Project Organization

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About the Project

The WordPress project is run by a core leadership team and led by co-founder and lead developer Matt Mullenweg. The team governs all aspects of the project, including core development, WordPress.org, and community initiatives.

Trusted contributors and core developers earn their stripes on more than their abilities and actions. Leadership roles are earned on the basis of professionalism, personality, attitude, and respect among peers.

The best contributors naturally respect and subscribe to the project’s core philosophies. A lack of a personal agenda is paramount: we’re all a part of the same community and we all share common goals. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion – far from it. The best contributors can balance their opinions with the goals of the project and the perspectives of both users and developers. Offering consistently good suggestions, demonstrating a strong ability to collaborate with others, and being able to accept (and provide) feedback are all important.

You can identify these standards in some of our best core contributors, and that’s why they have strong influence over the project. Final decisions are made by the core team, which has evolved over the life of the project based on merit.

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Community Leadership

The WordPress community is led via two main avenues: the Internal Leads and the Community Volunteers. In many areas, such as UI and Support, the Community Leads are the driving force.

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The WordPress Core Team

The WordPress project is led by the core leadership team, which consists of WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, five lead developers, and a number of core developers.

The lead developers are Helen Hou-Sandi, Dion Hulse, Mark Jaquith, Andrew Nacin, and Andrew Ozz. These developers have final authority on technical decisions, and lead architecture discussions and implementation efforts.

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Committers

Current committers include:

Robert Anderson, Michael Arestad, Joen Asmussen, Felix Arntz, Jean-Baptiste Audras, Rachel Baker, David Baumwald, Ian Belanger, Riad Benguella, Pascal Birchler, Sergey Biryukov, John Blackbourn, Isabel Brison, Anthony Burchell, Aaron D. Campbell, Allan Cole, Mel Choyce-Dwan, Kelly Choyce-Dwan, Jorge Costa, Jonathan Desrosiers, Joe Dolson, Ian Dunn, Andrew Duthie, Andrea Fercia, Miguel Fonseca, Laurel Fulford, Herre Groen, Jonny Harris, Timothy Jacobs, John James Jacoby, Drew Jaynes, Aaron Jorbin, Tammie Lister, Joe McGill, Tonya Mork, Jeff Ong, William Patton, Gary Pendergast, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Brandon Payton, Omar Reiss, Bernhard Reiter, Daniel Richards, Weston Ruter, Dominik Schilling, Mike Schroder, Alex Shiels, Adam Silverstein, Dennis Snell, Allen Snook, Jake Spurlock, Scott Taylor, Anton Timmermans, Ella Van Durpe, Matias Ventura, K. Adam White, Peter Wilson, Adam Zieliński, and Grzegorz Ziółkowski.

Other contributing developers include Michael Adams, Nikolay Bachiyski, Jon Cave, Jeremy Felt, Boone B. Gorges, Joe Hoyle, David A. Kennedy, Daryl Koopersmith, Konstantin Kovshenin, Eric Lewis, Matthew Riley MacPherson, Matt Miklic, Ryan McCue, James Nylen, Konstantin Obenland, Joseph Scott, Ian Stewart, Andy Skelton, Peter Westwood, Lance Willett, and Samuel Wood.

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Core Contributors

The core and contributing developers serve as guides for WordPress development. With every version, hundreds of developers contribute code to WordPress. These core contributors are volunteers who contribute to the core codebase in some way. All it takes is a single patch to make a difference.

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Team Reps

Since anyone who is an active contributor on a team can be elected as team rep, team reps will often have different levels of familiarity with other areas of the project, communication protocols, and general processes. To get everyone’s expectations in the same place, the “job description” for team reps is located on Make/Updates.

@hellofromtonya and @webcommsat are the current Core Team Reps for 2023. Team Rep elections happen every years and follow a specific process that includes nominations, voting, and announcing the new reps.

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UX and Design

The design team is made up of core contributors who work on the design and user interface of WordPress.

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Support

The support forums are run by a team of volunteer moderators who remove spam, handle disputes, and generally keep the peace. They are led primarily by a self-appointed team leader and everyone is encouraged to jump in.

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Documentation

The Documentation team is responsible for all things documentation, including HelpHub (end-users documentation), DevHub (developer-oriented documentation), handbooks, admin help, inline docs, and other general wordsmithing across the WordPress project.

This handbook and HelpHub/DevHub are the primary sources of information for learning how to develop, improve, and troubleshoot WordPress. These resources are curated by a group of volunteers. Everyone is welcome to contribute.

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Mobile

The WordPress mobile applications are open source software, just like the project. There are two applications currently for iOS and Android. Both apps are hosted on GitHub where anyone can contribute.

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Theme Reviewers

Themes submitted to the WordPress Themes Directory are reviewed by a team of volunteers to ensure compliance with the WordPress.org theme guidelines. The team is made up of community leaders and contributors who work together on developing standards and reviewing themes.

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Plugin Reviewers

Plugins submitted to the WordPress Plugins Directory are reviewed by a team of volunteers to ensure they meet WordPress.org guidelines before being included in the plugin directory. The team rep is Boone Gorges, with volunteers Pippin Williamson, Scott Reilly, Samuel Wood, Mika Epstein, Kailey Lampert, Daniel Bachhuber, and Mark Riley (Reviewer Emeritus) reviewing plugins and developing standards.

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Community Blogs and Communication

WordPress core development updates and discussion from the teams above happen on the Make WordPress blogs. You can also follow core development by joining the #core channel on the project’s Slack team, which is open for anyone to join. Dedicated channels are set up for various WordPress core components and community initiatives. A more specific breakdown of the WordPress project’s communication channels is available in the Communication section of the Core Handbook.

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