Nearby WordPress Events

In an effort to grow awareness of WordPress community events like WordCamps and meetups, a group of us have been working to upgrade the WordPress News widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user., adding WordCamps and meetups, as Matt mentioned in his recent post. We’ve created a 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 (background) called Nearby WordPress Events for testing and iteration. It turns the existing News widget on the Dashboard into WordPress Events and News, with a short list of upcoming nearby events above the usual news items.

WordPress Events and News widget

Why?

The community that has been created around WordPress is one of its best features, and one of the primary reasons for its success, but many users are still unaware that it exists, and aren’t taking advantage of all of the resources that it makes available to them.

Inviting more people to join the community will help to increase its overall health, diversity, and effectiveness, which in turn helps to ensure that WordPress will continue to thrive in the years to come.

We think that wp-adminadmin (and super admin) is the perfect place to display these events, because that’s the place where almost all WordPress users are visiting already. Instead of expecting them to come to us, we can bring the relevant information directly to them.

How does it work?

In order to display events that are “nearby”, the plugin uses a determined location for the current user. If a site has multiple users, each one will be shown the events that are close to their individual location. The widget tries to automatically detect a user’s location, but they’ll also be able to enter any city they like.

The 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. and 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. event data for the plugin is provided by a new api.wordpress.org endpoint [source, documentation].

Feedback

We’ve solicited the Community team for testing and feedback and have made several improvements. Now we’d like to take it to the next level and get feedback from the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team, in preparation for a proposal to merge it into Core, perhaps for WordPress 4.8.

Specifically, we’d like to get testing and feedback about:

  • UXUX User experience: What is the user experience like? Is it easy to find a local event near you? Do you have trouble changing your location? Have we built the widget in an accessible way? (cc +make.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//design)
  • Location detection: Does the widget accurately detect your location? If not, be sure to report your approximate location at the time you started using the plugin/widget.
  • City search: Does it find the city nearest to you with the name you searched? How well does it work when searching in languages other than English? Character sets other than Latin? (cc +make.wordpress.org/polyglots)

The best place to file issues is the GitHub repo.

 

Kudos to everyone who worked to make this a reality: @andreamiddleton, @azaozz, @camikaos, @coreymckrill, @chanthaboune, @courtneypk, @dd32, @iandunn, @iseulde, @mapk, @obenland, @pento, @samuelsidler, @stephdau, @tellyworth

#nearby-wordpress-events