Team Meetup at WCSF (More)

Hi again! We’re working on making sure we have enough room blocks to make sure all the contributors who are coming in October can get a decent rate (or have a room provided by us if needed). Some of you replied to my post from last week and filled in the survey so I’d know you were planning to come, but some haven’t. Additionally, some people did the survey and marked themselves as team members of teams they’re not actually involved with, so I need your help! 🙂

I just want to make sure we count everyone so we can try to put you at the same hotel to make the meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. part easier (though I know most people on this team are also heavily involved in other teams, so we’ll figure that once we have a solid tally of who’s planning to come at all).

If you didn’t read the post before, the plan for the event is:
Sat/Sun — WCSF conference
Monday — community summit
Tues/Wed — team meetups (team being together to talk issues, make plans, work together, etc)

The people who identified themselves as active members of the docs team in the survey are: @jerrysarcastic, @drewapicture, @trishasalas, @topher1kenobe, @hanni, @kpdesign, @nicolealleyinteractivecom, @davidjlaietta, @jazzs3quence, @sewmyheadon, @siobhan, @otto42 (all authors on this team blog), as well as:
Cousett Hoover, Benjamin Hansen, John Blackbourn, Ed Caissie, and Russell Fair.

Is this an accurate list? @kpdesign, can you let me know if these folks are all active with the docs team, and also tell me if there’s anyone missing that you think should be there from the team? Comment here, email me, hit me in irc, whatever’s easiest.

Any docs folks not listed above who are active on the team and want to come to the team meetup should fill out the survey so I can have you on the list as we start deciding which hotels to put each team in. We’ll be spread out among 4 or 5 hotels, so I want to be sure we can keep the teams together.

And just a reminder that we have a travel assistance program this year to help contributors who don’t work for a wp-based company and can’t cover travel costs on their own. Apply for travel assistance by June 30 Applications for travel assistance are now closed. If you need help, contact @jenmylo.

Thanks!

#meetup, #wcsf2014

Admin Help, week 21

A bit of a late write up, sorry about that I’m preparing to be gone for a week. The late update does mean we get to include what we got from Thursdays Docs meeting as well.

Chat logs here

We need a clear component list
Defining components to get a clear line on what we wish to focus on for each iteration will help greatly. The definition of a component is not necessarily just a single page in the admin, but the flow of a task. An example f a component would be “media in posts”, this would be the flow of users adding media to their post, from wanting to add it till it’s actually in their post, and would thus mostly involve the media modal, but some users may not know how to properly work it and go to the Media page to upload first (that would mean we failed at making the media modal obvious/simple enough to use, and it should be looked into).
An important element to this is knowing what coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. components each of our components relate to (if we can use core components for things even better, no relationship table required, but I know some components can be too narrow). Drawing relations makes it easier for us to tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. what we discover.

Started planning for how local user testing can be performed, utilizing WordCamps or Meetups.
Being able to do actual testing with users should help leverage the problem we have with online user testing services and time constraints. How to record the data was discussed, and we touched on what kind of setup that might be the most appropriate for this in regard to sitting on your own laptop or looking over shoulders of users. When possible using your own laptop is the most beneficial as it will allow you to do screen recordings. Emphasis on getting users permission was made, as privacy is important, and if they don’t want it publicly posted we need to respect that.
@kpdesign suggested we check with meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers to see what they often find their users struggling with, we should check in with @jenmylo to find a good way to keep that dialogue flowing, since meetups are a reoccurring event it would be beneficial to keep in touch with organizers there.

Interviews
There was some interest for following the interview route. I’m personally not familiar with it but will be looking into what others have been doing here to see if it’s a viable approach as well, the more data the better, I like data.

I will be gone for week 22, from Monday 26th of May, for mandatory military training, but I hope you’ll keep up the good work for Monday and continue the great work we’ve begun. What I’d like to see happen during next week is a draft of the component list

#admin-help

Docs Chat: May 15, 2014

Thank you to everyone who came to the meeting on Thursday.

The following is a summary of the topics discussed.

1. DevHub: Work continues on moving the parser out of alpha. @siobhan posted a list of the project’s current priorities/issues, along with a list of other issues that need to be resolved. There are also several 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. TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets open. If you are interested in helping out, you can attend the weekly chat on Tuesdays at 19:00 UTC.

2. Admin Help: @trishasalas stepped down as project lead, and @Clorith will be the lead moving forward. The weekly chat discussion included user testing and other options for identifying problem areas for users.

3. Handbooks: @blobaugh posted a summary of the Handbooks chat, along with the current status of the 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 Developer Handbook. @sewmyheadon will be wrapping up work on the new Theme Developer Handbook intro this coming week. Contributors are still needed for both handbooks, so if you’re interested, please attend the weekly chat on Wednesdays at 21:00 UTC.

4. Reserved Terms: We discussed how to resolve #27962. There needs to be a generic, top-level reserved terms list somewhere in the Codex/handbooks. Right now, the only place that list appears is in the register_taxonomy() Codex page, and is hard for developers to find. We discussed where such information would be on DevHub – a general, best practices area for developers, or in one (or both) of developer handbooks. Several options were suggested. For now, we decided to do a Codex page so the Trac ticket can be closed. @trishasalas volunteered to take responsibility for completing that task.

For anyone unable to attend, you can read the chat log here.

#chat-recap

Admin Help May 13th, 2014

Bit of a fleshy update!

@trishasalas has stepped down as project lead, feeling the project was moving in a direction she did not feel fully comfortable with leading. I’ll be stepping out of the shadows and taking point moving forward.

During our meeting we discussed what we see from the current set of tests. We chose to focus on the newly updated theme screen for these tests, and although more data points would be nice we did identify some consistent misconceptions on the users ends.

We then discussed how to best utilize our time when deciding what to look into and when, some ideas thrown out by yours truly were to focus on modules of the admin that have either recently been updated, or haven’t seen any love in a while.

Further more, @jerrysarcastic voulenteered to look into the process regarding credits for tests.

Another idea that was thrown out seemed like it might be very interesting; An opt-in 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 for dedicated users who wish to help further WordPress, which would do anonymous heat map data of the admin. I would certainly like to re-visit this idea at our next meeting and look into the viability of this.

#admin-help

Docs Chat: May 8, 2014

The weekly chat was held at the new time (17:00 UTC). @sivel and @samuelsidler made the changes to the IRC chat topic and the make.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/ main page to reflect the new meeting time.

@jerrysarcastic is on a dotorg rotation for 4.0, and will be helping with coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. docs. Welcome back Jerry!

The following is a summary of the other topics discussed:

1. DevHub: There’s been some work done on the code reference theme, including review and inclusion of some work by @trishasalas. Improvements to the search results template are also in progress.

2. Admin Help: The team discussed the user testing results, and started making plans for the next round of tests, using the same starting point (working with themes). They also discovered an interesting limitation in the user testing (soft limit of 15 minutes to complete the task) which they will need to account for in future tests.

3. Handbooks: @samuelsidler posted a summary of the Handbooks chat containing the current status of the 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 Developer Handbook. @sewmyheadon has been working on combining the new Theme Developer Handbook intro (Part 0) with the existing intro, and should finish work on that this week. The Seattle Docs Sprint last weekend had 5 contributors – 3 worked on the Theme Developer Handbook, and 2 worked on the Plugin Developer Handbook.

4. Inline Docs: Hook docs cleanup to improve the code reference continues in #26869. The focus for 4.0 will be improvements to the functional docs in core.

5. Codex Updates for 3.9: We still need help with pages that need to be updated or created. There are some questions about whether the keyboard shortcuts for editing media are working properly.

For anyone unable to attend, you can read the chat log here.

#chat-recap

Docs Chat: Apr. 17, 2014

Thank you to everyone who came. For anyone unable to attend, you can read the logs here.

The following is a summary of the topics that were discussed.

1. DevHub: Parser and theme work is ongoing. @DrewAPicture will be pitching in to help the team finish up work on both.

2. Admin Help: @trishasalas said work continues on reviewing the original user testing videos. @jerrysarcastic attended this week’s meeting, and has volunteered to help with video reviews and preparation for the next round of user testing.

3. Handbooks: @blobaugh is reviewing the current content in the 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 Developer Handbook, and making notes for the spreadsheet. He still needs to review existing content in the Codex that can be moved over.

4. Inline Docs: We’re done with hook docs – yay!

5. Codex Updates for 3.9: @siobhan put together a list of Codex pages that either need updated or created for the 3.9 release. If you have some time and want to help, please grab a page and make the appropriate edits. Anything not done before April 25th will be available for contributors to work on at the 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. Austin 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/..

6. Community Summit: There is a proposal to hold another community summit this year as part of WordCamp San Francisco. Anyone wishing to discuss doing another retreat-type summit instead of adding community discussions to the WCSF agenda should leave a comment on the post.

#chat-recap

Docs Chat: Apr. 10, 2014

Thank you to everyone who came. For anyone unable to attend, you can read the logs here.

The following is a summary of the topics that were discussed.

1. DevHub: The parser has one bug left to be fixed. Theme work is ongoing, and could use everyone/anyone’s help.

2. Admin Help: @trishasalas talked to @designsimply about starting user testing. Work continues on reviewing older usertesting.com videos.

3. Handbooks: @sewmyheadon incorporated @philiparthurmoore‘s intro text into the Theme Developer Handbook. There have been some other contributions as well, so things are moving forward. The Seattle Docs Sprint last weekend went well. There were 9 contributors, and progress was made on both handbooks.

4. Codex updates for 3.9: We need a volunteer (or volunteers) to compile the master list of pages in the Codex that need to be updated for 3.9. If you would like to help with this, please leave a comment on this post.

5. Docs Conferences: If you are planning to be in Portland for Write the Docs-NA (May 5-6, 2014), please let @siobhan know so a WordPress get-together can be planned.

Docs Chat: Mar. 20, 2014

Thank you to everyone who came. For anyone unable to attend, you can read the logs here.

The following is a summary of the topics that were discussed.

1. DevHub: Work continues on fixing parser-related issues. @siobhan posted on Make/Core, looking for volunteers to help with the parser and the handbook theme. If you would like to work on the project, leave a comment on the Make/CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. post, or come to the weekly IRC chat on Tuesdays at 19:00 UTC.

2. Admin Help: @trishasalas said the group’s current focus is on discovering what problems users are currently having, and addressing those with appropriate solutions. @designsimply has agreed to help with user testing. The team will start with a few simple tests, and see what those reveal. They are compiling a list of tasks to be used during testing. If you would like to be part of the effort, please attend the weekly meeting on Mondays at 18:30 UTC. (3/17/2014 team meeting summary)

3. Handbooks: I asked @samuelsidler when the Theme Developer and 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 Developer handbooks would be moved over to DevHub. He said he wasn’t sure, but there are some encoding issues that may require them to be moved manually. @siobhan said it was important to retain the contributor information to be used on the Credits page for each handbook.

4. WordPress Core Style Guide: Fred Clay Meyer and @joshlevinson attended the meeting to discuss their proposal for a WordPress Core Style Guide. Discussion centered around how they could best present their ideas to the core team to begin the discussion. The team suggested that Fred put together a proposal to present at a core dev chat after 3.9 is released.

#chat-recap

Docs Chat: Mar. 13, 2014

Thank you to everyone who came. For anyone unable to attend, you can read the logs here.

The following is a summary of the topics that were discussed.

1. DevHub: Work continues on fixing parser-related issues. @samuelsidler said volunteers are still needed to help with the handbook theme. If you would like to work on the project, leave a comment on this post, or come to the weekly IRC chat on Tuesdays at 16:00 UTC.

2. AH-O2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/.: There are some big changes, and a new direction, for both the team and the project. The new co-leads are @trishasalas and @Clorith. @jazzs3quence will still be involved in the project in a supportive role. Their weekly meeting on 3/10/2014 was used to discuss the Feature PluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. Meeting, and the feedback @jazzs3quence received regarding the current implementation of the 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. They also began laying the groundwork for the new direction the project will take. If you would like to be part of the effort, please attend the weekly IRC chat on Mondays at 18:30 UTC.

3. Handbooks: @sewmyheadon and @hanni met on Wednesday to discuss the current status of the handbooks. @philiparthurmoore has made progress on the Theme Developer Handbook intro. @sewmyheadon still needs to review it.

4. WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Style Guide: The team discussed a post that proposed a community-written (and maintained) style guide for WordPress Core to follow. The consensus was that WordPress has its own voice, and there are places where that voice could probably be refined a bit. A WordPress Core style guide could be written, but it would be a canonical reference rather than a community-driven guide.

5. New 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/ Profiles: @jenmylo reached out to the team reps a few weeks ago about identifying people in each team to get badges on the new profiles that are being worked on. At some point they hope that the process may be automated, but for now, the profile badges will be manually added. I have already provided a preliminary list of names of team members.

6. In-House Mentorship Program: @DrewAPicture and I talked to @jenmylo and @andreamiddleton about the program 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. Phoenix in January. They hope to kick off the one-month ‘contributor onramp’ within the coming month. The team discussed what the requirements are, what tasks we could have someone work on for the one-month contributor onramp, and possible mentors.

7. Group Chats Calendar for WordPress Project: @GaryJ brought up the idea in IRC for a group chats calendar that people could subscribe to. @siobhan said this would be a project for 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. team, if a decision was made to implement one. Concern was expressed that, without a maintainer, the calendar could end up with incorrect information listed. The consensus was that the chat times listed in the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. for each of the Make blogs should be sufficient for now.

#chat-recap

WordPress task identification

As @trishasalas mentioned, we want to identify what areas of WordPress people struggle with, and we’d like to do some user tests on this (both for new users, as well as seasoned veterans, we all have things that bug us at some point or another), and then focus on how we can improve these and help get more people to adopt it and use it on a regular basis.

Our previous user tests have some value to them still, but as mentioned some areas of them have changed quite a bit, and we are also skipping a major part of the getting started experience; the setup, and all the pitfalls it may include.

It was also discussed to make the user tests intentionally “vague” (although this hasn’t been fully decided yet), to avoid being too leading as we want to see how users interact, not how they follow commands.

To this end, we’d like input from various sources on what tasks you perform in WordPress when getting started to help us shape tests to get a broader view of it all.

Some examples to get the ball rolling;

  • Upload and configure WordPress
  • Remove the default post and comment
  • Drop by the theme editor and find the right theme
  • Writing my first post

From the list above many people will probably butt heads at the configuration because the wp root directory isn’t writable and they can’t get wp-config automatically configured, they couldn’t find the remove option for the default post, the theme they liked didn’t work well with their WP version (or they couldn’t install it because of permissions again?), and so forth.

We’d then take that list, and break it down into a “vague” list (if that’s the approach we go with) of something like this;

  • Here’s some FTPFTP FTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol which is a way of moving computer files from one computer to another via the Internet. You can use software, known as a FTP client, to upload files to a server for a WordPress website. https://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Clients. details, go add WordPress
  • Make the site “yours”
  • Create some content

The first task might be the most stressful I suspect, but it’s also an extremely important aspect of WordPress, it’s the initial step you take after all (we are also aware that many hosts have single click setups, but that’s a custom setup by the provider, and not part of coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.).

#admin-help