Office Hours

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Performance office hours are held every 2 weeks on Tuesdays and the current meeting time is always up-to-date on the Meetings calendar. Chats are held in the #core-performance channel and last for one hour.

All are welcome to attend the weekly chats to share updates, ask questions, and learn more about the Team’s work. A meeting summary is posted there after the chat. All summaries are viewable in the #performance-chat tag.

Responsibilities and access

The office hours are typically hosted by one of the Core Performance Team Reps. In case none of the Team Reps is available for a meeting, they should coordinate finding a replacement host with other active members of the team ahead of time.

The technical requirements to be an office hours host are:

Have 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 and a 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/. account.
Have access to use the /here command in the #core-performance channel on Slack.
Have access to draft and publish posts on the Make WordPress Core blog.

Running the chat

Recurring agenda

The agenda for the office hours meeting is typically very similar every time. As such, it is not necessary to publish an agenda post ahead of the meeting.

The meeting host should raise the following topics in order of priority as listed. Some topics may only be applicable to raise at certain times.

If there is nothing to discuss for a topic within 2 minutes of posting the message, the host can move on to the next topic.

If there is too much to discuss in a meeting so that not all topics can be covered, this is okay. The only topics that always need to be covered if applicable are the ones about releases upcoming soon.

Any blockers or updates to discuss for the upcoming WordPress Core release?
- Only applicable while in BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. or RCRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. phase of the upcoming WordPress Core release
Any blockers or updates to discuss for the upcoming Performance Lab 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 releases?
- Only applicable when <2 weeks before a scheduled Performance Lab plugins release
Any blockers or updates to discuss for a priority project milestoned for the upcoming WordPress Core release?
Any blockers or updates to discuss for a priority issue milestoned for the upcoming Performance Lab plugins release?
Any general blockers or updates to discuss for anything else? (open floor)

Example messages

Feel free to copy and paste these messages, or ignore them and write your own. These examples are here only for reference and are by no means a guideline or required to be used.

Meeting start

/here Welcome to the bi-weekly Core Performance <office-hours>!
Who’s around today? Even if you’re only lurking, please feel free to send an emoji to indicate your attendance. 👋

Starting with the first topic

One of the following:

Let’s start with the upcoming WordPress Core release <version>. Does anyone have any blockers or updates to discuss there?
Let’s start with the upcoming set of Performance Lab releases which is due <release-date>. Does anyone have any blockers or updates to discuss there? Who will be running this release?
Let’s start with priorities for the current WordPress Core milestone. Does anyone have any blockers or updates to discuss there?

Meeting end

And that’s it for today. Thank you for attending, and see you in 2 weeks!
</office-hours>

Posting the meeting summary

After the meeting, post a summary of the meeting to the Make WordPress Core blog. Ideally this should happen immediately afterwards, but no later than the same day.

The easiest way to get started is to clone one of the recent performance chat summaries to start the new post. You can find previous performance chat summaries under the “core-performance” tag. For example, start by copying this summary post.

In the new summary post draft, do the following:

Update the post title to reference the correct date of the meeting.
Update the post slug in the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. to also reflect the date (which unfortunately may not happen automatically after updating the title) and remove any unnecessary suffixes (like “-2”) from it
Update the link in the first paragraph to point to the first Slack message that started the meeting (which you typically sent yourself).
- You can get that link by right-clicking on the message in Slack and then “Copy link”.
Update the very last paragraph (the one in bold) to reference the upcoming meeting date. This is typically two weeks after the meeting that the summary is for.
Populate the sections for WordPress Core, Performance Lab, and Open Floor accordingly by summarizing the chat, or remove them if they were not covered in the meeting.
- You don’t have to paraphrase what was said in the chat. It is often sufficient to copy and paste essential messages from Slack and simply adjust minor bits (e.g. instead of “I think …” use “@… thinks …”.
- Make sure to refer to any specific people by their WordPress.org user name prefixed with “@”.
- Note that users’ display names in Slack do not necessarily match their wordpress.org usernames. You can use the URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org https://profiles.wordpress.org/SLACKMEMBERID to easily find a Slack user’s wordpress.org username. You can easily and find copy a user’s Slack Member ID by clicking on their name in Slack, selecting the three dots next to Huddle, and selecting Copy member ID.

Once you have drafted the summary, feel free to publish it right away. These summaries do not require a review. If it’s your first time and you would prefer to have someone review the draft, 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.” the #core-performance channel or feel free to DM one of the previous meeting hosts that have posted summaries in the past.

Optional recommendation: Set up the summary post draft before the actual chat starts. This way you have it fully prepared and can copy and paste relevant messages from the meeting while it is ongoing. This can help speed up the process, especially once you have gained familiarity with it.