Welcome to the MetaMetaMeta 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!
The Meta team is responsible for maintaining and managing WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ websites. Our work is mostly done on the meta trac. If you see a bug, file a ticket!
^ This glowing dot cannot be clicked since it’s just an animation.
During the tour, that element of the web page will be highlighted like this:
Since the Polyglot contributors got good feedback about this tour and its potential applicability to other areas of Make WordPress, they then collaborated with MetaMetaMeta 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. contributors @psrpinto and me (@akirk) to convert this tour into a dedicated plugin, simply called Tour, and added an easy way to create such tours (similar like you might know the Inspector of browser developer tools).
In order to restart a tour that you already completed (or dismissed), and for better accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), there is also a Masterbar menu to start the tours that are visible on the current page:
There is also a shortcodeShortcodeA shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site. and an “Available Tours” GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/blockBlockBlock 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. that allows you to embed the list of tours in a place of your choosing on the website so that there is also an additional path of starting a tour for people who are not logged in (and thus don’t see a Masterbar).
Demos
To demo this, we created two videos, one to show what it’s like to go through a tour, and one to show how to create a tour. Finally, a screenshot to show what updating a tour looks like.
Taking a Tour (Video)
Creating a Tour (Video)
Updating a Tour (Screenshot)
You can update each step separately (title, text and CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. selector) and HTMLHTMLHTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. is available in the description.
Also note that tours are a custom post typeCustom Post TypeWordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. with revisionsRevisionsThe WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision., so you can undo any changes. While creating, testing, and editing a tour, you can keep it as a draft so that it won’t be visible to users who cannot see drafts.
The Tour plugin is not yet in the pluginPluginA 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 directory but you can download the ZIP file from Github and install it on any WordPress site.
On Make WordPress, we have activated the plugin on the Meta and the Polyglots P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. and we’d be happy to activate it on other Make teams if they want to use it on their own P2 for whatever they feel it could be useful.
Accessibility
I’d like to give a special invitation to the +make.wordpress.org/accessibility/ team to try the tour and let us know which improvements we’d need to make to make it more accessible. We think that an important aspect to start with is that it doesn’t open up automatically and gets in the way of people who were trying to do something different in the first place. The underlying driver.js library had in the past made some strides to make it accessible and per suggestion from @joedolson, we have added alternative ways (such as the Masterbar or Gutenberg block) to start tours.
Try It On this P2
We have created a first tour here on the Meta P2 (see the logo in the blue bar at the top of the page, or start it using the Masterbar). It is just a very quick demo, we’ll probably expand it in future. You can take it to get an idea of how such a tour could work and if you’d like to discuss with your own Make team whether you’d like to try it out as well. Please reach out in the comments!
The Slack bridge is active in all public channels so you can join conversations from either side.
For some rooms the history is already imported (for example, the metaMetaMeta 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. room or a number of archived Slack channels), for others we’ll continue to import them over the coming week.
In the meeting itself, we first summarized important points from the previous meetings:
Login to the community.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ Matrix server has been implemented using Single Sign On (SSO) with WordPress.org using OpenID Connect (OIDC). The plugin we created is open source and can also be found in the WordPress.org pluginPluginA 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 directory as OpenID Connect Server.
Compared to Slack this means a vastly simplified onboarding process. Instead of waiting for an e-mail arriving at a special e-mail address, you set the server in your Matrix client to community.wordpress.org and click “Login with WordPress.org” (the name of that button might vary by client).
As another way to access Matrix, we’ve created a GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/blockBlockBlock 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. that hosts an in-page Matrix client, called Chatrix. It can be added to P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. pages or posts to add a Matrix chat there and when you’re logged in to WordPress.org, joining the chat is a matter of going to that page and proceeding with SSO inside the block (which, the first time, will redirect you to authorize the login). An example of this can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/meta/chat/.
Slack Bridge
We’ve enabled the Slack bridge on all public channels, and we’re gradually importing Slack history to Matrix. For some channels, like #meta, this has already completed.
As part of the history migrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies., you’ll be automatically invited to rooms on Matrix when you have joined the channel on the Slack side. You’ll also be autmatically invited to the respective Matrix rooms if you said something on Slack in the channel since we started the bridge earlier this week.
DMs are not part of the bridge, so on Matrix you can DM people but you’ll only get a response if they also use Matrix.
Private channels are not bridged at this point either but it will likely be possible to bridge them. In one of the next meetings we’ll discuss that.
You Can Try It Today
So, please go and start trying to use Matrix today and give us feedback!
We’re planning to do some more wide-scale announcements after this has been running stable for a while. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments!
We first recapped a few items around the setup that we’re exploring:
We have a Matrix server for the WordPress project at community.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/.
Instead of having to create a new account at that Matrix server, we’ll want to use SSO (“single-sign on”) and allow you to use your WordPress.org account. This is possible through OpenID Connect (OIDC) and a WordPress pluginPluginA 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 that we created, called OpenID Connect Server.
To make joining WordPress meetings easier, we’ve developed another plugin that sports a GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/blockBlockBlock 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. that hosts an in-page Matrix client, called Chatrix. The idea being, that we can have pages on the Make P2s that are dedicated to a specific room on the Matrix server where the meeting will take place.
So for example, for metaMetaMeta 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. meetings, there is a Chatrix block installed on https://make.wordpress.org/meta/chat/ which points to the Matrix room where these meetings occur. Unfortunately, at the time of testing, the Chatrix block was broken for people who first started using it. We are working on a bugfix on Github.
Still it is possible to experience the above setup by joining the room via another client (and this is one thing that sets Matrix apart from SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.: you have multiple clients to choose from), for example Element at https://app.element.io/
When you click “Sign In” there, you’ll arrive at a screen where you can change the server to community.wordpress.org. Then you can continue using the Single-Sign On flow: you are redirected to WordPress.org and asked to allow the Matrix server to confirm your WordPress.org username to log in. After this you arrive logged in to the Matrix server where we have already set your display name and profile picture.
Over at the Matrix server, we looked at the second agenda item, a test-migrated Slack channel on the Matrix server:
These are the topics that we would like to discuss:
Join us exploring the community.wordpress.org Matrix server. We’ll walk you through how to join and test.
Look at a test-migrated Slack channel on the Matrix server.
Explore a test-setup of the Slack bridge together.
Discuss the next steps.
If you have topics you would like to add to the agenda, please share them in the comments below.
The next meeting will be on Thursday, June 15, 2023 10AM UTC Thursday, June 29, 2023 10AM UTC. Also, @psrpinto and myself (@akirk) will attend WCEU and are happy to chat about Matrix there.
We didn’t have a set agenda this time, so we followed up on some discussion points of the last chat. Below I am mostly quoting myself from the chat. No further questions were asked.
MigrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. of Messages from SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. to Matrix
A big part of the last discussion was around message migration and how to deal with public and private messages. We’ve done some more research on migrating public messages and are currently evaluating whether the Slack Matrix migration tool could work for us. It operates on Slack export files and requires a fresh Synapse server.
We haven’t yet been able to confirm whether it actually can import the messages and hope to be able to share more on the next meeting.
For migrating private messages in DMs or private groups we’ve concluded that we won’t want to attempt their migration but will look into providing tools for achieving that.
Here we’ve found that browserextensions exist which allow you to download your own Slack direct messages inside your browser as a text file. Possibly it’ll be our recommendation to use those tools to export the messages for yourself.
AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility)
We are a small team of contributors to the WordPress and Matrix projects who would like to propose to form a community project to explore bringing the Matrix open sourceOpen SourceOpen 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. federated chat system to the WordPress community as a possible replacement to SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. (for Making WordPress).
What is Matrix? According to Matrix themselves, “it is an open source project that publishes the Matrix open standard for secure, decentralised, real-time communication, and its ApacheApacheApache is the most widely used web server software. Developed and maintained by Apache Software Foundation. Apache is an Open Source software available for free.-licensed reference implementations. Maintained by the non-profit Matrix.org Foundation, we aim to create an open platform which is as independent, vibrant and evolving as the Web itself… but for communication.”
At WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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 2022 in Porto, we talked to a lot of community members, asking them about how they liked Slack and what they’d think about using Matrix as an open source alternative to Slack.
While we heard from a lot of people that they liked Slack, a number of items were mentioned that made us think Matrix could be a great fit for the WordPress community:
1. The Slack onboarding experience is hard
A significant amount of time at WordCamp contributor days is spent on helping people getting onboarded to Slack. You need to receive an invitation e-mail to a special, personal e-mail address and then select the correct Slack workspace to join, following these lengthy instructions.
We’ve explored the possibilities for creating a seamless login experience for Matrix, and we’ve already successfully implemented a Single-Sign On flow where OpenID Connect is used with WordPress as an authentication provider. Thus, to start chatting, you’d only need to authorize WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ to pass your username on to the Matrix server by the click of a button, and you’re in.
Joining the Making WordPress Polyglots room could look like this
2. The Slack Client isn’t well suited for some Local Communities
We’ve heard that some local communities prefer to communicate via instant messaging such as WhatsApp or Telegram over using Slack. While this might overlap with the previous item, where getting added to a Telegram group is much easier than signing up for the WordPress Slack workspace, we’ve also heard how this form of messaging and its integration with their mobile phone is preferred.
One of the benefits of Matrix is it supports free choice of clients, one of them being a client that is very similar to Telegram, called FluffyChat. There are also particularly lightweight clients (called Hydrogen), a full featured client called Element (previously known as Riot), a client that is more like Discord called Cinny, CLICLICommand Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. clients, and many more.
Additionally, we’ve done some work to make it possible to integrate a Matrix chat into a Gutenberg block. This means that you can use any WordPress post or page to start chatting when it has that blockBlockBlock 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. embedded. This could even be set to a particular room, so that users can be asked to join a specific room or Make team by giving them a link to a particular WordPress(.org) page. This could make taking part in Make WordPress teams much easier and possibly encourage more contributions.
3. An Open Source Project should use an Open Source Chat System?
Many people were excited about the Matrix project and how it being open source seemed like a much better fit for the WordPress open source project. It was mentioned to us that an open source product might have a tougher onboarding experience, so we were happy to see how our research of using SSO and a Matrix client inside a GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ block encouraged us to think that it actually might be more accessible.
Would Matrix be a good fit for Making WordPress?
Since our efforts so far have been sponsored by Automattic and didn’t revolve around a particular community, we’d like to start a metaMetaMeta 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. sub-team that would hold bi-weekly chats and figure out a plan how we could assess whether Matrix would be a viable option for the community.
In particular, we’d like to contribute our projects Chatrix and OpenID Connect Server to the WordPress project. Additionally, work with people of the community interested in Matrix to see which Slack integrations would need to be ported and how that could be done. As well as understand through testing with other WordPress teams how good or bad the experience is, either on its own, or comparing it to Slack.
Thus we’d like to invite everyone who would like to take part in this to speak up in the comments so that we can find a day and time in the week where we could hold our meetings to get this started.
