Shiny Updates Visual Records

https://make.wordpress.org/flow/2016/05/02/shiny-update-visual-records/

#4-6, #shiny-updates, #upgrade-install

Shiny Updates Kickoff for 4.6 Chat Summary

This is a summary of the shiny updates chat from April 26. (Slack log)

Attendees: @ocean90, @swissspidy, @ethitter, @adamsilverstein, @karmatosed, @obenland

Topics:

  • Remaining work
    On the updates-core.php side there is quite a bit of work remaining. On 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/theme management part outside of that, there is actually fairly little work remaining.
    Since the two parts vary in their readiness so much, it was proposed to go ahead with the theme/plugin management part and propose that for 4.6, while leaving the rest to be continued to be iterated on.
  • More user tests
    @obenland will reach out to @mapk and @karmatosed to get a final round of user tests in, to make sure the new workflows are up to par.
  • update-core.php changes
    Autoupdate settings will be pulled as they are not ready to be worked on yet. @swissspidy volunteered to work on #5, mainly merging the three tables and adding JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. handlers for coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and language updates.
  • Schedule for 4.6 inclusion
    Core patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing. should be ready by June 1 for merge on June 8. The remaining time is for creating visual records, user tests, and a merge proposal.

Next meeting is on Tuesday May 3, 19:00 UTC.

#4-6, #shiny-updates, #upgrade-install

Shiny Updates Chat

While 4.5 came a little too early for Shiny Updates v2, I think it would be worthwhile to try getting 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 and theme management changes into WordPress 4.6. Regular chats have been dormant for a while, but I’d like to continue them starting Tuesday April 26 at 19:00 UTC in the #feature-shinyupdates 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/. channel.

Topics for this first chat will include remaining work, the need for more user tests, how to proceed with update-core.php changes, and a schedule for 4.6 inclusion of shiny theme/plugin installs/updates/deletes.

There are still plenty of opportunities to get involved and help bring this iteration over the finish line. Please come join us next week and contribute to the abolishment of The Bleak Screen of Sadness™.

#4-6, #shiny-updates, #upgrade-install

Shiny Updates v2

Shiny Updates v2

What is Shiny Updates?

With the stated goal of “Hiding the The Bleak Screen of Sadness”, the shiny updates team is working on bringing a smoother experience for managing plugins and themes to WordPress. Shiny Updates v2 is an effort to continue the shiny updates effort from WordPress 4.2. The original shiny update feature only includes shiny 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 updates. The new version aims to extend this to all aspects of updates, installs, and deletes for plugins, themes in WordPress. There are numerous screens in the Adminadmin (and super admin) that allow you to install, update, and delete themes, plugins and WordPress itself. Shiny updates is exploring ways to improve their design and especially to offer a better user experience by improving perceived performance and limiting confusing notifications.

What does it do?

The shiny updates plugin currently enables the following features:
  • Deleting single plugins, bulk updating and bulk deleting plugins from the plugin page.
  • Shiny plugin installs from the plugin install screen: multiple actions can be queued up.
  • Shiny theme installs, updates, and deletes, multiple queue-able, including multisitemultisite Used to describe a WordPress installation with a network of multiple blogs, grouped by sites. This installation type has shared users tables, and creates separate database tables for each blog (wp_posts becomes wp_0_posts). See also network, blog, site.

What is still being worked on?

Currently the team is brainstorming a complete rethink of the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. updates page (update-core.php), working to improve clarity and enable easier Update All functionality. Work on that is happening here: https://github.com/obenland/shiny-updates/issues/5

How can I help?

Anyone can help by testing the plugin! Download and install the plugin, then test out all the shiny features: try installing, updating, and deleting plug7ins and themes, including bulk actions, on both single and multisite. Does everything work as expected? Are there any jarring flows? Missing notifications? Please report any issues on the Github repository, or drop in the #feature-shinyupdates channel 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/. to ask questions or give feedback. It’s also where we have our weekly chats, on Tuesdays 19:00 UTC. Thank you! P.S. Props @adamsilverstein for ghost-writing this post.

#feature-plugins, #needs-testing, #shiny-updates, #upgrade-install

Document title in 4.4

WordPress 4.1 introduced a way for themes to support a new way of rendering the document title, letting CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. handle its generation and output. The next step followed just recently (#31078), deprecating wp_title() and replacing it with a more comprehensive way to generate titles.

UPDATE 12 November – wp_title has been reinstated until alternative usages have been identified and a path forward for them defined.

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 can now check for theme support and have a few new filters available that will allow them to change or replace the title in a reliable way:

  • 'pre_get_document_title' short-circuits wp_get_document_title() if it returns anything other than an empty value.
  • 'document_title_separator' filters the separator between title parts.
  • 'document_title_parts' filters the parts that make up the document title, passed in an associative array.

This latest change makes the new APIAPI An 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. (almost) feature complete and theme authors are discouraged from using wp_title() in the future. If it was decided to add a UIUI User interface to let users choose the make up of their document title, or another improvement to how title generation works, we now have a forward compatible way to handle these things.

To upgrade themes from using wp_title() to declaring theme support for core’s title-tagtag A directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) without breaking backwards compatibility with WordPress 4.0 and older, theme authors can check if the callback function exists and add a shiv in case it does not:

if ( ! function_exists( '_wp_render_title_tag' ) ) :
	function theme_slug_render_title() {
?>
<title><?php wp_title( '-', true, 'right' ); ?></title>
<?php
	}
	add_action( 'wp_head', 'theme_slug_render_title' );
endif;

#4-4, #dev-notes, #wp_title

4.3 Retrospective Results

I missed posting the 4.3 post mortem recap before I went on vacation, so without further ado:

We discussed the 4.3 release 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/., where I asked for things that should be improved and things that went well, in order to get some feedback on how I did and helpful tips for future release leads (please find the Slack log here):

Should be improved:

  • Figure out some ways to get more testing and more eyes on betas and RCs.
  • Not having feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. complete (with coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. patchpatch A special text file that describes changes to code, by identifying the files and lines which are added, removed, and altered. It may also be referred to as a diff. A patch can be applied to a codebase for testing.) before the merge window.
  • The menu customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. proposal could have been written differently in anticipation of community perception.
  • The people who are able to test term splitting properly are very limited. Not sure how to wrangle people for this kind of specialized testing.
  • there seemed to be a lack of movement at the end of the cycle.
  • Features like site icon should be done as a feature plugin.
  • The merge proposal could have been proof-read by someone from the core team.
  • Getting dev-notes written up earlier.
  • There were also not a lot of feature plugins ready for core at the start of 4.3.
  • Don’t think it’s really okay to be relaxing standards in the name of forcing something to fit a deadline.
  • We did a freeze/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). maaaaybe 24 hours before release that had significant changes in it, that did not feel good.
  • We completely changed features after betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1.
  • I think in 4.2 we discovered that have a core mentor involved much earlier also helped get it to that “ready” place. Or closer to ready.
  • Find a way to increase participation for bugbug A bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority. scrubs.

Went well:

  • passwords went really well.
  • We had a solid crop of guest committers that really made things go well for there project area.
  • Update to 4.3 went really smoothly over all as well.
  • We had some epic traction on Formatting component patches during this cycle. I’m a bit surprised how many tickets we closed with 4.3 because those are usually very problematic.
  • Touch and small screen usability improved significantly. Two of my top five issues were fixed outright and progress was made on a third.
  • I demoed the keyboard shortcuts in the editor to some people and they were like “DAMN, that’s amazing”.
  • i’m really happy about list table changes!
  • Shared taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. terms are dead.
  • WE RELEASED ON TIME!!!!

I’m probably a little biased, but contrary to what the amount of bullet points in each section might suggest, I agree with @samuelsidler who said: “Almost everything went really smooth.” I’m proud of what we accomplished, and the download and update numbers speak for themselves. Thank you again for everyone who helped out during the release, let’s make 4.4 even better!

#4-3, #post-mortem #retrospective

WordPress 4.3 Post Mortem

I’d like to do a review of the WordPress 4.3 release cycle, talk about what went well, what didn’t, and ideally derive specific items that we can improve on.

Let’s do that in the #core channel on Slack on August 24 2015 20:00 UTC, the usual dev chat time.

#4-3, #post-mortem

Dev Chat Agenda for August 12

Here’s the agenda for today’s Dev Chat in the #core channel on Slack.

Time/Date: August 12 2015 20:00 UTC:

  1. 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). Notes
  2. Component Updates
  3. Open Floor

#4-3, #agenda

Dev Chat Agenda for August 5

Here’s the agenda for today’s Dev Chat in the #core channel on Slack.

This will be a rather short meeting I assume. We’ll be discussing code freeze, RC3, and a timeline for the last two weeks of this release.

Time/Date: August 5 2015 20:00 UTC:

  1. 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). Notes
  2. Component Updates
  3. Open Floor

#4-3, #agenda