A new release is upon us and I wanted to take a moment to post about what that means for design and how you can get involved if you wanted to.

Summary: the design focus will be on polish and fix, clearing ‘needs design feedback‘ issues. If you have any questions reach out 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/. #design.

Design focus this release

As outlined in the release post the focus for the release squad is:

After evaluating the current active initiatives, there will likely be fewer features ready to ship when compared to other recent major releases. As a result, 6.8 will focus primarily on being a polish and bug fix release. New features will be considered if deemed reasonably ready.

For design, this means the following:

• Polish: Consider what we’ve got in the design system and how we can bring that to existing design tickets. What also needs clearing and sorting within our interface for this work to begin, where are our paper-cuts – where can we simplify and ease? There are tickets already for most of this and we can discover those together during this release. We start with triaging design tickets and discovering what we have.
• Fix: Giving feedback and reviews on tickets as others work on them. Supporting ready features to get over the line.

Later releases this year can build on this work and if time we can do more, however, by having focus this time we can look to soar into the new year knowing what we have to work with.

How to help this release

Whilst I’ve shared the focus what does that mean in how you get involved?

• Reviews and feedback: Existing work needs this and even giving feedback that something doesn’t need design is helpful. Places you can expect to do this include coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. components on TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. and the editor in 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 do this you either go to a scrub meeting
• Provide mocks and designs: Some areas might be blocked and need mocks or work by designers to aid them. What you are looking for is the ‘needs design’ label or keyword.
• Provide release designs: From the about page to much more, part of the work designers do in a release is support getting the message out about the release.
• Test and report bugs: Testing the interface to report bugs can be helpful, particularly if you bring a different perspective or use case not reported. Check before report the bug exists and if it’s your own setup, if you still are finding an issue report it and let’s ‘catch them all’.
• Design can be code: If you are a designer that codes you are very welcome to join in and work on styling tickets, closing those is incredibly welcome.

How to get involved

There are a number of opportunities:

• Attending ticket scrub and weekly focus meetings. Scrub schedule is now published. You can discover all active meetings here. You don’t have to attend every meeting but any you can is welcome.
• Checking queues. You can check the ‘needs design feedback label in trac‘ and sort by 6.8 milestone. If that is clear go further back and ensure as many tickets as possible get feedback this release.
• Attend core dev chats. Each week there will be a core dev chat on Wednesday.
• You can also run your own sessions checking tickets. Grab an hour each week, sit down with a cup of tea and see how many you can get through.
• We are all in this together so if you get stuck running through a ticket or giving feedback just raise up in #design on Slack and someone can collaborate.

Timeline

The dates for this release are as follows:

• 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: March 4, 2025
• Release CandidateRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. 1: March 25, 2025
• General Release: April 15, 2025

What’s next?

If you want to get involved and are looking for help there are many options. You can reach out in 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/ Slack #design. You can also add a comment here and I will do my best along with others to help you. Most of all, enjoy this.

Over the next few weeks I would like to create posts here and use the Slack channel as a source of information for any designer looking to get involved. We won’t have any other groups or meeting this time around to ensure also focus on visibility of this release. If there is something in particular you would like to know about around getting involved in this release please ask in the comments.

Thanks to @jeffpaul and @desrosj for reviewing.