On September 10, 2024, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy joined a Media Corps briefing to discuss the mid-term goals for the WordPress 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. project and answer questions from participants.
The session was recorded and published on the WordPress.org YouTube channel. Below is a summary with relevant links and the full transcript.
Recording
Participants
Bernard Meyer (@bernard0omnisend), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann), Javier Casares (@javiercasares), Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune), Nahuai Badiola (@nahuai), Nathan Wrigley (@njwrigley), and Reyes Martínez (@rmartinezduque).
Summary
Make WordPress updates
Reyes Martínez started the briefing by calling out some Make updates, including:
- The recently published experimental dashboards, which offer a snapshot of Make teams’ metrics and key ongoing projects.
- The post on Advancing the WordPress Design System emphasized the importance of the design system we move into Phase 3 and the admin redesign. It’s a valuable resource for anyone looking to contribute and extend the platform, including 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 and theme authors.
- The State of the Word site went live last month. Participants were encouraged to forward anyone interested in attending to the community interest form.
Mid-term goals for WordPress discussion
Josepha Haden Chomphosy introduced the discussion on mid-term goals by referencing Matt’s 11 points shared 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. Europe 2024 and the 2024 big-picture goals, which cover three main focuses—CMS, community, and ecosystem.
The work around the CMS was mentioned as the biggest change earlier in the year, noting less active involvement in Phase 3’s real-time collaboration efforts to prioritize the admin experience, modernize its look, and address pressing items from user feedback. Part of this focus area has included foundational work, major backend elements, and APIs. The design system update was also noted as a positive step towards a consistent design language for WordPress.
“The hope is that we can improve the user experience by having a more consistent look and feel across our admin, and then also having the dashboard and admin areas just be more modern and more in line with what the software actually is capable of doing now.” – Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy.
In community initiatives, Josepha mentioned the shift to bring in new users to events. Current efforts include getting better, standardized feedback from event attendees and making online learning as clear and valuable as in-person meetups and WordCamps.
Upcoming plans involve forgoing the WordPress annual survey. Instead, the WordPress project will leverage Stack Overflow survey results to identify growth opportunities and insights from people outside of the WordPress space. Additionally, ad hoc polls from various platforms are being considered to gather timely feedback on new features and ideas.
The third major goal in the ecosystem space focuses on Data Liberation, powered by WordPress Playground, to simplify migrations between non-WordPress and WordPress sites. A viable concept for easier migrations was explored around WordCamp Europe and work is now gearing up for an adoption phase of both Data Liberation and Playground tools.
Josepha expressed being closer to having a “Try out WordPress” button on the homepage for users to test what their site, theme, and plugins could look like in a Playground instance. Also, a Playground-driven wiki experience for documentation is being prototyped and efforts to revitalize the forums are underway.
Throughout the discussion, Josepha elaborated on how Matt’s points support the direction of the outlined goals. She also underscored the importance of user testing and feedback loops to ensure that the current contributions and software meet users’ needs. “It doesn’t help us to be moving forward with speed,” she said, “if the direction that we’re moving forward in is not something that our users need or want from us.”
A list of completed and upcoming projects related to the 11 points and tactics is expected to be published before WordCamp US to align everyone on the progress.
Questions & Answers
The Q&A covered numerous topics, including thoughts on making WordPress fun, the Feature Notifications project, GatherPress testing efforts, and the importance of aligning demo themes and content with the onboarding experience when installing a blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. theme.
On Phase 3 work, Josepha reiterated that while real-time collaboration is open for contribution and active development, the current top priority is improving and modernizing the admin experience.
She further explained that the initial concept for a “Try out WordPress” button would be to provide a generic WordPress installation, allowing users to experience WordPress as close to its out-of-the-box state as possible. Setting up additional plugins with enough example data to showcase different types of sites (like an eCommerce site) has proved challenging, but the Playground team is working on ways to better display sample data and make different setups easily exportable.
In response to specific initiatives that could benefit from increased awareness and amplification from media folks, three major areas were outlined:
- Data Liberation and Playground for content migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. and for addressing users’ needs by offering a more interactive and realistic preview of WordPress. Both projects have involved the development of a complex set of tools, but they are nearing readiness. The project hopes for community support in spreading the word about them.
- WordPress events: Josepha mentioned the need to demystify WordCamps to enhance their appeal, particularly for newcomers. The goal is to improve understanding of event offerings and ensure first-time attendees feel welcomed and informed.
- New admin prototype: Lastly, she underscored the importance of gathering feedback on the new admin prototype to ensure a smooth transition and avoid disruptions for users.
Towards the end, the discussion turned to the impact of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) on open source software. Josepha noted that, after revisions to the carve-out, WordPress currently does not face immediate issues but is closely monitoring the situation. Major open source CMSs are planning to collaborate to assess the impact of other related legislation to ensure that future changes do not negatively affect their communities and software.
Questions with timestamps
- [00:19:31] Nathan Wrigley (WP Tavern): How do we keep things fun? Have you got any ideas around what we could do to make it [WordPress] more fun?
- [00:23:40] Javier Casares (WPpodcast): Is there a roadmap to integrate the feature notification in Phase 3? How is the real-time collaboration doing?
- [00:27:08] Javier Casares: About that “Test WordPress now” button. Will it be a general WordPress installation or will there be different options like “create an eCommerce,””create a blog,” or “create a company page”?
- [00:30:50] Javier Casares: Is there a roadmap for migrating from 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. to GatherPress?
- [00:34:58] Nahuai Badiola (Freelandev): I’ve been playing with Playground and importing a theme and demo content, which is great. But as a WordPress theme maker, I can’t offer that nice experience to users who install our block theme. Are there any plans to add an onboarding experience for themes?
- [00:41:46] Reyes Martínez: Could you share your thoughts on any specific initiatives or audiences that you think could benefit from increased awareness and support from media folks?
- [00:48:22] Javier Casares: What about the CRA (Cyber Resilience Act) and how WordPress is going to comply with the parts that everybody needs to comply with?
- [00:52:08] Nathan Wrigley: I’m curious about the Playground on the homepage button. Is there a point person who might be able to give me some intel about that or an interview?
Other relevant links
Most of the resources mentioned during the briefing have been added to the summary above, but here are some other relevant links:
- Biweekly Design Share updates
- WordCamp Europe 2024: Matt Mullenweg Keynote Presentation
- Playground Blueprints GitHub repo
- EU Cyber Resilience Act
Transcript
The following transcript was AI-generated and may contain some errors despite being reviewed.
Full transcript
[00:00:00] Okay, I’m just ensuring that I have all the, yeah, permissions settings. Okay, perfect. Strong amount of silence. I feel like that’s not a, that’s not always a given with us. Usually happens every, every meeting starts the same. Honestly, wind me up. I’ll fill all that silence.
[00:00:29] Yeah, but it’s true. Until we wait for some other folks to join, there’s usually kind of silence, like awkward silence. But yeah, I think we can officially start. So, hello everyone. And, and welcome. I’m very, very excited to have Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy with us today to discuss our midterm goals for WordPress.
[00:00:55] I’m Reyes, and as you all know, I’ll be facilitating today’s session and just before diving into our discussion, I thought I would share. briefly a few updates that just for extra visibility. The first one is about some new experimental make dashboards. Some contributors are working to offer like a snapshot of some make teams key metrics and ongoing projects I think there’s an upcoming announcement soon.
[00:01:27] Probably we can expect that by the end of the week, but I think that’s a pretty exciting update. So, yeah, keep an eye out for that. And next on my list is a post on advancing the WordPress design system. The goal of this initiative is to consolidate all the existing tools into a unified design system reference site, so that anyone looking to contribute, contribute back to WordPress or extend the platform can do it in line with, like, a shared design language and approach.
[00:02:08] I think this effort is especially important as we look into phase 3 of the roadmap and as we look at the admin redesign efforts, so I recommend giving that post a read if you haven’t done so and keeping an eye out for the biweekly design share updates. Let me share, one second, all the links in the chat, so you know what I’m talking about and
[00:02:41] all right. Here you go and, yeah, last but not least just as a reminder the State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/. site went live last month, and everyone is welcome to attend this annual event and request a seat. So, if you know of someone who wants or is interested in attending, please direct them to the community interest form.
[00:03:06] I’m going to share the link as well in the chat.
[00:03:15] All right, here we go. And that’s what I got in my list for updates and reminders. I don’t know if you have any questions or thoughts so far. Is the the the advancing the WordPress design system. I read that. And is that, is that intended for anybody touching .Org? So plugin and theme developers as well, or is it, is it specific?
[00:03:41] Well, I, yeah, that’s my question really. Is it just designed for everybody or is it for plugin and theme developers? Specifically. I think it’s for plugin like authors as well. I mean, if they are looking to extend the platform, I think those tools will come handy and useful. Yeah. Okay. But I can make a note and get back to you on that later.
[00:04:01] I mean, and I can also ask we can also ask Joen who I’m sure he might be helpful help. He might be happy to share any other information. Having read it, I couldn’t as who was the intended audience for it, but that would be helpful. Yes, please. Thank you. Yeah, of course, I’ll make a note and I can follow up with you on that after the briefing.
[00:04:24] All right. For if there are no more questions for now, I mean, if you have any thoughts, questions during the session later, just a reminder that you can share them in the chat. I would encourage you to indicate the media outlet and the channel you represent, because that help us first of all, have, to help us to have some context, but also it’s usually helpful for the recap and transcription purposes, but you’re also welcome to raise your hand if that’s easier.
[00:04:54] Okay. So, I think we can get started with our main discussion. Over to you, Josepha. It’s me. I’m Josepha and I’m here with WordPress. Yeah, so I wanted to talk a little bit about our midterm goals. So WordCamp Europe, obviously, Matt showed up with his 11 opinions about, about what WordPress needs to do, what it needs to be.
[00:05:18] And after that, I ended up having quite a few conversations with folks about like, how does this fit with the overall big pictures that we put out there? Big, the big picture post that we, that I put out. And fortunately everything, almost everything that showed up in those 11 points are still absolutely relevant to the big picture post that I put out.
[00:05:40] Now the biggest change obviously this year is on is around the CMS. So we had hoped to get phase 3 kind of prototyped and built out and put out in front of the community. But early on in the year, it became pretty clear that one of the more pressing items for user facing, I don’t know, user satisfaction of WordPress is to maybe make our admin a little bit more modern looking and probably get all of our, you know, five different interfaces kind of looking the same, which I think is actually part of what that design system that Joen published is about.
[00:06:21] And so the work on phase 3, the active, like, everybody focused diligently on phase 3 work sort of paused early in the year. While we took a look at the admin and what we wanted to be in the future, how blocks will work in there. And then ended up doing a bunch of foundational work, which is not user facing a lot of major back end elements and APIs to make sure that we can get that done.
[00:06:44] And so I’ve been really excited to see that design system get out because I think that one, it does kind of pull together some visual elements of what we are aiming for, and then also gives a common design language to WordPress. That is the hope, is that we can improve the user experience by having a more consistent look and feel across our admin, and then also having the dashboard and admin areas
[00:07:09] just be more modern and more in line with what the software actually is capable of doing now. So that is probably the biggest shift from that big picture post, but it happened a long time ago. And so there are, however, four things in those 11 points that Matt brought up at WordCamp. Europe that I think really commit to that and and support that change in direction.
[00:07:38] Obviously, the first one being that simple things should be easy and intuitive and complex things should be possible. The admin area, along with just kind of having a massive influx of notifications, has gotten more and more complex as we have gotten through WordPress as a whole. And so, getting that into a state that’s a little bit easier to kind of fall into and understand is going to be really important.
[00:08:04] And then there were three other things in there as well. One, that WordPress should be more opinionated and quirky that people who are building WordPress should be using WordPress and a bunch of the 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/ engineers recently did a ton of user user, what is this called? Sorry for the recording.
[00:08:25] I am sick. And so I can’t get my words sometimes. User testing. That’s it. A bunch of user testing. Not only to check flows for onboarding, which I know have been an ongoing concern for the project or for the software, but then also for like any basic activity that you want to accomplish so that you can feel successful and have the desire to learn those bigger concepts.
[00:08:51] Just trying to make those a lot easier, a lot clearer, and a lot quicker. And so, that goes into that. And then, if we get all of those things kind of back into an easy, comfortable state, then the, the part that Matt shared about blogging and commenting and pingbacks being more fun and allowing websites to be more dynamic again, I think that that shows up over time in it.
[00:09:17] The second element from the second goal from our big picture post was around the community, continuing to support our community as a whole through learning events and mentorship, and that would be for courage and future contributors. Early on this year as well, the community facing teams, the event folks.
[00:09:36] Had a big shift toward less focus on bringing in new contributors, which has been our lifelong focus and more focus on bringing in new users with the belief that everything that we’ve done to enable contribution will still function as, as it always has. So the work that is going in now is to get better feedback from
[00:10:01] people who are attending our workshops and our events and making the online learning as clear and important and valuable as all of the business stuff and networking that you can do at meetups and WordCamps and then also all of our flagship events. We have the dashboards coming, which Reyes mentioned,
[00:10:22] and that’s part of the reason that we’re doing that. Like, we’re working to standardize the questions that we ask new and returning attendees to our events so that our organizers can have some clearer and better information to make decisions that are helpful for them and impactful for them. We also are foregoing the giant annual survey this year.
[00:10:41] We’re gonna take advantage of the giant annual survey that Stack Exchange does. We’re included in it again this year and so we’re going to take advantage of that information because they get more people from outside of the WordPress space to give us some better information, more accurate information about future users of WordPress as opposed to current users of WordPress so that we can kind of get some, some indications of what our opportunities are for future growth, but then also making space for those kind of ad hoc polls that we see popping up on LinkedIn and Twitter and anywhere else where people can just say like, hey, do you use it for this or this?
[00:11:21] If you were doing this activity today, would you choose this or this? And get kind of more timely feedback for the features that we’re trying to experiment and build toward that way. And so the things from Matt’s 11 points that fit in with that are that we should have better feedback loops in general.
[00:11:40] Agreed. Hard agree. It doesn’t help us to be moving forward with speed if the direction that we’re moving forward in is not something that our users need or want from us. And then also one of his callouts was to be a supporter by going to meetups, events and other things that help us stay close to users.
[00:11:58] Because we are the people who are building WordPress. And so, if we are building it, we should be using it. And that includes if we’re building it, we should be talking to the people who are using it. In ways that we expect and ways that we don’t expect. And the best ways to do that is to get to those events, either as organizers or just regular old attendees.
[00:12:16] I’m headed to WordCamp US and I’m going to do my best to be a regular old attendee, sitting in some sessions, seeing what’s happening and not. And that’ll be a change of pace for me as well. So that’s a, that’s a kind of one of those changes that occurred on our second big goal. And then our third one actually has not changed too much.
[00:12:35] The third big goal that we had was around the ecosystem, and especially focusing on the Data Liberation project to make the process of getting from one non WordPress space to a WordPress space easier, and then WordPress to WordPress as required. That has been ongoing all year. We had a few prototypes at the start of the year that we’re kind of okay, but not quite what we were looking for.
[00:13:00] And it was around WordCamp Europe that we had gotten a pretty viable concept of what could work and what will work, I think for easier migrations and the hardest parts of that, the, the parts that require, you know, you to be as brilliant as Adam Zieliński are almost done. We’re ready to start to, to start hooking into it and extending it like we do any other WordPress thing.
[00:13:26] And so for that, actually we’re kind of get gearing up for an adoption phase of it of all of the, like, top 100 plugins that exist in the WordPress repo, I think only 12 of them use blueprints so that when you are testing a plugin inside Playground, it gives you some information, some, some fake data so that it’s clear what it’s trying to do versus what you are hoping it will do.
[00:13:57] And also so that it functions correctly in there. And so that’s going to be our next phase for that is to get the hardest parts built so that, so that every In the WordPress ecosystem can make a blueprint and put it in there. And so their users know, is this solution something that’s going to solve my problem?
[00:14:19] As we have been gearing up for that, we also are really nearing, I believe it, I feel it in my bones nearing the time when we can just put a try out WordPress now button on the homepage that takes you to a playground instance that has a valuable, not valuable. A useful theme, a theme that looks like what we want a good first timer site to look like, and a couple of plugins, so you get a sense for like, what a theme is, how it works, what plugins are, and how they work, and really can, can test drive your site before you get into it.
[00:14:56] We’re really close to that, I’m pretty sure. And so the things that Matt had brought up this summer, if you’re in the northern hemisphere, about that in his 11 points were wikis for documentation. We are actually prototyping a Playground-driven wiki experience for our documentation. And, that looks like it’s going well.
[00:15:18] I don’t understand it, but there is a post out that we can get a link for and share with you all. Getting forums back into kind of a front and center space so that people can have not only conversations but but also like see who else around them is having the same issues or the same excitements, the same extending opportunities that they are having and a lot of work is going into that.
[00:15:44] We have a bug smashing event for it at WordCamp US coming up, which should be pretty fun. And the call to having plugins and themes having mirror infrastructure to the WordPress project is still ongoing. Better theme previews, obviously, Playground is going to drive that. And the work with that Data Liberation is Playground driven at the moment.
[00:16:09] And so as we are building out all of these things for the Data Liberation project powered by Playground I’m pretty sure the rest of these holes that we have in the new user experience when they’re trying to just decide whether WordPress works for them or not, we’ll also get a few bridges over those gaps.
[00:16:28] And at that point can only be made better by our plugin authors and our theme authors really embracing that new tool and making sure that their tools work inside it. And so a little bit, Matt’s 11 points show up almost as like tactical elements that live inside the goals that we have for the WordPress project this year.
[00:16:50] We pulled together a whole list of projects that we either have shipped or are about to ship that specifically relate to all of those 11 tactics that go along with the three goals that we have. And I’m going to try to get it published before WordCamp US so that we all kind of have the same sort of thing that we’re looking at.
[00:17:12] And I, I think maybe Reyes can get you all an early, an early copy of it before, before it gets out there, so that if you have questions around that, we can get those answered. Or if there are anything that doesn’t really make sense to you all, you can let us know about that too. But that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the long and short of how those all fit together.
[00:17:32] And in the post that we pulled together about the work that’s been done just kind of in the last quarter around those tactical elements for our goals. I was tired looking at it. It was like four pages long. And so we’re going to try to make it a little shorter. But it’s just a continuing testament to the work that the community does toward the things that we think are going to make WordPress be able to grow in the future.
[00:17:57] And so I’m really excited to be able to get that post out for you all. Like I said, depending on how fast my brain continues to work while I’m sick, I’ll get that out before WordCamp US. I believe that we can do it. And so yeah, that’s kind of the lightning tour of where we are with that, and I’ll pause for questions on that or anything else, I guess.
[00:18:22] Can I just raise my hand? Is that alright? Yes. Do I need to do it virtually or can I just actually do it like that? Nathan Wrigley from the Tavern, I guess, probably easiest. I’m looking at Matt’s post, the 21. And the points 2 and point 9. He uses the words quirky in point 9 and fun in point 2. And that was what I, I was in the room when that happened.
[00:18:50] And that was what I, that was the impression that I got when I left is that basically the whole thing should just be more fun, it was that word fun. And I’m just wondering if you’ve got any intuitions. As to how we do that, what, what, what could we do to make WordPress more fun? I mean, Matt says here, you know, static websites are better than normal ones.
[00:19:11] And he says. No, he says dynamic wesbites. Dynamic. That’s right. Yeah. Sorry. CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. should be opinionated and quirky, Easter eggs, languages with personality. It’s difficult to translate, jazzy. I I’m all for having fun. I think I, but I’m just wondering what you’re, how do we. I don’t know, because it’s easy to go from fun to just silly, isn’t it?
[00:19:32] How do we, how do we keep things fun? Have you got any ideas around what we could do to make it more fun? I love how this question kind of is like, Josepha, how fun are you? And how much fun can you make WordPress have? No, I’m joking. I’m joking. Yeah. So there are a few things. So for one, there are, as we get the admin into a more modern space, I think one of the things that.
[00:20:00] It’s just kind of a small delight that we see around software at the moment. Places like Discord have this. I think Facebook had it for a while, but like minor animations on your icons, which you can turn on, turn off, depending on, on your motion needs. I think things like that are going to be available to us once we get the admin in a better space.
[00:20:21] There are, there were a number of like core eggs, Easter eggs that were there for a long time that we took out. That existed in comments, it existed in tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/., it was just like weird nerdy things for people who are digging for weird things, like there was a specific set of words that you could say in trac that caused
[00:20:44] like an eagle to flash up on the screen for some reason. I only did it once and it scared me to death, but I obviously things like that in our own spaces, in our own work are possible and, and welcomed. But I think that one of the things that the community can do is like, excuse me, like when we were doing the next gen events for WordCamps and kind of trying to figure out like what new and interesting versions of getting people together to talk about WordPress, can we still kind of do, I think that’s a lot of the spaces where we have some opportunity.
[00:21:24] So some, some cute and surprising design things. It’s probably not cute and surprising code things like you want that to be pretty predictable, but you know, cute and surprising design elements, some unusual and enriching events, probably is where we can do that. And then, of course, Matt is kind of
[00:21:44] sponsoring art across the entire WordPress ecosystem. And I think that that probably has a bit to do with wanting to bring some fun back into the space as well. Like when we had those cute little spam bots at WordCamp US last year. And and I think that there’s going to be some art around WordCamp US this year as well.
[00:22:08] Thank you. Josepha, we have some questions from Javier in the chat as well. Great. I, I, I can read them. Perfect. Yeah. Go ahead, Javier. So the, I have four. The first the first is is there a roadmap to integrate the feature notification in phase 3? Because that’s a project that has been around and a lot of people is messing with the messages and everything.
[00:22:38] So is there, is there an idea to integrate that now, or is a project that is going to be around until somebody adds it into the core?
[00:22:52] So I think that we should tackle your first and second question together around real time collaboration in phase 3. Because I think that that is going to, is going to impact this. So, on the one hand, at the moment, I don’t, I don’t think that we have a strong sense for notifications specifically being in the, in the phase 3 roadmap.
[00:23:15] But, I do have a roadmap that we’re pulling together for the next couple of releases, so I can take a look and see if, if we can more confidently target it for either one of those. So there’s that. As far as, like, to get it into phase 3, because we as a community have shifted our attention toward the admin and dashboard experience rather than phase 3, real time collaboration is moving forward and and we would like it to continue to move forward.
[00:23:50] I think it’s important, but probably less important than getting the overall software looking a bit more modern. And so real time collaboration still open to contribution, but I’ve asked everybody to focus more on the admin so that the software looks modern. Great workflows are good and important, but like, If we, if we’re trying to get out to a bunch of new users, we also need to absolutely make sure that we don’t look like we’re a software from 2000.
[00:24:17] 2000. That was 24 years ago, quarter of a century ago. I hate it. That notwithstanding 2000 and, and when was, when was Crazy Horse? 2008. So, I think that that’s probably the most important part of what we’re looking at in the, in the near term. And I realize that that’s not like, what’s the plan for phase 3 and how’s real time collaboration going?
[00:24:41] But I do think that that pause that we’ve taken there is really key. Notifications and how to handle them obviously are a real problem and on the minds of a lot of folks in the community. We used to have some pretty clear understandings of like what notifications should be and how they should be managed.
[00:25:03] And I think that at some point we loosened those expectations and those guidelines when we kind of loosened some of the guidelines around a plugin review. I think that that’s primarily when, when that really started to be taken over. And so there is some systemic work to do. There are some, some like
[00:25:23] contributor program types of rehabilitation things that we’ve got to do in there. But then also obviously a mechanism that makes notifications a little bit more corralled and easy to find when users need it. And so I’ll take a look at those roadmaps for the next couple of releases and see what we can fit in there.
[00:25:40] But that’s a great question. Okay. The next one about the, the, test WordPress now, or whatever it will be it’s going to be only clean installation of WordPress, or there is an idea to have like more working with blueprints, like, okay. I want to test something like an ecommerce so we can show an ecommerce and or I want a blog and we can show a blog is it’s going to be that way or a generic WordPress or.
[00:26:14] Yeah, at the moment the plan is just for generic WordPress for a couple of reasons. One, because we want them to see what it looks like as close to out of the box as possible. That. That way they understand, like, this is what the basic interaction looks like, the basic interface looks like, so that they are not surprised when they get a basic installation running.
[00:26:38] And then they’re like, I thought there was a ecommerce site in here. Like, we don’t want it to be too far away from what their initial experience will be. And so that’s part of the reason. The other part of it is that it’s actually very difficult to get additional plugins set up with enough data and a false data coming in.
[00:26:56] Not false. Example, test data coming in that it looks right so that you understand what’s in there. There are a couple of prototypes that we’ve been that that the folks who work on Playground have been working on that are bringing in a bit of sample data so that you can see how something would look.
[00:27:15] But for ecommerce in particular, that is very difficult to do. It’s actually one of the primary hurdles that we’re having also with Data Liberation. Figuring out what is in the front of a site and what is available, like, in an admin area is pretty easy. But having the functional parts that go along with it so it still works is actually kind of hard at the moment.
[00:27:39] So you can see that there’s a shopping cart. You can put like a shopping cart block into the playground instance, but that doesn’t mean that it works or that you know what you would need in order to make that work on the other side of it. And so we’re trying to figure out how to get more complex initial sites
[00:27:57] shown and then also exportable, instantly publishable to your individual host that you’re hoping to work with, that you’re hoping to get hosted on. But we’re just finding that to be a little more complicated than we had hoped. We’re, so the MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia of it is plain vanilla WordPress, and then we’ll figure out some alternatives for how to get to the other things.
[00:28:20] But I think that we found a similar problem with frontenberg when we first put that on 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/ WordPress. org slash Gutenberg is is the back end of a WordPress site basically and when we first put it up there it had just the block editor and that was it. And so that was kind of helpful for folks when they figured out where the, where it lived.
[00:28:43] But when they just went into plain WordPress, they do just get dumped into the dashboard and sometimes couldn’t figure out how to get to where the, the block editor was. And so trying to, to make that experience a bit better this time around is an important part of that. Okay, the last for now in the community, in the community, yeah, no, I think it’s my mind always ask questions.
[00:29:08] Is there a roadmap on migrating from meetup.com to GatherPress?
[00:29:17] I know right now is there are a lot of testing, but basically I’m hosting the testing website now. So I know how it’s going, but I know they are working on, on starting to integrate things with WordPress.org and everything, but I don’t know if there is, there is some idea on when that will be a reality or if, for example, if some new meetup group or some new community wants to start, it will be on, on GatherPress and not in meetup or something like that, or?
[00:29:59] Yeah, there’s not a, there’s not a roadmap for that at the moment. I think that we’re considering this like a testing period for GatherPress, which is fine. And. The reason for that is because we’re having a little bit of difficulty getting people back up and running in their in person events. And so we want to make sure, I want to make sure, that the tools that they can use are tools that feel as comfortable as possible for them.
[00:30:27] So that it’s not this additional lift. Like, I want to put together a WordPress event. I can use Eventbrite or Meetup, or I can use this custom tool. And so I think that the future for getting on gather press still is there. I think it makes sense for us to have something that is more aligned with our open source thoughts and opinions.
[00:30:49] But at the moment, I just want to make sure that there’s not any extra hurdles for folks that are trying to either return to the habit of having in person events happen or join us for the first time. And so great question. And it’s, I think the work that’s being done with GatherPress is good. I think the testing with groups that are getting on there right now is also good.
[00:31:11] It’ll help us figure out like how to get those connections better into profiles and also into the ecosystem of sites as a whole. But right now there’s not a roadmap to get everybody over there. Okay, thank you. Just a quick note that they’re actually seeking feedback from organizers. So, yeah, I’ll share the latest update in the chat.
[00:31:37] Nahuai I think you have another question. Yeah, I will start with the one I didn’t mention in the chat, if I can, it’s not a mention it, but it’s very related with the GatherPress and Meetup. I’m going to host the meetup in, yeah, in one hour or something. And I’ve been having problems with the email
[00:32:00] deliverability or the deliver of the emails in Meetup, which is quite sad because returning from the summer that we did that two months break, it’s less easy to tell the other people that come back in September. We will talk about this and that. Yeah. And I’ve been sending, I usually just send one mail because I’m very mindful of the inbox of the people, but several people told me that they didn’t get it.
[00:32:29] So I sent a second one and some of them got them, but some not. So this is just one thing I will Did they just never arrive? Or did they go into spam? No, never arrived. Never arrived. The spam check in is always the second question. Did you check the spam mailbox? Yeah. In this case, not. So I just wanted to share in case it’s happening to more people.
[00:32:53] And maybe it’s just It’s been years since we had that problem with Meetup, but we can reach out to them, our person over there, and see what’s happening. That would be great because if not, one of the upsides of using meetup is really less an upside because you cannot reach to those people. You can’t get to anybody.
[00:33:12] The question that I wanted to do is more with the extender hat. So I’ve been playing with the blueprints, playground blueprints. I love how you can set up a theme and import demo content and you can really do a one click. Like, look how cool this looks, but I cannot do the same if I’m putting a block theme in the repo because they will activate it and it’s going to be quite sad.
[00:33:44] They will see a nice home homepage, but they will not have any onboarding experience. So specifically for block themes, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. So my question is, if there is anything thought about that because I think that this diminished quite a lot the experience of the a newcomer that is maybe seen a very cool demo in Playground and then they install, they activate and they say, why is there is this difference between the cool demo I just saw and this thing that I just installed?
[00:34:20] So yeah, the second point is that there are some, I can program something to make that but I cannot put it in the repo and more importantly, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. I really want to have an extent and a standard to adhere and then use it. So, yeah, my question is, is if there is any idea or anything planned and if there is not, if you would consider it, because I’ve been talking with some Automatticians, just asking, is there anybody working on this?
[00:34:52] My feeling or my sense is that not right now, and I feel that this a bit more important that may looks for user experience. Yeah, I think you’re right. Like, I, I understand that the majority of, of the decisions that we’re trying to make on behalf of users is like, did what they do in one spot. Also look like what they expected it to do when they get on the outside of it.
[00:35:24] And I think that that it counts for this as well. Like we never want to say to someone, this is what you’re getting. And then when they confirm that they want it, they hit publish or hit export or whatever, it doesn’t look like what it looked like on the inside, same problem that we’re having with like putting an ecommerce test me on the homepage, like getting that to look the same as vanilla WordPress will never happen.
[00:35:47] And so I think that that. It’s the same sort of answer to a different kind of question, which is that, yeah, we obviously absolutely need to make sure that the test area is as close to the reality area as we possibly can make it. It is true that no one is currently working on that for block themes inside Automattic, but I don’t think that means that no one could work on it.
[00:36:08] If you’ve got a solution that you would work across the board for block themes and classic themes. Oh, no, I’ll finish the thought. Then I think that you should build a prototype and put it up as a, as a feature proposal and see if we can get other people to work on it. I think that’s a great idea. And then here’s the other thought that I had.
[00:36:31] Okay. I have been wondering if, like, we could at Contributor Days have these, these contributor drives, contribution drives where people take the classic themes and rebuild them as block themes and just republish them in that way because we got so many classic themes that are so great. My favorite theme of all time is 2012 and I know that that means that I just like old design things, but I just write.
[00:37:01] I don’t have a lot of visual stuff on my, on my blog and so like. Of course, I like old, old word based things. But if I had that one in a block way, I probably would try to use it again in a couple of spaces. But yeah, I’ve been wondering if that would be a fun thing to do or a not fun thing to do. But right now, the, the theme tables at Contributor Days are doing, like, everybody show up and we’re going to build a block theme together.
[00:37:23] And then we’ll publish it by the end of the thing. And so like, if we’re going to do that, why not do it with some beloved classic themes that probably could get a new life as a, as a block theme. So yeah, I didn’t ask that question, but no, no, but I think it makes sense. But responding to the previous thing, I don’t have really the time and bandwidth to do a proper, something that I would like to have in core.
[00:37:50] So, the closest thing I’ve been seen is a proposal that Mike McAlister did in some point, I don’t know if you heard about OllieWP, it was a theme that it was an onboarding and it, the onboarding part was stripped out because it was not meeting the the repo guidelines, which makes sense. But I think something like that, I indeed it was built with ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. and everything, something like that would be really, really nice to have as a foundation.
[00:38:20] And it would be great if someone that could put more time on it or a small group working on that. And I really think, sorry for being a bit like going in the same direction. I really think that themes. are the entry point of a lot of people. And if they are not engaged by the first install and activation, we will lose them.
[00:38:46] So that’s why I think that this part is important. And with that, I close my, my point. I agree with you. I agree with you. We have seen for years that whatever the theme is, is what people assume their WordPress is. And so if they didn’t like the theme, if the theme didn’t work for them, then they didn’t like WordPress and WordPress didn’t work for them.
[00:39:06] So I agree with you on that.
[00:39:12] What else we got?
[00:39:20] I was just saying that in the comments that we should get Jamie Marsland to do a speed build where he gets, where he gets two people to rebuild. two classic themes in 30 minutes. I love it. Yeah, that’d be good. I thought he would do it. Yeah.
[00:39:38] I have one question. Yeah, I was wondering, Josepha, if you could also share any your thoughts on any, like, initiatives, that you think could benefit from increased awareness and, like, support from media folks, any initiatives, yeah, like, specific audiences, I think I know some folks are, you know, like, or are interested in knowing more about, you know, like, priorities, like, for amplification.
[00:40:19] So I think it, if you could share your thoughts on that or any specific initiatives that you think would welcome more, more help and support. Yeah. So there are two that I will, that I have been saying all year, and I’ll say again, cause I mean it then, I mean it now. The first one is, Is around Data Liberation.
[00:40:43] And specifically because it’s powered by Playground. So Data Liberation, obviously, is helping people migrate from one site to another. The more people that we enable to be able to use our tools and our our CMS the better for them, obviously, and for the open web as a whole. But then also for us, because we’re always trying to figure out how to make sure that we can still grow but all of the work, because Data Liberation is such a complex problem
[00:41:12] every bit of work that we do there enables the filling of those gaps that I mentioned before in the user experience. Any time that you have a new user, like, it used to be the case that the first stop on your WordPress learning journey was probably WordPress.org and so you got to the homepage and from there you could get to the showcase.
[00:41:34] You could download. You could learn about the code and and and the people building it. You can learn about the community and the people building it. Those are kind of the four big things that we wanted people to do on the website. And I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I don’t think that people get to WordPress.org as their first experience of WordPress anymore. I think that what they do have is a bunch of content that’s around us saying either, like, these are the things that could be better, or these are the things that I do love and, and, you know. Everybody should look at and so once they get to WordPress, they’re pretty knowledgeable about what they are worried
[00:42:09] the problems are for them and they want to look at something really specific. And so getting some way for them to see the back end as quickly as possible I think matters. Getting them to see themes that look pretty close to what they’re going to get when they unbox it for themselves so that they know whether it’s too complicated, too simple, missing functionality, like the decision making once they get to the pages that we have
[00:42:36] that are really prominent are so different now. And I think that, that what we can enable or hands on experience of it through the work on Playground solves a lot of those problems for us. And so we’ve got to figure out how to get Playground able to do it and then figure out how to get everybody to really adopt it and embrace it.
[00:42:55] And that will help themes and plugins be easier to sell, easier to get into the hands of WordPress users. And then of course, like if someone’s wanting to use your product and your product works with WordPress, then we want to make sure they understand what WordPress looks like too. We don’t want to be a hindrance in anyone’s sales process as it goes with their products.
[00:43:17] And so that’s, that’s a really big thing. It has been, like I said, very hard to work on because it’s a really complex kind of set of tools, but we are really, really close to having it be ready for the community to get in and get their hands on. And so once that happens, I hope that everybody helps us get the word out that it’s available for you to get in and extend and make work with your stuff so that we can teach people how to work with our stuff and your stuff together.
[00:43:46] So that’s a big one. And then the other thing is we have this big shift in our events that is coming. So, like I said, for all the whole year, we have been from an events and community perspective, focusing more on our new users and their experience with us and part of the problem that we often hear from sponsors and organizers, is that like, they’re getting a lot of the same people that come and talk to them.
[00:44:14] And I know that we keep getting stats that are like 40 percent, 50 percent first time attendees at various events that we are hosting, but it’s not translating into, and then they go see sponsors, and then they go see the other things that are available in it. And so, I think that WordCamps have become kind of a black box.
[00:44:37] It’s not easy to tell what’s coming in them, it’s not easy to tell whether it’s for you or not, and then once you get there there’s just so much happening, and it looks like there are a bunch of people who already know everything. And so I would, I would love to demystify our events a little bit, and as we are demystifying, help people to understand that, like, if you truly are brand new to this and you feel a little anxious, we also have all of these online things where you can
[00:45:03] learn about the community, learn about contribution, whatever it is just so that you have a sense for what you’re getting into. And so I think that those are the two things, big initiatives that I really, I really would love a lot more chatter about in the space. And then, as soon as we get a
[00:45:23] prototype for our new admin, like we’re going to need a lot of feedback on that to get it right because millions of people are looking at that every day. And if we suddenly break it for millions of people because we couldn’t figure out how to be loud enough about the fact that that was changing, we’re going to.
[00:45:40] We’re going to have a surprise. We’re going to have a Drupal 8 moment where they were like, object oriented programming forever. And then they lost half of everyone and we don’t want that. We have worked really hard all throughout Gutenberg to not lose half of everyone. And so we don’t necessarily want to break it with an admin change, but yeah, it’s going to be, those are the three big things that I think really are going to need a lot of attention and focus.
[00:46:08] I go again something we’ve been talking for some time, but a few months ago, the, the Cyber Resilience Act was approved. It’s not yet on calendar, but I think in 2025, maybe. Yeah. So, how is WordPress going to comply with the CRA? Yeah,
[00:46:36] so the CRA initially had a really bad carve out for open source that made it, as far as I am concerned, impossible for all of our extended community to function because they were going to have to have this incredibly high burden of proof to prove that like, They weren’t, I don’t know. Also the definitions of the digital assets, I think were not very good.
[00:46:58] So we did really get involved with that and and the carve out for open source is substantially different at this point and is much more in line with what we can and need to be able to do. So at the moment, there’s not a lot that WordPress is going to necessarily need to do, but we are keeping an eye on it and just making sure that we understand how it is moving and changing over time.
[00:47:20] All of the major open source CMSs are planning to try to get together to talk through like what the immediate future impacts are of this now that it looks a little bit different. And also, if there are other pieces of legislation, because I think that there are like four additional pieces of legislation that we have general concerns about the impact on on our communities and our software.
[00:47:46] Yeah. Because they, they, they got out the developer involvement with the security part and everything. So that’s, that’s great for everybody, but there are a lot of things like information forcing updates, security updates, and that those kinds of things that everybody is going to comply open source or not.
[00:48:09] So. We need to start thinking because that’s a lot of work for 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. and Meta is not a team that has a lot of time to do a lot of things. So that’s, that’s more, more my concern because I know everything is, is on air, but there are some things that are not going to change. And we need to look on, on that.
[00:48:36] It sounds like you have put a lot of thought into it. So why don’t you send me your list of things you’re concerned about and we will make sure that we have covered all of them. I have a project about that. So, yeah, I’ve been working on that for two years because I knew that that was going to come in and we need to include that on.
[00:48:55] I was in last year at WorldCamp US. I talked with Otto and he told me that there are some tools, internal tools that allow to do some of the things, but those are manual right now, but they need some work to, to open and not be abused for everybody. So I think we have some road made, but there are some things to, to, to do.
[00:49:29] Agreed. Agreed. Yep. I will look forward to your list and project then. Okay.
[00:49:40] May I ask one more thing, please? To, to anybody really. I thank you Chloé. She just gave me the name of Alex Kirk in terms of the Data Liberation project. But I’m curious about the Playground on the homepage button. Is there a point person who, who might be able to give me some, I don’t know, intel about that or an interview?
[00:50:01] That’ll be Adam Zieliński, but also Adam Adam and Alex work together. So that’s great. Thank you. They’re doing a lot of really complicated R and D, but most of the time I understand as long as all you want is like. the surface level information. If you want really complex explanations of what is happening they will be, they will be your people.
[00:50:29] So I just describe it as a voodoo. That’s just, but thank you. Yeah, exactly. Press the button. It’s amazing. Yeah. Thank you. That’s perfect.
[00:50:46] Looks like we have about five minutes left. Yep. I was actually going to share that I want to be mindful of everyone’s time. So I don’t know if there are any other questions
[00:51:07] Good because I can’t answer any questions in five minutes.
[00:51:12] We all know this about me. We’ve learned it over time
[00:51:23] Well, I really appreciate everyone showing up and inviting me along for this. This was great I love talking to you all and answering your question. Yeah, this was yeah, this was really enjoyable Thank you, Josepha, for your time and for sharing your insights. Nathan, I see your hand. I don’t know if that’s a question or, oh, okay.
[00:51:48] Yeah, thank you everyone for contributing to today’s discussion and for sharing your questions as well. And just as a reminder you know, that as, you know, the recap and the recording will be published in the coming days. And if you have any other questions just feel free to reach out 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/..
[00:52:06] All right, bye everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you to @cbringmann and @chanthaboune for the peer review.