Developer Blog editorial meeting summary: November 2, 2023

complete transcript of the meeting can be found in the #core-dev-blog channel in Making 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/..

Agenda

  • Site updates and new posts
  • Project Board
  • In Progress
  • Today
  • Needs Review
  • To be approved
  • Open Floor

Notes of the last editorial meeting on October 5, 2023 – props to @webcommsat

Props to @milana_cap for facilitating the meeting.

Attendees for Nov 2, 2023 meeting: @milana_cap, @greenshady, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @oglekler, @ndiego .@bph was unable to attend – thanks to Birgit for preparing items in advance for the meeting.

Site updates and new posts

New Posts published since the last meeting:

@milana_cap shared: “A huge thank you to the writers, and their reviewers! Fantastic job!”

Project Status

Posts In progress

To-do list

  1. A tutorial about the highlights of the browser and focus modes of the Navigation Block
  2. Using the Grid layout type for theme creators Justin Tadlock: this will wait as it is still in experimental phase.
  3. How to manage block governance
  4. Tutorial on building block-based templates in classic themes
  5. Tutorial on building patterns and block styles with Details/Summary block Justin Tadlock will be working on this.
  6. Optimizing your WP_Query queries for better performance Olga Gleckler
  7. How to disable specific blocks in WordPress
  8. How to add commands to the command palette Writers needed, Justin volunteered if needed.
  9. Creating a custom External Template for the @wordpress/create-block package
  10. Overview of the coding standards tooling available to WordPress developers
  11. An overview of the “Auto-inserting Blocks” feature coming in 6.4. This initial proposal is now being discussed in this ticket – Note timescale for this post will be post 6.5.

@marybaum is revising the long-form type post. @greenshady to support with code samples and @webcommsat with proofing.

Writers are needed for the remainder of the items on the to-do list. Call to be shared in dev chat when possible.
Wider calls to encourage people to add to the relevant 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/ issue if they can assist with collaborating on these items.

Actions: If you know someone or want to write one of these posts yourself, comment in the Developer-Blog channel on Slack.

Reviews needed

There are no posts currently in the queue marked ready for review. More are expected with the release slated for November 7, 2023.

To be approved

  • At the moment, the queue for items for discussion or topics for approval is empty.
  • @greenshady to add some new topics for next month’s meeting.
  • @webcommsat: From early signs of what could be in 6.5, I think there will be quite a few use case blogs to come out of there in the future.
  • @milana_cap: to propose a few WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ topics.
  • @marybaum: potentially one on using the post-content blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. inside the Cover block, and a topic related to a block theme.
  • @ogleckler: proposed a topic on design in Figma for blocks. Discussion followed in the meeting: @webcomms suggested sharing the idea with the Design team and with the release contributors who worked with Figma for potential interest in scoping/ key inclusions, or to take it up to write. Strong interest in the editorial group about a post on designing a block theme in Figma. New issue created for the Dev Blogblog (versus network, site) to take this forward.

@webcommsat proposed that in general, adding ideas for topics to the board makes it:

  • easier to raise awareness and target potential contributors 
  • adding a basic scope /inclusions from discussions in the editorial group
  • there have been a couple of discussions in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and documentation during the release journey about use case of features. Some of these would be potentially good dev blogs. Helping scope out some of these topics can help people commit to taking them on or to better understand the next steps. This has been seen with other new topic proposals
  • agreement from the group on this and promoting potential contributors to add ideas to the board
  • @webcommsat with @codente and @nalininonstopnewsuk have been marking items up from the 6.4 release documentation tracker where there has been some interest already in writing about particular items and will encourage these ideas for the Dev Blog board.

Open floor

1) @greenshady raised a conversation about resolving how writers upload images to their draft posts.  

Issue: Slack convo. In this instance, the published post was missing two images. They later had to be pulled from the original Google Doc and the post updated. Two older posts needed the same solution too where an image URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org was added which was no longer valid.

Solution: make sure folks are uploading images to the Developer Blog WordPress install and not hotlinking from Google Docs or elsewhere. I updated two older posts in the past week where this was done and the image URL was no longer valid. 

Further questions: any guidance needed on checking images uploaded have been checked for virus/malware? The system does not allow upload of svg files for this reason.

Actions:

  • add further instruction in the contributing guide for writers, the checklist on GitHub, and to prompt checks when they are ready for the post to be edited. @greenshady to add a ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. for these additions.
  • @webcommsat requested to add to the checklist/ guide for images to be given a useful name and alt text to be added when uploaded. All agreed and a sub section on images suggested, and to include guidance on image sizes, image naming and alt attributes.

2) Discussion around using using the /blog URL instead of /news for the Dev Blog

Clarification shared that this would not change the URL, just add a redirect from /news to /blog.

@ndiego shared: The reasoning behind using /blog is to match the brand name, “WordPress Developer Blog”. This would be too build on the branding cultivated in the past year around this name.

Discussion points:

  • only news items on the blog are the round-ups
  • concern that ‘blog’ url might give an impression that it is personal opinion rather than posts from the project WordPress. Alternative suggestions for its name were suggested, including “guides”, “tutorials”, “guidelines”, “journal”, “writings”, “Developments”, but not felt to cover the breadth of content, would need a rebranding exercise, and would mean potential duplication/ overlap with Learn WP content. Suggested a way of addressing reservations about url ‘blog’ could be to add further clarification in the purpose and writing guidelines so that it was clear to potential writers that articles were not personal blogs.
  • @webcommsat highlighted that there is a wider discussion to be continued on overlap and working alongside Learn WordPress in both directions.
  • @ndiego clarified the specific aim of the redirect question is to help people find the Developer Blog not to change or widen its current scope. He confirmed it is about search and helping people find it. There are people typing in developer.wordpress.org/blog and wonder why it didn’t go to the WordPress Developer Blog.
  • @greenshady raised that /news was not the preferred option originally to match the scope, but there was an issue early on where there was a potential plan to reserve /blog . The option to use /blog is now possible from the information shared by Nick.

Solution proposed:

  • to go ahead with the redirect and there by keep both /news and /blog in use, subject to further discussion with @bph on her return
  • relook at the published purpose/ guidelines for writers to make sure there is no potential misunderstanding for submissions/ writing. This is turn would save time for this group, writers and reviewers. Add a list of the type of articles that appear on the blog to assist contributors to know how to target pitches, articles and language, as well as helping give some next steps for new writers.

3) Trying to avoid duplications of series names in the Developer Blog and other parts of the project, e.g. Learn WP
@webcommsat highlighted this topic to avoid confusion from both audience and search engine perspectives, especially where items are not cross-linked.

For example, there is a “What’s New for Developers” series on the Blog, so it would be better to avoid having the exact replica title in other public-facing resources from the project. Where one communication is a follow-up to an existing one elsewhere in the project, it should reference it to help people find similar resources and help their learning journey. There may need to be some manual proactive cross-linking.

Solution proposed:

  • cross-linking to be encouraged, and this can help for search in terms of authenticity and credibility of information about WordPress, and in terms of readers’ journeys.
  • avoiding exact duplication or too similar naming of titles. Specific titles that cross link should be less likely to cause confusion, eg Hallway hangout – What’s New for Developers in 6.4 covered topics from the article series on the Blog, and cross-referenced in the event itself. Suggested that posts about a forthcoming event or write-ups would benefit the user / attendee with cross-referencing.
  • the discussion also highlighted how more synchronization between Learn WP and the Dev Blog might be helpful
  • a recommendation to add excerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox. to posts, which makes it so much easier for users, and shorter search result descriptions in the P2P2 A free theme for WordPress, known for front-end posting, used by WordPress for development updates and project management. See our main development blog and other workgroup blogs. and the internet too.

Next meeting

Update: change to the next meeting date. It will now take place on December 14, 2023 at 13:00 UTC.

#core, #core-dev-blog, #dev-blog, #meeting

Developer Blog editorial meeting summary: October 5, 2023

complete transcript of the meeting can be found in the #core-dev-blog channel in Making 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/..

Notes of the last editorial meeting on September 7, 2023 – thanks to @bph

Attendees: @bph, @milana_cap, @greenshady, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @oglekler

Site updates and new posts

Since the last editorial meeting, the following posts have been completed by writers and reviewers.

@bph shared a huge thank you to the writers, and their reviewers! Fantastic job!

Project board

Posts in progress

Posts for review

At the time of the meeting time, these posts were in need of review.

2nd review: New developer focused workflow article about how the login and registration works in WordPress.
1st review: A tutorial about the highlights of the browser and focus modes of the Navigation Block
1st review: #151 Type series post 3: Setting body-conscious type for long-form text#156

Action: comment on the 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/ issue if you can review.

Posts on the to-do list

These were all approved topics, with writers assigned:

On the to-do list

@webcommsat to look at how to highlight call for writers on Dev Chat agendas post 6.4.

Posts that need writers

Two topics are still looking for writers:

Actions: If you know someone or want to write it yourself, post in the Developer-Blog channel on Slack.

Posts for approval

The group approved one new topic:

Open floor

Discussion to encourage writers to share GitHub tickets, Google Docs, public preview links to accompany a call for review in Slack to help reviewers. When writers and reviewers contributing in opposite time zones, these links can be particularly helpful.
Action: to guide contributors to use GitHub to capture comments/ changes, including when posts have moved to the CMS phase.

In the last quarter, many new writers have been inducted to the Dev Blogblog (versus network, site). Proposed a post for new writers with input from contributors recently joined.
Action: @webcommsat and @bph to take forward the post.

Agreement to allocate Documentation badges to contributors for writers and reviewers of the Dev Blog.
Action: @bph and @milana_cap

#core, #core-dev-blog, #dev-blog, #meeting

Developer Blog Editorial Meeting – 07 September 2023

A complete transcript of the meeting can be found in the #core-dev-blog channel in Making 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/..

Attendees: @greenshady @marybaum, @milana_cap, @oglekler, @ndiego, @bph (facilitator) and @webcommsat (async)

Agenda

  • Site updates and new posts
  • Project Board
    • In Progress
    • Today
    • Needs Review
    • To be approved
  • Proposal for modification of the 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.
  • In-between meeting approval rounds for time sensitive post around releases.
  • Open Floor

Site updates and new posts

The Social image 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 was migrated to JetPack, and since then, we struggled a little to find a good way to automatically generate a decent Social Image when sharing posts on Social networks. We could use some design help for a universal template, as the current one is not the most attention-grabbing one.

If you want to catch up on the discussion, there is this GitHub Issue for the Theme

  • Request writers to select a feature image that works with the options in Jetpack
  • Set a default template similar to how it worked before, blue background + post title.


Nick Diego and Birgit Pauli-Haack will work on this.

Project Board

New Posts published since the last meeting.

Huge Thank You to the writers and their reviewers!! Fantastic job!

We published in July and August as many articles as in the three months before! So excited to see this! Incredible work! Thank you to all who contributed!

Posts in the works

On the To-Do list:

To be approved

These topics have been converted to issues, and the discussions are closed. Prospective authors who would like to contribute to the Developer Blogblog (versus network, site) are invited to select one of these to work on, that have not already been assigned an author.

In-between meeting approval rounds for time sensitive post around releases.

If there is a time sensitive topic, they will be voted on in an async fashion over two days. If there is further discussion is needed, it ought to happen on the 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/ discussion thread, and voting is deferred to the next monthly meeting.

Proposal of modification of the Field Guide

It would need more input on why a secondary digest version would be needed beyond the Field Guide, or if there is a way to improve on the Field Guide itself (most important issues on top). The original discussion takes place on the Make Blog. Proposal: An update to the Field Guide.

Next meeting

The next meeting of the Developer Blog Editorial Group will be on October 5, 2023 at 13:00 UTC in the core-dev-blog channel of the Make WordPress Slack. Contributors continue on GitHub.

Props to @ndiego for reviewing

#core-dev-blog, #summary

Developer Blog editorial meeting summary: August 2, 2023

Site updates and new posts

Updates

The dev blogblog (versus network, site) is going to use the Learn WordPress organization repository on 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/ to host code samples, gists and the like. That will save writers and editors from having to use their personal GH accounts. @greenshady has volunteered to be the first to use it, and the board will develop some processes and guidelines from his experience. If you have thoughts on anything surrounding these repositories, please share on this GitHub issue.

The Marketing team as of August 2, the Marketing team is sharing Developer Blog posts on the official WordPress social profiles.That means a post author has one more step on the post-publish checklist—write some copy for the social-media post and add it to the issue for the post.

New posts

Project board

Posts in progress

At meeting time, these posts were in review:

And the second of @marybaum‘s type series was In Progress.

Those posts are all now live on the blog.

Posts on the to-do list

These were all approved topics, with writers assigned:

One topic needed a writer: Optimizing your WP_Query queries for better performance

And A tutorial about the highlights of the browser and focus modes of the Navigation was on hold pending the publication of the 6.3 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..

New topics

The group approved two new topics:

Open floor

@webcommsat pointed the group to a Slack discussion on sustainability.

The group needs some ways to approve topics outside the monthly meetings. As it stands, potential authors are having to wait more than a month for a green light. See the discussion.

#core, #dev-blog, #meeting, #core-dev-blog

Developer Blog Editorial Meeting – 06 July 2023

A complete transcript of the meeting can be found in the #core-dev-blog channel in Making 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/..

Attendees: @greenshady (facilitator), @marybaum, @milana_cap, @mburridge @oglekler @bworkz . Asynchronous: @webcommsat

Agenda

  • Site updates and new posts
  • Project Board
    • In the works
    • Reviews needed
    • To be approved
    • new discussions on topics
  • Open floor

Site updates and new posts

Update 1:

The What’s new for developers? (June 2023) was amplified by official WordPress social media profiles (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook). It seems Facebook doesn’t pick up all the metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. 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.). Discussion via this issue on the Developer Blogblog (versus network, site) Theme repository. 

Update 2

To recruit new writers we added a Call to Action on every post: (also team effort with design, latest version by @greenshady)

screenshot of Call to action for new writers

How to identify topics that are available? If potential authors or reviewers are interested in a topic that is under discussion, you can add a comment to the a discussion issue on 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/. Potential authors can identify if someone is working on a topic or what this person should do to claim the topic. If a GitHub discussion on a potential topic is locked and the issue is assigned to someone, the this topic has been taken.

Update 3:

At 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. Europe 2023, a group of contributors identified a GitHub space where Developer Blog writers and Learn WordPress faculty can upload code examples, themes and plugins that are used for educational content.

Once there are a few basic rules in place, we can give access to it and also move existing repos from personal to the Learn WordPress GitHub organization. Huge thank you to @psykro and @courane01 for awesome team work on this. 

Project Board

Closed issue: “not planned” How to add starter content to WordPress themes View comment on the issue

New Posts published since the last meeting:

Posts in the works

On the To-Do list:

To be approved

The following topics were approved:

These topics have been converted to issues and the discussions closed. Prospective authors who would like to contribute to the Developer Blog are invited to select one of these to work on, that have not already been assigned an author.

The group discussion on the post 10 things that all WordPress plugin developers should avoid quite lively. The discussion continues on GitHub issue itself.

Regarding the topic idea: A first look at the Interactivity API. As the feature hasn’t been released yet, there is time to flesh out the topic some more and bring it back to the editorial meeting later this year.

Open floor

@greeshady inquired about formatting a post title that belongs to a series. Example: “Beyond blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. styles: part 1: integrating the wp-scripts package into themes”

Mary Baum has two ideas:

  • use a comma to separate the series and the part number, then we only have one colon, or
  • make the series and part a kicker (= a slug above the titel)

@mburridge brought the latest topic idea to the attendee’s attention: Periodic video round-ups by @eidolonnight. The biggest hurdles for such a round-up would be the external link policy. In the meantime, the discussion has been closed.

Next meeting

The next meeting of the Developer Blog Editorial Group will be on August 3, 2023 at 13:00 UTC in the core-dev-blog channel of the Make WordPress Slack. Contributors continue on GitHub.

Props or reviewing this post to @webcommsat and @oglekler

#core-dev-blog, #meeting, #summary

Developer Blog Editorial Meeting – 01 June 2023

A complete transcript of the meeting can be found in the #core-dev-blog channel in Making 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/..

Attendees: @greenshady (facilitator), @marybaum, @milana_cap, @ndiego, @webcommsat, @mburridge

Agenda:

  • Site updates and new posts
  • Project Board
    • In the works
    • Reviews needed
    • To be approved
    • new discussions on topics
  • Open Floor

Site updates and new posts

The “What’s new for developers? (May 2023)” post was tweeted about from the official WordPress social media accounts. Attendees were encouraged to re-share to their networks.

Project Board

In the works

New Posts published since the last meeting:

Topics that are currently in progress:

It should be noted that Adding custom color options for blocks has had a change of direction from what was previously approved, but this change has been approved by @greenshady and @bph.

The following posts have previously been approved and are on the to-do list. Some of them already have authors;

Reviews needed

Currently only one post is in need of review:

To be approved

The following topics were approved:

These will be converted to issues and the discussions closed. Prospective authors who would like to contribute to the Developer Blogblog (versus network, site) are invited to select one of these to work on, that hasn’t already been assigned an author.

New discussions on topics

Two topics are under discussion and have not yet been approved:

Regarding the first of these, it was considered that the topic is not yet defined enough. It also mentions using a third-party theme and a third-party 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 which prompted a discussion on whether third-party themes and plugins should be promoted in the Developer Blog. The consensus on this was that they should not be promoted in this way.

With regards to the second topic that was discussed, it was considered that the remit is too broad but that there may be some good ideas for individual posts contained within it.

Open Floor

@greenshady asked whether it might be best to allow linking/mentioning to only coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-owned plugins/themes (i.e., official products), retaining a policy of not linking to third-party plugins/themes?

There was some disagreement on this but eventually the consensus was that only mention of wp.org made plugins/themes should be allowed.

@greenshady also suggested that it might be possible to draw a hard line on this, but allow the editorial group to decide when an edge case pops up.

A distinction was made between personal repos used for demo code in a post, and “products” such as themes and plugins in the WordPress repository.

A ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. will be opened to continue this discussion.

Also briefly discussed at the end of the meeting was updating the guidelines to make the review process clear.

Props to @greenshady for reviewing this post.

#core, #core-dev-blog, #meeting, #summary

Developer blog meeting summary: May 4, 2023

Last month’s summary, for context.

@bph ran a lively meeting from a simple agenda (and a new continent!):
• Site updates and news
• Project Board
    ◦ In the works
    ◦ Reviews needed
    ◦ To be approved
    ◦ New discussions on topics
• Open Floor

Site updates and news

@bph has moved from Sarasota, FL, USA to her hometown—Munich, Germany—after 25 years in the States.

More exciting than her big move was her news about the blogblog (versus network, site). She’s been working with @dd32 on a few things:

Working on the blog adds goodies to your .org profile

Dion has installed 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/’s WP Activity Notifier 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, which adds a post contribution to your WordPress.org profile activity list every time you publish a post, going forward. The contribution looks like this:

If you wrote an article between November and now, he has added the activity to your profile retroactively, by hand. Thanks, @dd32!

Let’s build a Create Props blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.!

Since all the Make blogs are adding props for review, Dion has also started thinking about a Props block for posts and whatever else. If you have some time to make this real, he and Birgit have opened a MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. #6945 with their thoughts on how to get started.

Cross-publishing dev blog posts in CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and dev-blog 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/. channels

Addressing a Dev chat conversation with @jeffpaul, Birgit and Dion have also made every new post on the dev blog auto-publish on the Core Slack as well as the #core-dev-blog Slack. So that should get even more eyes on the blog!

A 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/ organization for educational code

Birgit told the group that @psykro is working through a process that will make a GitHub organization for the faculty on the Training team and dev-blog authors to house code people can learn from. More on this when there is news to report …

New posts on the blog

From @greenshady come these:

@welcher published How webpack and WordPress packages interact.

Project status

These posts are in the works:

And these to-dos are approved:

@bph pointed out that some of those are delayed because of travel, or are waiting for a feature to land in a stable 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/, Core or a feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins.. Or, she added, because the writers don’t yet have the bandwidth.

New topics

The group approved these new topics:

  1. Tutorial on building patterns and block styles with Details/Summary block
  2. How to manage block governance
  3. Adding custom color options for blocks
  4. Tutorial on style variations in theme.json
  5. How to add starter content to WordPress themes
  6. Make your site’s typography make a statement.
  7. Navigating the Block Editor Handbook
  8. Tutorial on building block-based templates in classic themes

@greenshady noted that a lot of those ideas are his, and he’s happy to write any or all of them. The one post he is firmly committed to writing himself is the tutorial on the Details/Summary block.

The group spent a few minutes discussing what block governance really means in idea #2 and concluded that the post covers restricting access to specific block controls by user role so authors and editors on a WordPress site—maybe a publication or a corporate site, for instance—can edit content and visuals but can only use blocks that are styled to comply with their company brand standards.

@marybaum noted she can start the typography series in idea #6 this week with a plan for the posts and a draft of the first one.

Welcome Olga!

@bph welcomed @oglekler to the meeting and the editorial board. Recommended by @webcommsat (and highly seconded by your friendly neighborhood summary writer) Olga Glekler is a full-stack developer, component maintainer, and contributor to several Make teams over the years. The group gave her a rousing, emoji-filled welcome.

Open floor

@webcommsat suggested that whoever writes the agenda distribute links ahead of time so attendees can come prepared to discuss an idea at a deeper level come meeting time. Several folks thought that was a nice idea and then admitted they might not actually get around to reading the material in advance.

Birgit raised Olga’s post in the dev-blog Slack about software architecture and how to keep basic principles in mind as developers switch from language to language. The group concurred that a discussion of these concepts would be immensely valuable, as long as they stay firmly rooted in WordPress-relevant examples.

#core, #meeting, #summary, #core-dev-blog

Developer Blog editorial group, April 6, 2023

Last month’s summary, courtesy of @webcommsat. Thanks for your in-depth coverage!

@bph led the meeting from her home town of Munich, Germany. Congrats, Birgit!

Site updates and new posts

The dev blogblog (versus network, site) is out of 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.! @cbringmann made the official announcement on the News blog on March 22.

Since early March, the blog has published these new posts:

Project Board

The project board it available on GitHub

In the works

At meeting time, these posts were in various early stages on the project board:

In progress

On the to-do list 

Items that need reviews

None of the above items were ready for review at meeting time. A couple have since gone through and are now published on the blog.

Items that need approval

The group approved these new posts:

New topics

@bph surfaced three new topics from the 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/ repo to discuss, 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.-scrub style.

Understanding duotone filter abstraction #62

The group thought this could be a useful tutorial if it focused more on how to get a CSSCSS Cascading Style Sheets. image-filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. effect working in a blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., with duotones as the example, as opposed to focusing on the uses for duotones. (Ed. note: Some editorial members are old enough to remember when duotones were cool before. ;-p)

How to offer multiple homepage options in a single theme

The group saw overlap between this idea and two posts already published. @greenshady agreed to 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.” @annezazu and @daisyo and see if those two posts cover this idea. If they think it needs its own post, @marybaum said she could write it later in April.

Deep-dive Tutorial on the New Style Book

After some discussion, the group approved the topic.

Open Floor

@marybaum asked the group if posts about design, like typography, have a place on the blog. The consensus was they do, particularly in light of features like the Style Book and other no-code or low-code tools and their coverage on the blog. Mary then said she’d post some topic ideas on the Github board.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 4th, 2023 at 13:00 UTC in the #core-dev-blog 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/. channel.

Props for review @bph

#core-dev-blog

Developer Blog editorial group, March 2, 2023

This group is part a cross-team collaboration. The editorial group meets monthly on the first Thursday of each month at 13:00 UTC in the #core-dev-blog channel of 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/..

Slack link to start of the meeting on March 2, 2023.

Summary from the February 2023 meeting

The 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/ card numbers on this page relate to the Developer Blogblog (versus network, site) GitHub repository.

Attendees

Editorial group attendees: @bph, @webcommsat, @marybaum, @milana_cap, @greenshady, @mburridge, @ndiego, @bcworkz
Observer attendees: @carl-alberto
Due to different time zones, some of the editorial group to add to the meeting asynchronously.

Update and actions since last meeting

Developer Blog – Editorial meeting: February 2, 2023 – thanks to @greenshady and @webcommsat for collaborating on the summary.

Ongoing action: Comments / additions needed on the draft template for suggested topics: GitHub #69 Developer Blog.

New published blogs

@bph shared a ‘huge thank you’ to all and to those who helped with direction, editing and reviews.

@greenshady echoed the thanks to reviewers, and that it was ‘a huge help to have the support system to help clean things up and make the content even better.’

Growth in comments on the blog, especially the Intrinsic Design post which has received as of the meeting 20 comments.

@webcommsat update: The call for more ideas and writers was repromoted at Dev Chat yesterday and at 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. Ideas for more promotions are being collated for a future date when the blog is out of 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.. The Marketing Team is assisting with gathering ideas and is aware that the communication and messaging is limited until post-beta and the formal launch.

Project Board status review

Posts in progress

Topics in the pipeline

A few topics in the pipeline for consideration / approval. They are not all ready to proceed, but writers have started initial thinking on the topics.

General note: in the majority of times, the title on the ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. is for the initial discussion for review rather than the title of the post to be written. The writer and review team will collaborate on the post title during the publishing process.

What’s new for Developer (March 2023) – agreement in principle. What’s new for Developers is a monthly column. and it would now not require monthly pre-approval as a topic via the editorial meeting. This way focus can be on the content, and information for it could be collated throughout the month. It would still go through the editorial process of review, but this agreement will streamline its planning. Starting with the April 2023 edition, it will appear each month on the Project Board.

Homepage with with alternate blocks and query on inner paginated views (#81) – agreement in principle

How Webpack and WordPress packages interact (#79) – agreement in principle

New HTML Tag Processor – an in-depth tutorial (#75) – agreement in principle

useEntityRecords tutorial (#60) – agreement in principle

What the heck is wp-env? (#33) – agreement in principle, further discussions on scope, coverage and audience

  • working title only – suggestions can be added to the ticket, eg how to use wp-env
  • further discussion on the main audience to follow (please add on the ticket): potentially developers who may be using MAMP/WAMP, Local, Valet, etc, and who may have heard of wp-env but are unsure what it is and how it differs from what they’re used to
  • suggestion of focusing on a survey of local hosting environments, but with an emphasis on wp-env.
  • discussion that developers would appreciate more in-depth explanation of wp-env than roundup of all the environments. Not too much detail on other environments as developer audience for this post are likely to know about them. Some others have suggested value of highlighting roundup of environments. The audience level set for this post will be crucial to the content focus decided
  • the audience to be subtly described early on in the piece to help people know of it is for them. This can be summarized with the excerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox. too.
  • to focus on encouraging more people to start using wp-env which is officially recommended by 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/
  • discussion on other pieces on wp-env, including a more in-depth one, and an article aimed at promoting its take-up and with some case studies on its use, and potentially inviting other case studies
  • comments can be added to the Issue #89 on GitHub 

Tutorial on spacing for block themes (#68) – agreement in principle

Working with theme.json filters (#82) – agreement in principle. Discussion about how this will be super valuable and a good example to promote use of this dev blog. This would also be important to cross-link with any existing or future plans for related Learn WP resources.

Share examples of using the new filter blockEditor.useSetting.before (#38) (title of the discussion, not working title yet)

  • agreement in principle for idea, further discussion to follow
  • @bph: there will be a Dev Notedev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase. about this new filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. hook and this would be a follow-up post to give people more examples and use cases
  • alternative titles to be added to the ticket. @marybaum to work with @ndiego and @greenshady on options

Support Resources for Developers (#54) (working title for discussion) – lots of good ideas and useful information. Discussion on:

  • further developing scope, narrowing its focus to save the writer time, identifying the key items for focus.
  • potentially rewording the title to reflect its focus and thereby be clearer what readers will find within it
  • as a title ‘Support resources for developers’ covers a broad area including what the docs team and documentation does, dev notesdev note Each important change in WordPress Core is documented in a developers note, (usually called dev note). Good dev notes generally include a description of the change, the decision that led to this change, and a description of how developers are supposed to work with that change. Dev notes are published on Make/Core blog during the beta phase of WordPress release cycle. Publishing dev notes is particularly important when plugin/theme authors and WordPress developers need to be aware of those changes.In general, all dev notes are compiled into a Field Guide at the beginning of the release candidate phase., Learn WordPress etc. (more details on a general and regular support resources content below
  • not necessarily the right thing for the developer blog at this stage of its content development, but potentially move towards the creation of an evergreen post or page that is routinely updated/ regular column rather than a one-off blog post (@ndiego)
  • Furthermore, to be aware that there are plans for a regular “What’s new on the developer blog”, as discussed at earlier in the meeting
  • the first edition of What’s New for Developer links to Learn.WordPress.org resources

Open floor

Two items were planned on the agenda for the Open Floor discussion: time was only available for the first one of this meeting.

Recognizing contributors in terms of badges

Discussion on what activity is considered a contributor badge-activity and also which team badge.
Given the nature of the content and the Dev Blog covering multiple contributing teams, there are several potential options discussed:

  • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Contributor (currently the Dev Blog comes under the Core Team umbrella. Note Core Contributor includes both code and non-code contributions)
  • Documentation Contributor
  • Training Contributor
  • a hybrid arrangement, with the type of contribution determining the badge. If badges were based on type of activity would this work, eg writing or editing a usage studies receive a Docs badge, tutorial development under Training Team badge etc?
  • a new solution/ dedicated badge within one of the teams listed above, eg a Core Dev Blog contributor badge
  • a new solution and in the longer term becoming a team in itself. Discussion on potential difficulties with creating a dedicated and additional Make team and its own badge system.
    • Workflows are still evolving, so there may need to be an interim solution to allow time for this, as with the model used for Learn WordPress.
    • Discussion noted that it would be important to find a solution which did not result in considerable additional administrative work, especially as it is likely that many contributors would come from other teams, and to keep the cross-team collaboration positioning for the Blog
    • Balancing administrative items versus the project management and administration associated with the editorial and production cycle for the Blog itself, especially its cross-working with docs, core, training with Learn WordPress, and marketing

Contributions in general are defined by the ‘How to contribute page’.

@bph summarized the main areas of contribution for the Dev Blog

  • Participate: Chime in on topic discussions or share your ideas for topics that might help a larger group of developers
  • Write: Adopt one of the ideas to write about and volunteer as a writer.
  • Review: each drafted post goes through two reviews. You can contribute by reviewing blog posts according to editorial guidelines or from a technical aspect.
  • Become a Member of the Editorial Group

Current process for badges:

  • each Make Team has one or more badges they can allocate
  • Core-Test, and Core-Performance are their own teams and have their own badges

Actions:

  • following the discussion and the summary on the Core blog, @bph and @webcommsat will raise the question as in metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. / as a meta ticket and explore options for the interim
  • @webcommsat to follow-up in Core about badge documentation in the handbook. Training badge documentation is currently in review. Docs badge documentation will be added to the post.
  • the above actions may need to wait until the main requirements for the current WordPress release are completed

The next meeting will be on Thursday, April 6, 2023, at 13:00 UTC. Note for some time zones, daylight saving time will have come in by this date.  

Props to @bph for facilitating the meeting, @webcommsat for writing the summary, and @bph for peer review.

#core-dev-blog, #meeting

Developer Blog – Editorial meeting: February 2, 2023

Once per month, contributors gather to discuss updates and topics for the WordPress Developer Blog on the #core-dev-blog 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. The following are the notes for the February meeting.

Attending live during the meeting were: @webcommsat@milana_cap, @mburridge, and @greenshady. Meeting preparations and facilitators: @bph and @greenshady. Read the full meeting discussion on Slack.

January 2023’s meeting.

Dev Blogblog (versus network, site) updates and news

Have you got a topic for the blog?

On January 11, 2023, @webcommsat published an open call to bring on new contributors to pick up existing topics or create new ones.

Volunteers are still needed who can share their knowledge with the WordPress developer community. It can be a really great way to pay it forward or even learn a new topic that you’re not familiar with by researching and writing about it.

A number of ideas were discussed to promote the call including sharing it at 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’s Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. later in February.

Upcoming redesign

Earlier this week, @joen shared some mockups the upcoming redesign of the Dev Blog and other aspects of 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/. This is part of a larger site redesign, and there is no official date yet for the launch.

A new ‘All Posts‘ page is now available on the Dev Blog.

Project status

New posts

In the past month, three posts were published on the Dev Blog:

Thanks to all the contributors who were involved with the writing, reviewing and editing of these posts.

Posts in progress

There are also several topics that are in various stages of readiness (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/ links below):

Approved topics

The group voted on and approved the following topics from the Discussion Board on GitHub:

Some of these topics have writers.
If you would like to contribute to any of these posts, comment on the relevant GitHub ticketticket Created for both bug reports and feature development on the bug tracker. listed above.

Open floor

Proposal: @webcommsat suggested a template to better facilitate discussions on new topics and assist topic proposers and writers in providing a description in addition to a working title.
Discussion: The group considered this and agreed to create a discussion template on the Developer Blog Content GitHub repo to support workflows. This would serve as a guide to assist in the reviewing of ideas and help topic ideas to be fleshed out when they are initially identified.
There is now an open ticket to create this template.
If you have a suggestion for inclusion in this template, add your comments on the post.

The next meeting will be on Thursday 2 March, 2023 at 13:00 UTC.

Props to @greenshady and @webcommsat for the summary.

#core-dev-blog, #meeting, #summary