First check-in
Your first check-in with your mentee is an opportunity to learn more about their interests, their goals, and to get a sense of how best to work together. In this initial chat, it can help to cover the following:
Can you tell me about yourself?
- Take this opportunity to learn a bit about your mentee’s background, while also sharing your own.
- How did you become a mentor?
- What is your experience in the WordPress community?
What are your goals for participating in WordPress Credits?
- Understanding your mentee’s goals for participating in WordPress Credits can help give you something to refer back to as they begin making decisions around their project.
- Do they want to learn about open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. more generally?
- Is there a specific skillset they’re seeking to build on?
- What makes them excited about the program?
Do you have any experience with WordPress or open source communities?
Learning about the student’s background with WordPress can help guide some initial conversations around navigating Learn WordPress, working through the WordPress user courses, and understanding any background information they have on WordPress tools and development.
Set expectations
- The amount of time students have to complete the program varies per institution.
- Work together with your student early on to figure out a sustainable pace that will allow them to meet any key deadlines, while also creating enough momentum to build on their contributions.
Set regular meeting times
- Weekly meetings are an important part of building trust between you and your mentee, in addition to helping answer questions and keeping progress on track.
- Set a time to meet weekly early on, so you can both make the most of the time you have available.
Day-1 Onboarding Checklist
Verify your mentee has a 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/ account, has joined 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/ workspace (#wpcredits), and can access the course on Learn WordPress.
Proactive unblocking
Encourage your mentee not to stay blocked: reassure them that if they are stuck on any lesson or setup for more than 30–45 minutes, they should reach out in #wpcredits or message you on Slack.
Agree on Week 1 next steps
Before wrapping up, confirm the mentee knows their immediate priorities: beginning the introductory Learn WordPress modules, saying hello in #wpcredits, and knowing how to log their hours.
At the end of the meeting, be sure to leave space for questions and follow-up, ideally on Slack, with any final tasks the student should focus on in their first week.
Week 2
Key progress indicators
- Your student should actively be working through the WordPress Credits Course on Learn WordPress.
- Slack accounts should be set up and active.
- Hours logged for Week 1 should be confirmed and up to date.
Helpful questions or topics for the second meeting
- How has your progress been in the WordPress Credits course?
- Do you have any questions about what you’ve learned?
- Were you able to sign-up for Slack? Do you have any questions about how it works?
- If they haven’t already, encourage them to introduce themselves in #wpcredits.
- What are your goals for this week?
- Note: If your mentee is finding it difficult to keep up with the course workload, suggest breaking lessons into smaller daily 30-minute blocks rather than cramming.
Week 3
Key progress indicators
- Students should be moving through or finishing the WordPress Credits Course on Learn WordPress.
- Hours logged should be consistent with the student’s steady progress through the program.
Helpful questions or topics for the third week
- How is the WordPress Credits course?
- Do you have any questions about the lessons you’ve covered?
- What WordPress user course(s) are you planning to complete?
- Which Make WordPress teams (such as Documentation, Testing, or Polyglots) are catching your interest?
- What are your goals for this week?
- Note: It can be helpful to set a goal of setting up their project site at this point for this week or week 4.
- Reassure your mentee that this only needs to be a simple, free WordPress blog for publishing weekly updates.
Week 4
Key progress indicators
- Ideally, students should be completing or starting to complete the onboarding phase and moving into their project-based work.
- Students should have set up or start setting up their project websites to begin publishing weekly updates.
- Encourage your mentee to treat this site as a living portfolio to showcase their skills, problem-solving, and contributions to future employers, clients, or professors.
Helpful questions or topics for the fourth week
- What were some takeaways from the WordPress User courses?
- Do you have any questions about where and how to use WordPress? Or how it works?
- Have you set up your project site? If not, is there anything blocking you?
- Which Make WordPress team(s) have you decided to contribute to, and have you joined their team Slack channel?
- Encourage your mentee to publish their first introductory post on their project site and share the link with you.
- Continue to set goals for the week, checking in with them about moving into the project phase of the program.
Weeks 5-12 (project-phase)
Depending on the student’s program, the timeline for the project phase may need to be adjusted. Consider this in your first few planning meetings.
Key progress indicators
- Students should review and complete the contribution team information.
- Over the course of the following weeks, your mentee will decide on which team(s) they want to contribute and understand pathways for how to do so.
- As they begin to contribute, you should continue encouraging them to observe and/or participate in ongoing team meetings, projects, and other forms of engagement with the WordPress community.
Helpful questions or topics during the project phase
- How were you able to find information on contributing?
- Are there any places where you feel blocked or unsure of next steps?
- Have you reviewed the areas of immediate contribution? Do any of those items sound like an interesting start?
- This can also be a good moment to review project sites and presentations from previous students.
- What is one small, bite-sized task or ticket we can target this week to get your first contribution landed?
- Encourage a brief mid-week async check-in on Slack so your mentee never stays blocked between weekly calls.
Final week(s)
At the end of the project phase, students need to complete their wrap-up tasks, which include:
- Presenting their project work, providing an overview of their progress and key learnings.
- Attending a WordPress event, online or in person.
- Publishing a final summary post on their project blog highlighting all their contributions, tickets, or translations.
Helpful questions or topics for these final check-ins:
- Do you have any questions about attending a 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.?
- When you’re finished, don’t forget to complete the final lesson in the course to receive your certificate!
Questions/FAQ
What if my mentee can’t decide on a team to contribute to?
It’s understandable! There are a lot of ways to contribute to WordPress and it can be hard to know where your skills best fit in the beginning. This can be a great opportunity to discuss your mentee’s interests, experience level, and what they’d like to get from the program. Review the areas of immediate contribution together and identify one or two initial tasks they can handle. Sometimes, taking the first step is the hardest part.
There’s no local community near my mentee. How can they attend an event?
Fortunately, there are plenty of online events that students can attend. To help find them, encourage your mentee to visit https://events.wordpress.org and 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. for the Online Event Format.