Category Archives: Meetings

Fellyph Cintra 11:31 am on July 4, 2025
Tags:   

Playground Meeting Summary: June 27, 2025

The WordPress Playground team convened on June 27, 2025, to discuss recent advancements, ongoing work, and future plans. Key updates included significant enhancements to Playground’s coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. functionalities, particularly around networking and Blueprints, along with improvements to the CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. and documentation.

Key Announcements & Highlights

Playground Enhancements

A major highlight was the default enabling of networking on playground.wordpress.net. This highly requested feature, now active by default, allows new Playground instances immediate network access, greatly enhancing its utility for various demos and use cases. This was made possible by performance improvements in the initial /wp-admin/ loading, specifically from PR #2296 and PR #2295.

Other significant Playground updates include Improved PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. Instance Handling, where the PHP Process Manager now offers better support for acquiring non-primary PHP instances(PR #2274), improving stability for ad-hoc PHP runs and resolving a race condition. Simultaneous Network Calls are now possible(PR #2286), allowing multiple, asynchronous network calls to run concurrently across co-existing PHP instances within the same web worker.

Blueprints v2 Runner Shipped

The Blueprints v2 runner (blueprints.phar) has been added to the @wp-playground/blueprints package. While the v1 runner remains the default for now, this addition paves the way for the next generation of Playground Blueprints.

CLI & File System Updates

The team also shipped several improvements to the Playground CLI and file system, including:

  • CLI Help Message Clarity with updated help messages for --mount-dir and related flags for better user understanding(PR #2287)
  • PHP_BINARY Defined to consistently define the constant when running PHP.wasm in php.cli() mode for compatibility (PR #2288)
  • Shared Filesystem Fix to ensure only NODEFS nodes are considered shared filesystems within the PHP Node environment, resolving a FS error 44 (PR #2300)
  • CLI Code Refactor where the parseOptionsAndRunCLI() logic was moved to run-cli.ts to streamline future development(PR #2297).

More Translations Added

Thanks to @shimotomoki for significant progress has been made on internationalization, with Japanese translations added to the”About Playground” (PR #2282), “Build” (PR #2290), and “Launch” (PR #2292) sections of the documentation. The team encourages further contributions from community members interested in translating the Playground documentation into their native languages.

Team Contributions

Team members shared their ongoing work and discussed various topics:

  • SQLite Driver Adoption: @janjakes is focusing on adopting the new SQLite driver and further testing 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 compatibility.
  • Blueprints v2 Polishing: @zieladam is polishing the Blueprints v2 for Playground CLI Pull Request. The team noted the potential for Playground CLI to run plugin tests, specifically mentioning the Plugin Check (PCP) plugin as a promising use case.
  • CLI README Update: @fellyph is adding a new README to the CLI, inviting collaboration for reviews.
  • OPcache Support: @zaerl is actively testing OPcache support and measuring performance, while also investigating an out-of-memory error. The discussion touched upon the potential performance gains and the challenges of debugging WASM memory issues.
  • Xdebug Support: Work on Xdebug continues, with a recent PR enabling it on Node 23. The goal is to extend support to Node < 23 and then to browsers, with exciting prospects for connecting Xdebug to Chrome DevTools.
  • 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./UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. Discussions: The team discussed the Playground web version’s menu structure, particularly the presence of two menus with similar options. While acknowledging the current discoverability benefits of the top-right popup, it was recognized that the Playground UI could benefit from further UX work, referencing existing “website redesign” issues on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/.
  • PHP Version Support: The team discussed the strategy for dropping support for older PHP versions (like 7.2) once WordPress core ceases to support them. The consensus was to likely drop support on the first major problem with that version, rather than immediately on day one of a new core release.

The meeting was productive and full of discussions around new features and improvements, until the next meeting. To keep the discussion going. Please join our #playground channel at wordpress.slack.com

Fellyph Cintra 10:50 am on June 23, 2025  

Playground Meeting Summary: June 13, 2025

The Playground team held its first meeting in a while on Friday, June 13, 2025, at 15:00 UTC. The discussion covered recent developments, contributor updates, and an open floor for questions.

Announcements

Several recent updates and resources for WordPress Playground were shared:

  • Workshops: Two recent workshops from 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 were highlighted:
  • Recent Developments: A June 2025 “What’s new for developers?” post detailed several Playground enhancements:
    • Direct support for data URLs in the blueprint-url query parameter.
    • The PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. environment now includes the Intl extension.
    • A new SQLite driver has been integrated, with more details in this post.
    • The CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. now supports mounting the current working directory.
    • Dynamic mounting of symlinked directories is now supported.
  • Major Update: A significant recent update also included 64-bit integer support, the exif extension, a Blueprint bundle format, and numerous stability improvements.

Contributor Updates

Team members shared their current focus:

  • @zieladam is concentrating on Blueprints v2, including the specification and an all-in-one-php-blueprints.phar runner that can work on any PHP web host. The next steps involve improving Playground CLI compatibility with native PHP.
  • @fellyph is in his first week of contributing and has been triaging issues. He is also looking into requests for contributor badges, documentation updates, a potential landing page for new users, and has submitted a fix for the mobile view.
  • @karthickmurugan noted he has been unable to contribute recently due to other project work but hopes to schedule time for contributions soon.

Open Floor

@janwoostendorp shared his positive experience with the WordCamp Europe workshops and has started writing automated tests for his Default Featured ImageFeatured image A featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. 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. He raised a performance question, noting that his tests take about 12 seconds to run in a CI environment, with roughly 8 seconds spent downloading a theme.

@zieladam explained that themes are not currently cached in the CI, but this will be resolved in Blueprints v2, which will implement an HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. cache for all resources, not just WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. This will result in a significant speed improvement once the Playground CLI is updated. As a temporary workaround for faster local development, he suggested using a local theme .zip file with a bundled reference in the blueprint.

Birgit Pauli-Haack 3:07 pm on November 29, 2024  

Hallway Hangout: Playground for agencies, Dec 6, 2024

Join us on December 6, 2024, at 14:00 UTC for an informal discussion on how agencies and product builders could use WordPress Playground for client work and showcase their products. The conversation will be kicked off by @karmatosed, and @zieladam. Others are welcome to participate and bring their ideas.

The conversation will cover, among other things,

  • How can agencies and product builders use Playground?
  • How do we let them know about it?
  • What’s not in Playground, yet but would be useful for agencies or product builders?
  • What’s the current direction of Playground and how can that wishlist be incorporated

The meeting is open to the public. The Zoom link will also be posted in the #playground channel on Make 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/. on that Friday morning. A recording will be available shortly after. Hope to see you all there!

Birgit Pauli-Haack 3:44 pm on November 22, 2024
Tags: ,   

Playground Team Meeting Summary – November 22, 2024

The Playground team met to discuss recent updates, ongoing projects, and community questions. (Slack script) facilitated by Birgit Pauli-Haack

Announcements

  • New Features:
    • Playground’s WordPress PR and 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/ PR tester can now be accessed via the three-dot menu, with a modal for PR number input. @ajotka and @bpayton
    • 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.-based Blueprints Editor, created by @ajitbohra, enables building Blueprints visually without JSONJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML..
  • Upcoming Hallway Hangouts:

Contributor Updates

  • Blueprints Development:
  • Database Support:
  • Playground Compatibility Tester Enhancements:
    • It now tests all 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/ themes and plugins for compatibility with Playground. Next step for @berislavgrgicak integrating a runner for continuous updates.
  • Data Liberation Efforts:
    • More PRs were merged and can be followed along on the tracking issue. Improvements to the next-gen importer include streaming data from WXR files, parsing markdown, downloading assets, resuming interrupted imports, and rewriting URLs. Upcoming work includes progress updates and handling complex WXR inputs.

Open Floor

  • CORS Proxy Update:
    • A new CORS proxy has been deployedDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. on the Playground domain, with plans to move it to a dedicated domain.
    • Contributors discussed the impact of the proxy move and the need to update documentation once the domain stabilizes.

Thank you to all contributors for your participation! Stay tuned for updates in Slack and on the Make WordPress blog.

#summary #meeting

Adam Zieliński 11:47 pm on October 28, 2024  

Playground Meeting Summary – October 25, 2024

The Playground team met to discuss recent updates, ongoing projects, and community questions.

Announcements

Contributor Updates:

Discussions:

  • @bph asked about a PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. deprecation message in a Playground setup, which turned out to be likely related to the TT5 theme. The issue will be further investigated asynchronously on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/.
  • The meeting time will shift to 2 PM UTC to better accommodate US time zones. Recurring meetings are now scheduled for the 2nd and 4th Friday of each month at this new time.

Shout-outs and Thanks: The team thanked @berislavgrgicak for facilitating the meeting for the first time and @bph for her increased involvement in developer relations for Playground.