I’m thrilled to share my first post here on Make WordPress! As the new Director of the WordPress Project, I’m excited to contribute to the ongoing work that shapes WordPress for millions worldwide. I also recognize the challenges ahead and the large shoes I’m stepping into.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve had the privilege of engaging in discussions with a variety of folks from across the community, hearing valuable ideas and some concerns. These conversations have provided great insights, and I’m eager to start diving deeper into the work ahead.
To foster continued open dialogue and collaboration, especially as I ramp up, I’ve scheduled office hours with Matt and myself. This will be a space to connect, share thoughts, and ask questions.
This will be an evolving format, especially to allow for different timezones, and of course I’m open to feedback—looking forward to continuing the conversation!
During 2021’s State of the Word, Matt revisited 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/’s timeline, what has been accomplished, and what is ahead of us. The project is at something of a halfway point, and I want to offer my unending thanks to everyone who has contributed and welcome anyone who wants to join our efforts. This post contains some goals for the year (and will be updated with links to individual team posts when I start to see them), but there are some things you should know first.
These are intentionally broad
There is more to WordPress’ success than the code we write or the 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. freedoms we support. While the goals below focus on shippable projects, I understand that supporting contributions (translations, testing, triage, 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), support, performance, etc.) are part of these goals.
These are intentionally incomplete
There are always small projects that arise over the course of the year. And there are big projects to move forward in pieces over the course of multiple years. This project is too big for me to see everything all the time, and I rely on the information from team reps and the vision from project leadership to help navigate any surprises.
If you don’t see a project here, keep in mind that there are many that are still valuable to the overall success of our work.
The Big Picture
2022 is all about committing to the co-creator relationship with WordPress users.
Drive adoption of the new WordPress editor – Following WordPress 5.9, our focus will be driving user adoption by making full site editing (and its tools) easy to find and use.
For the CMS – Get high quality feedback, ensure actionable tickets come from the feedback with collaboration from design as needed, and ship code that solves our users’ most pressing needs.
Invite more users and extenders to participate in the FSE Outreach program (10-12 calls for testing).
Host regular design-driven user testing (one test a week).
For the Community – Share our knowledge and resources in a way that inspires and motivates our users to action.
Invite more users and extenders to augment their skills through LearnWP.
Turn routine support issues into new evergreen content (10-15 pieces of canonical content using Learn, Docs, 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/, etc).
Translate high impact user-facing content across Rosetta sites (15-20 locales).
Host audience-specific WordPress events (10-12 by common language, interest, or profession).
For the Ecosystem – Prioritize full site editing tools and content across the ecosystem for all users.
Highlight 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. themes and plugins in the directories.
Provide tools/training to learn how to build block themes.
Improve the block developer experience.
Support open source alternatives for all site-building necessities – Provide access to open source elements needed to get a site up and running.
For the CMS
Update new user onboarding flow to match modern standards.
Integrate Openverse into wp-admin.
Integrate Photo Directory submissions into wp-admin.
Increase the number of social learning spaces (4 SLSs/week)
Block theme contribution drive (500 block themes in the repo).
For the Ecosystem
Update the theme previewer to support block themes.
Update the content & design across WP.org.
Update Polyglots tools to Improve the translation experience.
Create a developer-focused communications site.
Open Source stewards: Iterate on WordPress’ open source methodologies to guide and sustain long term success for WordPress as well as the overall open source community that we are part of.
For All
5ftF program expansion
Recruitment of future leaders in the community
Onboarding of current leaders in the community
Upstream contributions to other OS projects (PHPPHPPHP (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., JS, Matrix, or the like)
WordPress Project maintenance
Ancillary programs
Bonus: Preparations for WordPress’ 20th birthday
How can you help?
As I mentioned above, I know that our code isn’t the only measure of our success. If you already know what sort of contribution you’d like to make, you can check out this list of teams (with links to their community sites) and team reps. If you’re not yet sure, here are the areas that each team falls into:
Development, Technology, Code: CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./Editor, Mobile, CLICLICommand Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress./Tide, Security, Performance
Design, Product, UXUXUX 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./UIUIUI 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.: Design, Accessibility, Test, Triage
Community, Extending WP, Education: Community, Themes, Plugins, Polyglots, Training
Contributor Experience: 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., Docs, Hosting, Privacy
Communications: Marketing, Support, WPTV
A Note on Specialized Groups
A couple of coordinated efforts provide essential support to the progress of multiple teams.
Triage: The triage effort happens across multiple teams and has two purposes. One purpose is to make sure tickets are sorted and have all the elements needed for someone to work on them. The second purpose is to determine priority. Not everyone has the information to set priority, but anyone can help sort and replicate reported bugs!
Test: The testing effort also happens across multiple teams and has multiple purposes. One purpose is to validate bugs, bug fixes, and new features before they go to users. The second purpose is to bring continuous high quality feedback throughout the entire release cycle. A lot of that coordination happens on make.wordpress.org/test, but there are also calls to test during various points of the release process in the Core channel.
In 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. projects like WordPress, tracking progress through data is essential for informed decision-making, spotting trends, and improving efficiency. 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 2023, @matt emphasized the need for ‘project health dashboards,’ sparking the creation of a working group that includes @courane01, @nao, @peiraisotta, @harishanker (myself), and others. Over the past year, we’ve worked to bring this vision to life. Today, @courane01 and I are excited to announce experimental health dashboards for the Make/WordPress CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., Community, and Training Teams, along with an overview of WordPress 6.6 release statistics. These dashboards, compiled manually using tools like Bitergia Analytics, offer a snapshot of team performance.
This project, still experimental, seeks community feedback to refine and expand dashboarding efforts across more teams. You can check out the individual dashboards by following these links:
Based on the 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/ and wordpress_develop GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ repositories. The numbers have mostly skewed in favor of newly attracted developers, but there has been a recent spike in contributors leaving.
While the WordPress project has always had a good balance between new and inactive contributors, there is a clear increase in the number of contributors going inactive in 2024, as shown in our research.
The WordPress 6.6 dashboard shows a steady number of contributors (637), with 38% being new. In comparison, version 6.5 had 703 contributors, one of the largest recent releases.
Core Team contributions happen in spikes around WordPress releases.
Contributions are predominately by companies like Automattic, Yoast, GoDaddy, and 10up, with a reliance on sponsored contributors.
Core GitHub repositories maintain strong close/merge rates, but there’s a downward trend projected for 2024.
Contributor distribution is strong, with sponsored contributors supporting a majority of contributions. The team is currently focused on shipping version 6.7 and launching Gutenberg Phase 3.
Chart showing Learn WordPress Course users and enrollment rate. As of August 2024, almost 60% of users visiting course content have enrolled in courses. Note that course viewers has also gone up.
The Training Team has exceeded its projected goals, by achieving a video retention rate of 50% for their video content. and and a course enrollment rate of almost 60%.
Their Learning Pathways project has met its contribution goals, with high enrollment and course completion rates, as well as 90% learner satisfaction.
The team relies on GitHub for project management, with high engagement among contributors.
A high number of casual contributors indicates a need for more regular and core contributorsCore ContributorsCore contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. to ensure long-term team health.
We began this project by engaging with the WordPress community and gathering valuable feedback, which revealed the need for an automated dashboard tool. After extensive research, we selected Bitergia Analytics for its open-source nature and potential for self-hosting, ensuring digital sovereignty for the WordPress community. Bitergia offers customizable dashboards, GDPR compliance, and integrates with tools like GitGitGit is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/., GitHub, IRC, SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., Docker Hub, and more. Our Bitergia dashboard, linked to the WordPress GitHub repository, is currently private with access granted to @courane01, @harishanker, @peiraisotta, and @nao. This service operates under a basic plan sponsored by Automattic, costing €1000/month.
Informed by insights from Bitergia Analytics, @courane01, @harishanker, and @peiraisotta hosted project health hangouts in May to gather further feedback from the broader WordPress community. Based on that input, we developed pilot dashboards for WordPress Core, Community, and Training teams, which rely heavily on metrics for their work. However, Bitergia Analytics doesn’t currently support our tools such as HelpScout, Figma, TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/., SVNSVNApache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/., and GlotPress. To bridge this gap, we used alternative data sources like the WordPress 6.6 props list and contributor team data from the Community and Training teams to prepare these dashboards, alongside Bitergia Analytics.
What’s Next?
These dashboards were created as an experiment to assess their usefulness. Manually compiling the data is time-consuming and may not be sustainable. @courane01 and I invested significant effort into preparing them. If they prove valuable, we hope to encourage other Make/Teams to create their own and explore a project-wide dashboard, though this could be resource-intensive. Positive feedback would support continued development, including building custom tools or upgrading to a premium Bitergia plan for deeper data insights to support contributor teams.
Request for Feedback
Thank you for reviewing this project! Our long-term goal is to build automated, live dashboards for WordPress. We appreciate your feedback on the following questions as we attempt to refine our work:
Are these team metrics useful?
Should we consider additional metrics?
Should we continue creating similar dashboards in the future?
Can we automate this process, and if so, how? (We’re considering Bitergia.)
Are you interested in helping develop this further?
Please share your thoughts in the comments on or before October 7, 2024.
+make.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//core +make.wordpress.org/community +make.wordpress.org/training +make.wordpress.org/updates +make.wordpress.org/sustainability
Update: We have closed the call for mentors and mentees for the 2024 Q4 Mentorship Program cohort, as of August 26th, 23:59 Pacific Time. Thank you for the overwhelming response! The contributor working group will start evaluating applications from current and early applicants and will aim of finalize a group of mentors and mentees at the earliest. We hope to finalize our cohort by next week and plan to reach out to our selected mentors and mentees at the earliest by the week of September 16. Got questions? Drop a line to: wpcontributors@wordcamp.org or comment on this post with questions.
Following the success of our 2023 Q3 and 2024 Q1 cohorts, I’m thrilled to announce the official launch of the third WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program cohort, set for the final quarter of 2024. This program connects seasoned WordPress experts with newcomers, offering a fantastic opportunity for mentees to gain hands-on experience contributing to WordPress, while mentors share their expertise and improve their leadership skills.
Whether you are new to WordPress or looking to enhance your skills, this program offers a unique opportunity to learn from experienced contributors. Receive personalized guidance, develop your skills, and network within the WordPress community.
New to WordPress? Participating in this program may get you up to full speed as a contributor in a very short time — You’re strongly encouraged to apply!
Criteria for Mentors
If you have experience in WordPress development, design, community engagement, or any other WordPress-related area and wish to guide new contributors, this is your chance to make a significant impact. Through mentoring, give back to the community, enhance your leadership skills, and connect with emerging contributors.
If you have a project in mind and want to guide 4-6 mentees, this program is ideal. Learn more about project-based mentorship.
The formal call for mentors and mentees for the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Q4 Cohort has closed as of August 26th, 23:59 PT. We will be reaching out to selected/paired mentors and mentees by the week of September 2 September 16.
Program Goals and Details
Our program connects seasoned WordPress experts with newcomers. Mentees will gain hands-on experience in contributing to WordPress and grow their network of contacts within the global WordPress community, while mentors share their expertise and develop their leadership skills. Over six weeks, mentors and mentees will collaborate, learn, and contribute within a diverse, global community of talented contributors. Mentees will also get opportunities to directly contribute to WordPress 6.7 (the next and latest WordPress release) and also gain an inside view of WordPress contributions.
We are offering early contribution opportunities for those interested and available to spend an extra month. These opportunities include dedicated training and may lead to leadership roles within the project. You can indicate your interest in the application form.
Selection Process
Mentors and mentees will be selected based on various criteria, including mentor availability, participant interest, individual profiles, and adherence to WordPress Community Guidelines. Our goal is to include as many mentees and mentors as possible in this cohort.
Timeline
Application Opens: Thursday, August 16, 2024
Application Deadline: Monday, August 26, 2024
Selected Mentors and Mentees Announced: By September 9, 2024
Program Duration: October 7 to November 15, 2024 (6 weeks)
Benefits
For Mentees: Receive personalized guidance, develop your skills, and expand your network within the WordPress community.
For Mentors: Give back to the community, enhance your leadership skills, and connect with emerging contributors.
Over 55 mentees have graduated, and 35 mentors have participated in this program thus far in two cohorts, with excellent results. Curious to learn more about the mentorship program and its impact? Check out the following blog posts:
YouTube has become an essential platform for sharing complex ideas with a diverse audience, and our WordPress YouTube channel is no exception. Since 2023, we’ve experienced a 6x increase in monthly views and engagement, driven by the growing availability of WordPress content. Since October 2022, when WPTV content began syncing automatically with YouTube, to the design iterations in 2023 and our participation in the Nonprofit YouTube Partner Program—removing ads from our videos—our channel has become a trusted source of information and inspiration.
In keeping with our commitment to meeting the needs of both current and future users, I’m excited to announce that Jamie Marsland will be taking on the management of the WordPress YouTube channel. Jamie’s extensive experience in the WordPress community and his passion for empowering creators through this medium makes him the ideal person to lead our efforts in expanding and enhancing our YouTube presence.
With over a decade of experience working with WordPress and training others, Jamie brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to this role. He will oversee the creation of high-quality content, ensuring our channel remains a valuable resource and a source of inspiration for WordPress enthusiasts worldwide while inspiring and empowering other 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. content creators to further the movement.
For those attending WordCamp US, say hello to Jamie in person! And for everyone else, please join me in welcoming him to this new role as we embark on an exciting new chapter for WordPress on YouTube.
Update: The 2024 Incident Response Team cohort training is postponed from Q2, and will instead be held during Q4 of 2024.
Summary: Submit your Incident Response Team nominations by February 14, through the button below.
The WordPress Project Community Code of Conduct helps WordPress community members and contributors understand how we aspire to work together in “official” WordPress spaces. When people see behavior that doesn’t match the Code of Conduct, the Incident Response Team can assist in determining if the Code of Conduct has been breached and addressing situations that are in question of doing so. The Incident Response Team does not actively search for or monitor behavior. Instead, this team is a resource to the community for when things don’t go as expected. The Incident Response Team handbook captures the team’s current practices.
The first Incident Response Team cohort was onboarded to the team in December 2022, and it’s now time to train and onboard a second cohort of Incident Response Team members!
The work of taking and responding to incident reports requires a high degree of professionalism and emotional intelligence, and it is often invisible and difficult work. Because of this, individuals are vetted and need to successfully complete a 6-session, cohort-based training prior to joining the WordPress Incident Response Team. Read on for all the details!
How to Join the WordPress Incident Response Team
To best serve the community, Incident Response Team members need to be able to remain calm when faced with difficult situations and possess exceptional listening and communication skills. When responding to incidents, they need to be able to maintain confidentiality* wherever possible and think objectively.
Because of this, new members join the team through a nomination, vetting, and cohort-based training process. Please complete the form below to submit your nomination of who you think would be a good candidate for this team. Nominations are due by February 14.
Note: The Community Team also offers online training for incident response, covering topics like expectations when doing this work, how to take incident reports, and how to respond to reports. This training is available on Learn WordPress for everyone who is interested.
Nominations will go through a vetting process similar to how the Community team vets organizers. For Incident Response Team members, vetting will include:
Making sure they are in good standing with WordPress
Familiarity with WordPress and 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. practices is a plus
Perfunctory review of social media
Checking for compliance with the GPLGPLGPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples.
Reviewing any examples of excellent communication
Further, it is important that the Incident Response Team be diverse to reflect our global community, and this will be a consideration for the final make up of the team.
It is our hope that Incident Response Team members can commit to being on the team for one full year. Depending on the volume of incident reports, they can expect to contribute anywhere between 2 to 15 hours a month. In addition, to help Incident Response Team members be well prepared, they are expected to successfully complete the required training prior to joining the team.
Training for the Incident Response Team
While anyone can complete the incident response training on Learn WordPress, potential Incident Response Team members will complete additional training alongside peers in a cohort. The cohort will meet synchronously six times (one hour-ish each), across the span of seven weeks, to discuss Incident Response Team training modules and practice through role play. There will be optional, highly recommended office hours and additional opportunities to practice learned skills.
In addition, Incident Response Team members will be required to complete DEI training that is applicable to WordPress’ global contexts.
The time commitment for this training will be approximately 2-3 hours per week at minimum, across seven weeks. Each session will be offered twice, to accommodate APAC, EMEA and AMER timezones.
As with any team, we will continue to bring on new team members over time. We aim to train and onboard a new cohort every 12 to 18 months.
Questions? Comments? Feedback?
What questions or feedback do you have? Share them in the comments below.
*A note on confidentiality: While the WordPress project tries to work transparently and in public spaces as much as possible, for the safety of community members, incident response needs to be treated confidentially wherever possible. However, anonymized, annual reports are published.
It’s been exciting to see how this community of contributors has come together in the past year to rebuild so much of what we lost in the wake of covid. It has not been an easy journey, but it has certainly been rewarding. With this renewed foundation, I invite you all to join me in focusing our energy on engaging and attracting users of closed-source products.
A Quick Caveat
There are always unexpected projects that arise over the course of the year. And there are big projects to move forward over multiple years. This project is too big for me to see everything all the time, and I rely on the information from team reps and the vision from both Matt as project lead and Matías as technical architect to help navigate any surprises.
Keep in mind that even if a project isn’t listed here, many unmentioned ones still contribute significantly to the overall success of our work.
The Top Focuses
Projects
There are three focuses for our projects this year:
CMS: Test, iterate, and ship Phase 3 of the 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/ project
Community: Continue to support the community through learning, events, and mentorship of current and future contributors
Ecosystem: Address the difficulty in moving platforms through the Data Liberation project as well as streamline existing review processes across repositories
Obstacles
Growth: Our new installations are stagnant year over year. The time to encourage the use of 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. software solutions like WordPress is now. Our project is pro-business and pro-commerce, and we’re committed to aiding in our users’ success by providing access and opportunities to those who might not have them otherwise.
Differentiation: Our event series needs to grow past a “one size fits all” strategy. With more advanced topics and more focused events, we can meet our community where it is—in a moment where time is valuable and joining an event should clearly help them reach their goals.
I believe that the WordPress software, ecosystem, and project can be the open source alternative of choice to any proprietary system you need to get your business going. And I need your help to get us there.
How Can You Help?
Code isn’t the only indicator of our achievement. If you already know what type of contribution you’d like to make, you can check out this list of teams (with links to their community sites) and team reps. If you’re not yet sure, here are a few teams and the areas they fall into:
Development, Technology, Code: CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./Editor, Mobile, CLICLICommand Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress./Tide, Security, Performance
Design, Product, UXUXUX 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./UIUIUI 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.: Design, 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), Test, Triage
Community, Extending WP, Education: Community, Themes, Plugins, Polyglots, Training
Contributor Experience: 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., Docs, Hosting, Privacy
I’m excited to announce that the contributor working group has now prepared a first draft for a project-wide mentorship program! Read on to find out more.
What is the Contributor Mentorship Program?
The Contributor Mentorship Program aims to provide cohort-based and 1:1 mentorship to new and aspiring contributors. The program is intended as a pathway to help new contributors find their way into WordPress contributions.
It aims to set new contributors up for success by providing them the necessary guidance, skills, and knowledge around the project and helping them make their first contributions.
In its ideal form, the program will:
Help and inspire its participants to make ongoing contributions to the WordPress project
Explain the different areas of contribution in the WordPress project to participants
Help participants to successfully select their area of participation in the WordPress project
Provide necessary guidance and community connections that will help participants be successful with their contributions
Help participants find success in their career through successful 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. contributions
A Brief Overview of the Program Plan
The flowchart below offers a high-level pictorial representation of the program flow, which I have tried to explain in brief through this post. A detailed description of the program can also be found in its white paper prepared jointly by the working group.
A call for mentees (participants) goes out and from the pool of applicants, 10 mentees are selected (primarily new contributors). Mentors are handpicked from a pool of experienced contributors and working group members. Selected mentees and mentors answer a pre-event survey to gauge their knowledge, interest in contribution areas, and confidence-levels. Mentors will receive specific guidance on guiding mentees through the program.
We invite all Make/Teams to take active part in this initiative to bring contributors to their respective teams. Interested teams can propose their team members as mentors to the program.
A short cohort of new contributors (not more than 10 mentees) and experienced contributors (not less than five mentors) are to be brought together in a dedicated space (potentially a SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel in Make/WordPress) to work together for a certain period (about four weeks or one month)
During this time, mentees will learn pre-prepared training material (existing contributor courses in Learn WordPress).
Each mentee will be assigned a mentor depending on multiple factors such as their locale, time zones, contribution interest, etc. Mentors and mentees will have at least two 1:1 mentoring sessions (over text chat and/or video) throughout the course of the mentorship.
Additionally, the group will have at least three group mentoring sessions on broad contribution topics (over text or video). Each week, mentees will also report their progress in the Slack channel and will have the space to interact with each other too.
Once mentees are done with the broad contributor training courses in Learn WordPress (ideally in the first two weeks of the mentorship program), they work with mentors to identify contributor teams of their choice (if not clear already before joining the program) and go on to make a certain number of contributions (depending on the team they select). They will have completed these contributions by the end of the mentorship program. Optionally, should they wish to, mentees will create a three-month contribution and learning plan with their chosen mentor.
Once all the courses and training sessions are complete, and once mentees have made their initial contributions, they graduate from the program, and the mentorship program wraps up. Mentees will be recognized for their contributions in public on an official WordPress space.
Once the program concludes, Mentees will continue working with the Make/Team(s) of their choice, and will be connected to multiple team members from their chosen team for ongoing guidance as they continue their contributor journey.
Post-wrap-up, mentees can continue to reach out to their cohort and mentors for ongoing guidance and support.
To find out about the proposed mentorship program in detail, please check out its white paper by clicking the button below:
The program will be considered extremely successful if:
At least 80% of the participants of the initial cohort graduate from the program (they complete the course, required lessons, make their initial contributions, and create their three-month plan)
At least 50% of the participants make ongoing contributions to WordPress as per their contribution plan, three months after completing the mentorship program
Other areas to measure impact:
Improved confidence after the mentorship program (measured through surveys)
Improved knowledge after the mentorship program (measured through surveys)
Feeling of belonging and commitment to WordPress (measured through surveys)
Action Items and Request for Feedback
Request to Make/Teams: The contributor working group invites Make/WordPress Teams to join our pilot program as mentors. If you contribute to a Make/Team and wish to be involved in building this program, please express your interest in the comments.
First of all, what do you think about this program in its current form? Please share your feedback in the comments of this post.
You will notice that this post only explains the program in brief. The working group has prepared a white paper that explains the program in detail. Please review it and share your feedback – either as comments in the document or as comments on this blog post.
Does this program excite you? Would you like to be a part of building a mentorship program for WordPress? We could use your help – Join the WordPress Contributor Working Group – participate in one of our mentorship chats, comment on this post expressing your interest, or pingPingThe 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.” me in Make/WordPress Slack (I‘m @harishanker over there).
Big thanks to all members of the contributor working group in helping draft this proposal!
The WordPress 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. project adopted its Community Code of Conduct in mid-2022. The Code of Conduct was forked from the Contributor Covenant, a template commonly used in many open source communities.
In an effort to better communicate our project’s Code of Conduct as widely and consistently as possible, an abbreviated version of the full Code of Conduct has been committed to the .github repository under the WordPress organization. Repositories with this name are treated differently by GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/, with all supported files being used as the defaults across the entire organization.
If a repository has its own CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file, that file will be used instead of the new, default one. Pull requests have been submitted to remove all repo-specific CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md files from unarchived WordPress organization repositories. Once merged, the default CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file will be displayed. A full list of all related pull requests can be found on WordPress/.github#1.
If any maintainer feels the abbreviated or full length Code of Conduct does not adequately address their concerns, please reach out to the Community Team before merging a repository specific CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file.
As a reminder, the Code of Conduct is a living document. Edits can be suggested by emailing support@wordcamp.org.
Props to @desrosj for all the help with this, from everything GitHub to writing large parts of this post.
In recent days, we (Matrix contributors @ashfame, @psrpinto, and myself) have been closely evaluating and engaging with testing, feedback, and discussions stemming from this recent post about the transition to Matrix by the end of the year.
First, I would like to acknowledge the great work Matrix and WordPress contributors did this past year. The explorations and progress made have been admirable, and I appreciate all the community collaboration and participation in testing and providing valuable questions and feedback.
As you may have heard during yesterday’s State of the Word Q&A, the migrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. 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 is being put on hold after careful consideration. Several factors, as mentioned by Matt, have contributed to this decision:
We, both Matrix contributors and project leadership, have listened and taken into account the concerns shared regarding 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) and usability. While significant progress and efforts have been made to address issues during the past few weeks, especially around accessibility, we understand that the current experience provided by Matrix clients is not yet where the WordPress project and community expect for their communication and collaborative needs.
On the other hand, we are concerned about the recent developments and license changes announced in the Matrix ecosystem. WordPress prioritizes tools and platforms that align with the project’s principles and values, and this includes considerations around licensing implications when it comes to choosing or contributing to software. In this case, the switch to the Affero General Public License (AGPL) and the requirement of signing a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) to contribute.
This decision allows for reassessing the current situation and ensuring that any transition aligns with WordPress’ standards.
Moving forward
As a result, Slack will remain the primary chat platform for the WordPress community, with no changes expected by the end of the year.
We found that the Slack-Matrix bridge and integrations, such as Chatrix, are still valuable for contributors and will keep working. This allows for flexibility and the continued use of the achievements made so far, especially to help onboard new contributors. We encourage Make teams to further explore and take advantage of all the opportunities that Make team chat pages have to offer.
Thank you for your support and understanding while we navigated to this decision. If you have any further thoughts or questions, please share them in the comments.
