged before the program closed, but he documented his process and delivered a wrap-up presentation on WordPress.tv. His own framing: “this is certainly not the end for me in the WP ecosystem.” That attitude, and the documentation trail he left, is exactly what sustainable contribution looks like.

All three graduated on the same day.

Hello Dolly

The moment that mattered most: reaching out directly

While T’Kai was submitting photos, several weren’t getting approved. The Photo Directory has real standards around quality and description, and queues get long when many students are finishing at the same time or when big events collide.

Sharing links and documentation didn’t move things. What did was going to the Photos Team page, finding the most active moderators listed there, and reaching out directly.

That message reached Michelle Frechette, who has contributed over 360 photos to the directory and has been part of this community for years. She responded immediately, explained exactly why the submissions weren’t passing, and offered to review T’Kai’s photos before she sent more.

That single conversation did what weeks of links hadn’t.

This is the lesson worth leading with for every new contributor: the WordPress community has no boundaries. People will help if you reach out to them. Not eventually, not after a queue, not via a form. Directly, by name, in the open.

What we’d change: scope projects around what teams actually need

The “30 photos to the Photo Directory” framing comes from how WP Credits structures its immediate contribution opportunities: each participating team defines a minimum deliverable that signals the student has made a meaningful, complete contribution, 30 CC0-licensed photos for the Photo Directory, a theme review for the Themes team, a Good First Bug worked on during a Bug Scrub for Core, and so on. That baseline matters. It gives students something concrete to aim at, gives mentors a way to measure progress, and gives each contributing team a consistent definition of “enough.” So this isn’t a critique of using a number as a goal.

But going through the cohort surfaced a hunch worth sharing. From experience organizing meetupsMeetup 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. in the LATAM community and producing video, it often feels like organizers are short on the kind of CC0 imagery they need: photos for event pages, social posts, recap posts, banners. So one alternative framing for the photo path could be: contribute photos that WordPress meetup organizers can actually use. That’s not a researched conclusion, just a sense from being on the organizer side of things.

What’s more interesting is where that hunch points. In a recent conversation, Isotta floated a bigger idea worth surfacing here: what if we asked the Photo Team, and other contributing teams, what kinds of contributions they actually need right now, and turned those into specific tasks for students?

That’s a meaningful shift. Instead of each team defining a generic minimum (any 30 photos, any theme review, any Good First Bug), teams could periodically share a short list of what would be most useful at a given moment, photos of specific subjects, theme reviews in a particular categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., bugs in a specific component. Mentors and students could then choose from that list, knowing the work has a clear downstream use.

The finish line stays. The direction sharpens. And students learn the most important habit in open source: thinking about who will use your contribution before you make it.

This is a conversation worth opening up to the wider team. If you’re a contributing team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. and have thoughts on what your team would surface as “high-impact tasks for students right now,” the comments below are a good place to start.

Takeaways for current and future mentors

A few things worth carrying into your own cohort:

• Lead with the community early. Don’t wait until something gets stuck to point students toward direct 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/, on Make blogs, and on team pages. The lesson “you can just ask someone” lands better when it’s framed as a first move, not a rescue.
• Talk to the team your student is contributing to. Beyond the minimum deliverable, ask the contributing team what would be most useful right now. A short conversation at the start can turn a generic quota into a project with a clear downstream use, and gives the student a real audience to design for.
• Respect async as the default. Your students may show up at 2:30 a.m. their time, on a Saturday, between feedings, between shifts. That counts. Build your check-ins to accommodate it.
• Help students find meaning, not just completion. The most durable contributions come from students who chose a path because it mattered to them. Give them room to explore early, even if it costs a week.
• Sweat the small operational details. Email mismatches, profile inconsistencies, missing form fields, these can hold up certificates and graduation. Catch them at the start.
• Document the wrap-up. A blog post, a WordPress.tv presentation, a profile update — documenting the journey turns one student’s experience into a resource the next cohort can learn from. Noah’s wrap-up is a good example of what this can look like.

Thanks

A lot of people stand behind a program that looks simple from the outside. Thanks to the WP Credits team members who patiently helped this cohort sort through every kind of issue: Isotta Peira, Celi Garoe, Francesco Di Candia, Maciej Pilarski, and contributors @evarlese, @nilovelez, and @roblesloaiza.

And of course, thanks to Gabi, T’Kai, and Noah for trusting the program with their first open-source contribution, and for letting their experience help shape what comes next.

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Are you mentoring, or thinking about it?

If you’re a current WP Credits mentor with stories of your own, what worked, what you’d change, what surprised you, drop a comment below. The more cohorts we document, the better the program gets for everyone.

If you’re considering becoming a mentor, the Mentor Guide is the right place to start. The interest in this role continues to grow, and that’s a good sign of where WordPress is headed.

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Props to @peiraisotta, @celigaroe, and @lidarroy for reviewing this post.

#community-team, #education, #mentorship, #wpcredits