Developer Blog editorial meeting summary, February 1, 2024

Summary of the WordPress Developer Blogblog (versus network, site) meeting, which took place in the  #core-dev-blog channel on the Make WordPress 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/.. Start of the meeting in Slack.

Attendees: @marybaum, @milana_cap @greenshady, @oglekler, second half @webcommsat, @bph (as facilitator),

Last meeting notes: Developer Blog editorial meeting summary, January 4, 2024

Updates on the site

Categories

The categories were updated a bit.

• Blocks Development renamed to Blocks
•  Visual Design renamed to Design
• Deleted “Learning” isn’t every article a learning experience?

Since the beginning in 2022, we keep categories very high level, and become more specific with Tags.

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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Action: label notifier

For the roundup posts, people can get notified when the next issue is available to share their team’s notes with the writer to be included in the next What’s new for developers post. If people want to get GitHub notification, please let me know and I’ll update the GitHub Notifier Action.

Author Profile links

With the redesign, author links now go to the 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/ profiles. 

Newly published post since the last meeting:

• Adding starter patterns to your WordPress themes by Justin Tadlock, reviewed by Mary Baum and Birgit Pauli-Haack
• How to disable specific blocks in WordPress by Nick Diego, reviewed by Justin Tadlock and Dan Soschin
• Building dynamic block-based attachment templates in themes by Justin Tadlock, reviewed by Laura Little and Birgit Pauli-Haack
• What’s new for developers? (January 2024) by Justin Tadlock, reviewed by Birgit Pauli-Haack, Nick Diego and Abha Thakor
• 2023: Year in review by Justin Tadlock, reviewed by Nick Diego and Birgit Pauli-Haack.

Huge “Thank you” to the writers and reviewers for bringing fabulous content to WordPress!

Project Status

Issues Closed as not planned

• A tutorial about the highlights of the browser and focus modes of the Navigation Block
• How to manage block governance #126
• Tutorial on building block-based templates in classic themes

Seven Posts in Progress:

• Optimizing your WP_Query queries for better performance
• Pitfalls working with @wordpress/data, useSelect and useDispatch and how to avoid those.
• How to build a theme demo with WP Playground blueprints
• A first look at the Interactivity API
• What’s new for developers? (February 2024)
• Tutorial on using create-block scaffolding to write a multi-block plugin
• Using the Grid layout type for theme creators

Eight post on To Do column

The Todo-List is growing, and we need to increase efforts to get them published.

• Creating a custom External Template for the @wordpress/create-block package
• Overview of the coding standards tooling available to WordPress developers
• An overview of the “Block hooks”
• Introduction on using Gutenberg components for plugin pages 
• Tutorial: Creating a mega menu with the block system
• Tour Guide for First-time writers on the Developer Blog
• Adding a “screen reader text” block option via themes
• Why you might not need a child theme

Topics still in need of a writer

• How to add a template via a plugin (podcast, woo, LMS)
• Create Figma designs for WordPress Block Theme

If you are interested in taking on a topic from this list or know someone who would be a good person to writer about them, comment on the Issue or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” @bph in slack either in the #core-dev-blog channel or in a DM.

Posts in need of reviews:

• New developer focused workflow article about how the login and registration works in WordPress.#165 – Needs 2nd review, @webcommsat takes it on.

New Topics approved

• When to use Transients API and how #29 
• What you can and cannot do with PHP in patterns
• Learnings from two Site Migrations
• Tutorial on building a “hover reveal” pattern
• Migrate classic sidebars and widgets to block for themers
• React best practices and pitfalls
• Overview of “block theme” stuff you can do with classic/hybrid themes

Open Floor

@webcommsat brought to the meeting, the discussion from last night’s dev chat meeting about the Proposal to improve the FieldguideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. of the WordPress release, to see “what role the dev blog could possibly have in this as well as identifying what the blog already does and could do.

There is a wider discussion needed on communication and education of release features, but it would be good to start a more detailed discussion on potential and what is already aiding these areas within the dev blog. This can then feed into the wider considerations with other teams.”

Relevant links:

• Proposal: An update to the Field Guide 
• Dev Chat meeting January 31, 2024

@webcommsat:
“The proposal now is not so much about a new version of a field guideField guide The field guide is a type of blogpost published on Make/Core during the release candidate phase of the WordPress release cycle. The field guide generally lists all the dev notes published during the beta cycle. This guide is linked in the about page of the corresponding version of WordPress, in the release post and in the HelpHub version page. appearing in dev blog, but looking at where and how we communicate and educate on a release, and what is needed. With the increased ability to segment to different audiences across the project, this could be a great opportunity. Hence, the wider input from marketing, docs, training, community, and the dev blog.

Being clear what happens in the dev blog already, giving tangible live examples to help those less familiar with the blog materials, and what could be potentially done would be a real cake yo the discussion.  With the segmentation, we have just in levels of developer knowledge, we can add a valuable insight too.”

@greenshady, @webcommsat also brought up concerns on ownership, availability of people during release time and bandwidth of contributors.

Next steps:
@webcommsat suggested: a mapping exercise would help, and happy to try to start one we can add to with ideas. We can then add links to examples of what we have already published.

Action: After 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. Asia, schedule a Hallway Hangout with contributors from the editorial group and other teams to kick off work on a basic content map for a release and 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 existing efforts and identify gaps.

Next meeting: March 7, 2024, at 13:00 UTC in the #core-dev-blog channel

Props to @marybaum and @greenshady for review.

#meeting, #summary