The FSE Outreach Program is Officially Starting!

In May 2020, @chanthaboune announced a new experimental outreach project dedicated to Full Site Editing. Most recently, @matveb shared a wonderful post summarizing where Site Editing is today. Building on both, I’m excited to announce that, despite 2020’s best attempts to derail efforts, the program will officially launch with the release of GutenbergGutenberg The 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/ 9.6! Right now, it’s likely that this release will be done 1 week later than usual to give a longer RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). period so expect the program to begin around December 23rd. This cycle will focus on testing this PR that introduces a template editing mode. For additional context, you can see the discussion around picking this PR here. Hopefully, aligning the call for testing with the current Gutenberg version will make it easier for more people to participate in testing. 

Please keep in mind that this is the program’s first iteration. We’re starting with this first item and expecting the outcome to be a comprehensive list of issues that the Gutenberg team can work on as capacity allows. We’ll also allow an extended time to test this first item to accommodate this time of year. 

Moving forward, this program will eventually offer a few items to test back-to-back, with an easy and quick way to integrate feedback into Gutenberg releases. Remember, feedback outside of this program is always welcome and necessary as well — think of it as doing the work to pave the way for future iterations! 

What are the immediate next steps? 

I will be posting on Make Test once Gutenberg 9.6 is released around December 23rd with an extended time to give feedback. The post will include a testing script, resources for setting up a testing environment, and where to share feedback. I will also share that post in the #fse-outreach-experiment channel to alert everyone who has opted in. 

How can I join this program/follow along?

To join the FSE outreach experiment, create a WordPress slack account, join the #fse-outreach-experiment channel, and subscribe to the Make Test blogblog (versus network, site) to be notified about future posts. 

Who should join this program?

This is a great program for you if you want to test new features coming to WordPress, and: 

  • You build WordPress sites for yourself or for others.
  • You manage or maintain WordPress sites for yourself or for others.
  • You publish content using WordPress.

If you’re not sure, join anyway and see for yourself!

Thanks in advance for all who join in on this experiment and who help make it better with feedback/questions/etc. I’m thrilled to get started!

Ultimately, this is an awesome way to help build WordPress’s future, and I hope you’ll join the fun. 

#core-editor, #full-site-editing, #gutenberg