Better Dogfooding Tips

This was originally written by @karmatosed. I’ve adapted it for 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/.

Dogfooding is a great way we can use WordPress and test our features. By testing WordPress ourselves, we get to unearth all manner of bugs, issues and fun things. Try setting up a new site from scratch, especially thinking about specific use-cases like a new photoblog, or a company website.

I thought it would be great to come up with some tips for so new folks doing dogfooding can have a resource to start with. So, without further ado here’s just that!

Format

How you present the post really helps for people to read and also how we can use later on. A rough format for reporting your observations via video that works is:

• Title: Make sure your title has the word “dogfooding” in it somewhere, so it’s easy to scan. Also include what feature you’re testing in title. ex: Dogfooding: Theme Setup
• Use the more tag to shorten posts. It helps keep the p2 streamlined so it’s easier to scan.
• Talk about your perspective as a user, and what you’re trying to accomplish.
• Embed the video in your post.
• Under the video, pull out any key points at minute marks. ex: 01:00: here’s where I spent a whole minute trying to search for directory themes from my installed screen. Keep this list short; don’t worry about pulling everything out, as if this is long, people will be less likely to read. Just make sure to list the biggest finds.
• After that, it’s often useful to chop up the video (if it’s very long) and pull out significant clips. Making clips like this is useful for bug reporting and summaries. Clips can go after or next to minute marks, and also next to bugs for easier visual reference. Just consider that not everyone will want to watch your entire video. 🙂
• Bugs: List out any bugs you found while testing. You can even do a fun thing by putting the bug emoji at end to make them stand out: 🐛
• Summary: Summarize the main issues and conclusions you found from testing. ex: I stumbled a lot with the theme installation process because… If we did x or y it might improve this feature…
• Tags: TagTag Tag is one of the pre-defined taxonomies in WordPress. Users can add tags to their WordPress posts along with categories. However, while a category may cover a broad range of topics, tags are smaller in scope and focused to specific topics. Think of them as keywords used for topics discussed in a particular post. it #dogfooding and anything else relevant.

Here’s what the above would look like laid out:

1. Dogfooding: Feature You’re Testing
2. As a user, I’m trying to accomplish x
3. Video embed
4. 1:00: something amazing, 2:00: something else amazing
5. Significant clips
6. Bugs 🐛
7. Summary
8. #dogfooding

Reporting

If you see a bug, report a bug. It’s important we follow through on the bugs and don’t just leave them on this p2.

The same goes for things you think are issues, or even enhancements. Sometimes you may think of something awesome nobody else has thought of before, and it could become something that changes the life of our users. Pretty cool right? That’s why it’s very important to report on tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/..

Enjoy and please dogfood 🐶

The caveat here is that not everyone can post to p2s. It might be worth opening up make/flow, or liberally granting Authorship over there. I’ll be x-posting this post on that p2 as well.

Maybe we should do a series of posts around a specific dogfooding topic, that people can comment on? This needs some additional discussion. 🙂