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/..

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:

• What’s new for developers? (October 2023)
• How to add custom color options to blocks

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

Project Status

Posts In progress

• A walk-through tutorial on using the Create Block Theme plugin
• Working with custom slotfills
• New developer focused workflow article about how the login and registration works in WordPress.
• Adding custom color options for blocks

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.

• New developer focused workflow article about how the login and registration works in WordPress.#165
• #151 Type series post 3: Setting body-conscious type for long-form text#156
• Adding custom color options for blocks
• A tutorial about the highlights of the browser and focus modes of the Navigation Block#149

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