Hosting Meeting Notes: March 28, 2018

Here’s a summary of our meeting in #hosting-community on Wednesday, March 28, 2018, 1:00 PM CST

(Slack archive).

Contribution Documentation

• @mikeschroder mentioned that Angela Jin is helping document contributor groups and drives, including info on how to contribute and projects available for contribution. An open call was made for HostingHosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Community contributors to help write up and proof documentation. @antpb and @ataylorme expressed interest in helping proof and write up info. If anyone else would like to help on this front, please pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” @mikeschroder on 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/..
• Two initiatives need attention — @danielbachhuber’s GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ testing, and Hosting Best Practice docs, which @ataylorme has been leading. They’re both in need of significant help.
• In the last meeting folks mentioned that it might be a good idea to pick a day or days to work together on docs, because pre-scheduled time might help. It was determined that Friday 4/6 at 1700 UTC we will meet to discuss documentation. Please come join us! When the event starts, instructions will be posted in the channel for optionally joining a hangout while working.

Hosting Community Discussion

• @mikeschroder expressed a need to bring in more representatives for the Hosting Community group. There is open call for nominations (self or otherwise) to help the group with things like organizing meetings, notes, or getting things together for camps and contributor days.
  

Gutenberg Testing

• @jadonn mentioned the need for Gutenberg Testing outreach and @miker has joined the group to help in those efforts (Welcome!). A resource was shared by @pdclark on Gutenberg testing: https://github.com/danielbachhuber/gutenberg-plugin-compatibility/issues/4
• The signup process in the testing site was mentioned to be a bit of a hassle/blocker in contributions to testing. Some discussion was had around sharing authentication via 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/ users. @danielbachhuber mentioned that considering things like automation the level of effort to link the two may be overkill. 
• @danielbachhuber mentioned that we don't take ownership of updating the plugins ourselves, but instead focus on making the compatibility data available/accurate, and then assist 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 or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. author with guidance on how to make their plugin Gutenberg compatible. Our main focus is just getting data around what is/isn't compatible. 
• On the topic of automation @danielbachuber warned "The challenge with the existing implementation is that some plugins require configuration before they expose editor UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing.. Simply taking screenshots of a fresh WordPress install with the plugin activated in some automated manner isn't sufficient. However, if a hosting company were open to it, we could grab customer databases with the plugins already activated, spin them up in some isolated environment, and do our screenshot analysis."
• @danielbachuber also mentioned "We could potentially generate a ton of plugin incompatibility data by screening the WordPress.org support forums"
• @danielbachuber also shared a comment that outlines some great steps for testing compatibility: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/4072#issuecomment-356136576

Feedback

Miss this week’s meeting and want to know more about anything above? Spend some time in the comments and share your thoughts! OR….Come join us!

Have some questions on how you can get involved? Join #hosting-community and feel free to ask at any time.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be in #hosting-community on Wednesday, April 4, 2018, 1:00 PM CST. Hope to see you then!

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