jordesign 10:53 am on February 19, 2024
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X-post: Data Liberation Next Steps

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Julia Golomb 9:17 pm on February 2, 2024  

Incident Response Team: Call for Nominations

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.

By Feb. 14: Nominate a WordPress community member to the Incident Response Team

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 Source Open 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 GPLGPL GPL 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. 

The vetting will be done by myself (@juliarosia), @adityakane, @angelasjin, and @samsuresh, and @chanthaboune will give final approval.

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.

Angela Jin 3:08 pm on January 26, 2024  

Updates from the Incident Response Team

In recent months, the Incident Response Team (IRT) has received excellent questions about its role and responsibilities and its approach to confidentiality. To that end, this post aims to share some current thinking with an invitation to ask further questions and provide your feedback. 

About the team

In WordPress spaces, including Make Team blogs, the Making 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/., and official social media accounts, all participants are expected to adhere to the Code of Conduct. This is upheld by all WordPressers in their interactions and efforts to de-escalate situations. 

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. Our approach favors mediation, de-escalation, and correction over punishment, promoting positive conduct.

The Incident Response Team is not for policing tone or intervening in every disagreement. Disagreements, when productive, can be beneficial, reflecting our shared commitment to developing great software and a strong community. This page captures the team’s current practices. 

Recent challenges

The Incident Response Team was formed in late 2022 and handled a wide range of reports in 2023. In doing so, there were a number of challenges: 

  • Reports received were increasingly more nuanced and difficult to take clear action on. 
  • There was a higher volume of reports, especially toward the latter half of the year.
  • Scheduling meetings for reporters, reported people, witnesses, and IRT members was challenging and often slowed down the process. 

In light of this, the IRT members came together in January to explore how to improve our current practices. Identified areas for improvement include: 

  • A handbook to publicly document existing processes
  • Improved training for new members and ongoing training opportunities for current team members
  • Improved communication, such as sharing how long inquiries might take with all parties. 
  • Onboarding more members to the Incident Response Team

How you can help the IRT and WordPress Community

The Incident Response Team strives to keep identifying details of incident reports confidential to support those hesitant about reporting and desiring a swift resolution process. However, we have seen more reports and their outcomes being made public beyond the IRT’s annual reporting. The IRT asks that before you do this, please consider the possible unintended consequences.

Publicly shared reports attract a wide range of feedback, from well-informed to uninformed perspectives. This can cloud the original issue, complicating the IRT’s understanding and response. Moreover, the influx of opinions can hinder maintaining an objective approach.

Sharing outcomes without appropriate context can also be problematic. It can lead to misuse of information, exacerbating division and mistrust within the community. 

In all cases, the IRT encourages careful consideration before making such details public to avoid these issues. While some conflicts should be public, not all conflicts need such visibility. 

The Incident Response Team will update its processes and create a more thorough handbook (V1 published here). Further work on this handbook will be done in the #incident-response channel and posts published on https://make.wordpress.org/project/ to invite your feedback and questions. 

Lastly, a gentle thought. Our Code of Conduct outlines the behaviors we aim for and explains the steps to be taken if these are not met. Remember, we’re all human and should treat each other with kindness and respect. If a situation becomes challenging, taking a brief pause is helpful. This allows us to approach these moments with a clear and respectful mindset, seeking solutions together.

Thank you to the Incident Response Team members for helping to write and edit this post!

Hari Shanker R 9:13 am on January 24, 2024
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Proposal: Updates to Five for the Future from the Community Summit

Last year, I published a blog post requesting feedback from contributors on how to improve the contributor journey of WordPress. The post, which garnered insightful feedback, was followed up by an innovative session on Five for the Future at the recent WordPress Community Summit. What follows below are actionable recommendations for our program based on Community Summit discussions to achieve our collective goal of making the WordPress contributor experience the best it can be.

Effort Impact Analysis

In view of our contributors’ precious volunteer time, we can only implement the most impactful ideas from Summit Discussions. Experienced Five for the Future contributors @nao and @jeffpaul joined me to find answers to this problem by diving deep into the Community Summit Discussion notes and dividing them into four sections as the first step: increasing program awareness, matching contributors with projects, improving participation, and addressing problems. We then rearranged the discussion points based on these action items in the following Google Doc for clarity. 

Next, we further divided the ideas into four discrete categories: Process Improvement, Visualization, Sponsorship (of contributors by companies), and Mentorship. We then listed all the ideas (and their corresponding categories) in an ‘Effort Impact Matrix graph’ with ‘Effort’ on the X-axis and ‘Impact’ on the Y-axis. Last, we shortlist a final set of action items that are impactful, actionable, and can be achieved successfully in a shorter timeline. You can find a visual representation of our Effort/Impact Analysis in the image below, where different action items are listed in boxes on the quadrant where we felt they would best fit.
The boxes with thick blue borders are the action items we identified as most likely to have a significant impact and are achievable in 2024. You can also find the source slide of this matrix in the following link.

Effort/Impact Analysis for the Five for the Future Next Steps

Final List of Recommended Action Items

Here is our final recommended list of action items as depicted in the list below:

Process Improvement

  • Implement the Make/Contributor Tool into contributor recruitment for Five for the Future.
  • Establish constant communications with current and new pledgees to help them stay active (automated email check-ins for existing pledges and email onboarding for new pledgees)
  • Improve Onboarding Processes for Make/Teams – Identifying and sharing impactful projects for teams, standardizing handbooks, simplifying team handbooks, and onboarding.
  • Treat 5ftF Sponsorship like 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. sponsorships with similar benefits.

Sponsorship

  • Task-based or project-based contributor sponsorships, where companies sponsor contributor time for a certain task or project in a Make/Team.
  • Project/release-based contributor sponsorships where companies could sponsor external contributors for a limited time as they work on specific projects.

Visualization

  • Create team health dashboards for all Make/Teams, which help contributors identify impactful projects and areas that need help (Already underway).

Mentorship

  • To Provide dedicated mentoring and onboarding for Five for the Future companies and self-sponsored contributors. 
  • Helping companies set up contribution teams and onboarding sponsored contributors to Make/Teams
  • 1:1 or group mentorship to help self-sponsored contributors onboard effectively.

Next Steps and Request for Feedback

Our next steps are to incorporate feedback to refine Action Items, publish a program direction page on the Five for the Future website, and recruit contributors to focus on these items.

We would love to have your feedback before we finalize these action items and proceed toward implementing them in 2024. 

  • Do you have any feedback on the recommended action items for Five for the Future implementation? 
  • Which among the suggested ideas could have the highest impact, in your opinion? 
  • Are there any missing ideas from the Community Summit Discussion in the recommended list that you strongly wish to implement?
  • Are you interested and available to help with any of the recommended action items?

Your feedback goes a long way in improving our project’s health and long-term sustainability. Please leave your comments on the post by February 7, 2024 February 16, 2024.

The following people contributed to this blog post: @harishanker @nao @angelasjin @jeffpaul

#5ftf, #five-for-the-future

Josepha 7:43 pm on January 19, 2024
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Big Picture Goals 2024

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 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/ 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 Source Open 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: CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./Editor, Mobile, CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress./Tide, Security, Performance
  • Design, Product, 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./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.: Design, AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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: MetaMeta Meta 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
#goals, #planning
Angela Jin 1:21 pm on January 15, 2024  

Incident Reports 2023 Recap

The Incident Response Team (IRT) receives and handles incident reports following the Community Code of Conduct. This handbook page includes information about the Incident Response Team, its members, and insight into their processes. 

If you witness behavior that doesn’t align with the project-wide or events code of conduct, please contact any IRT members, email reports@wordpress.org, or submit a report via this form. The IRT is also available for general inquiries, clarifying how incident response functions within WordPress.

Per Incident Response Team practices, this is an annual recap of reports received in the prior year, the method of reporting, and the action taken after investigation into each report. 

The Incident Response Team received 17 reports in 2023, 5 of which were resolved through mediation*. The remaining 12 reports are summarized as follows:

Report #1

Reports were received between December 2022 and January 2023 alleging that local community members influenced 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.’s organizing decisions to benefit particular companies and individuals.

Outcome: The inquiry process revealed insulting and personal attacks, public and private harassment, influencing and inciting harassment, retaliation, and discrimination. As a result, the Incident Response Team took several actions. The WordCamp was cancelled, a Community deputy and mentor role was removed, and involved companies were banned from sponsoring WordPress events for one year. As the issue also extended to the local 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., all organizers were removed from their roles and asked to complete Meetup organizer training before becoming an organizer again. 

Due to the unique nature of this situation, an announcement was shared with the community.

Report #2

In May 2023, reports alleged gatekeeping behaviors by a longtime Meetup organizer. 

Outcome: Following the inquiry, the Incident Response Team issued a warning and provided guidance to the meetup organizer.

Report #3

A WordCamp in late 2022 did not provide a thorough financial transparency report despite Community Program Supporters reaching out to request information. After giving significant time for the lead organizer to provide the requested information, the issue was escalated to the Incident Response Team due to the missing funds. 

Outcome: The Incident Response Team deduced that ample time had been offered to the individual to provide the information. As such, and due to the financial severity of the situation, the Incident Response Team took steps to remove the reported person from organizing roles. The individual eventually provided the requested information and was able to regain roles. 

Due to the unique nature of this situation, a reminder and clarification around the process were shared with the community. 

Report #4

In July 2023, reports alleged financial fraud by a WordCamp. 

Outcome: This report is still under investigation.

Report #5

In September 2023, reports shared that a member and speaker of the local community was directly insulting other community members and expressing derogatory comments.

Outcome: The Incident Response Team’s inquiry learned that the individual’s behavior did violate the Code of Conduct. They were removed as a speaker from an upcoming event and issued a warning. 

Report #6

In August 2023, a WordCamp attendee found an unwrapped condom hidden in the roll of toilet paper at the venue. 

Outcome: Incident Response Team members reported this to the venue, requesting increased security. 

Report #7

In September 2023, reports alleged hostile and aggressive behavior from one community member to another. 

Outcome: After an inquiry, the Incident Response Team issued a warning to the parties involved with a reminder of the Code of Conduct in place for all events. 

Report #8

In September 2023, reports alleged insulting and derogatory comments from one community member to another.

Outcome: This report is still under investigation.

Report #9

In August 2023, reports alleged harassing and inappropriate behavior from one community organizer to another. 

Outcome: This report is still under investigation

Report #10

In September 2023, community members reported an unfair banning from wp.org and requested additional review. 

Outcome: This report has gone through an investigation and is now working toward a resolution.

Report #11

A WordCamp attendee reported frustration with the organizing team. 

Outcome: In investigating this further, the Incident Response Team determined that there were misunderstandings on the attendee’s part and that their behavior (continuous contacting and harassing of event organizers) was inappropriate. The attendee was asked to refrain from attending the event. 

Report #12

In December 2023, a WordPress event organizer reportedly used threatening and rude language towards a Community Event Supporter. 

Outcome: This report is still under investigation.

Thank you

The Incident Response Team is essential to supporting our community, providing a straightforward method for members to report and address incidents that go against the WordPress Community Code of Conduct. A huge thank you to the Incident Response Team Members this year for their tireless, often invisible work to ensure a safe and respectful environment for all participants. 

Incident Team Members this year include Aaron Campbell (@aaroncampbell), Aditya Kane (@adityakane), Angela Jin (@angelasjin), Cate DeRosia (@mysweetcate), Devin Maeztri (@devinmaeztri), Destiny Kanno (@piyopiyofox), Evangelia Pappa (@evelina87), Harmony Romo (@harmonyromo), Hari Shanker (@harishanker), Isotta Peira (@peiraisotta), Julia Golomb (@juliarosia), Katie Richards (@katiejrichards), Kevin Cristiano (@kcristiano), Megan Rose (@megabyterose), Naoko Takano (@nao), Rocío Valdivia (@_dorsvenabili), Sam Suresh (@samsuresh), Timi Wahalahti (@sippis).

And thank you to the reporters and the individuals who assisted along the way. Reporting can be scary, especially if you’ve experienced an uncomfortable situation. At the same time, reporting allows for the opportunity to address and prevent unwelcoming challenges in the future. 

Looking forward to 2024

The Incident Response Team will continue to do this critical work in 2024. Additional activities will include refining and adding to existing training for Incident Response Team members and inviting and onboarding new members to the team. If you have questions about the Incident Response Team’s work, join us in the #incident-response 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/. channel or email us at reports@wordpress.org.

*Mediation is when the involved community members, with or without support from the Incident Response Team, work through issues by discussing them. This is a common and effective step to take before any enforcement guidelines. The Incident Response team appreciates being notified of these situations in case they escalate. 

Hari Shanker R 9:30 am on January 12, 2024
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X-post: Call for Mentees & Mentors: Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #2 (2024 Q1)

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Josepha 7:18 pm on December 22, 2023  

WordPress End of Year Celebrations!

Amidst the myriad events and releases that get highlighted during the course of a year in WordPress, countless other projects and contributions quietly move us ever closer to our goals. The items listed below were submitted by team reps and are just a selection of the projects that their teams are proud of. Give it a read to see a few hidden projects and celebrate how much we did together in 2023!

  • Training
  • Openverse
  • Themes
    • Themes waiting queue is so short!
    • Provided ideas and support for 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. theme authors and encourage them to develop more block themes.
    • Super props for the work @greenshady did on the Theme Handbook Overhaul. It will help other block theme authors to create more powerful block themes.
    • Create Block Theme 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: improvements to site editor integration, font management, export options, theme metaMeta Meta 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. data management, asset management and improvements to the 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.
  • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
    • As of Oct 9th, 304 new Core contributorsCore Contributors Core 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. got commit props (In 2022, there were 269 new contributors by Oct 1, 2022)
    • Shipped releases:
      • 3 major releases: 6.2, 6.3, 6.4
      • 6 minors: 6.4.1, 6.3.2, 6.3.1, 6.2.2, 6.2.2, 6.2.1 (+ security releases)
    • Core Editor
      • Phase 3 Collaboration foundational early work underway in Gutenberg
      • Phase 2, Finale: this year saw big improvements in the writing and styling and customization experience including Do everything in the Site Editor (content, templates, and patterns together in the Site Editor), Openverse in the editor, distraction free mode, fonts management, block theme previewer, and more
      • Greatly enhanced performance in both the front end and the editor
      • Global styles, Footnotes, Real-time editing/sync engine, Enhanced writing flow, Data Views
      • HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. tag processor and APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., Interactivity API and Lightbox, Custom Fields and Block Bindings, Partially Synced Patterns, Layout API
      • PHP:
        • Got 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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. 8.0 and 8.1 out of “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. support”
        • Dropped PHP 5.6 support
      • Focus to triage and resolve old tickets
      • New Features such as the plugin/theme update rollback, framework for storing revisions in post meta, etc.
      • 5,761 = TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets + 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/ PRs
  • Community
  • Polyglots
    • Launched Translate Live using the WordPress playground, this vastly lowers the barrier for translating plugins with inline translation
    • Launched the Tour plugin, which was first created for GlotPress, and made it available on all Make P2s
  • Five for the Future program
    • Ended the year with a 45% increase in companies pledging to 5ftF and 24.53% increase in confirmed contributors
    • Launched the contributor working group and the pilot edition of the mentorship program, where 11/13 mentees graduated, with at least 7 continuing to make ongoing contributions to the project as active contributors, and with an 89% course completion rate!
  • Meta
  • Design
    • WordPress 6.3 – The release introduced a refreshed site editor focused around letting you build and deployDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. your entire website from that one section alone. It also introduced a new process of WordPress release micro-sites, already on top of Google’s search results for the keyword WordPress 6.3, and we are continuing this release microsite tradition for subsequent releases. WordPress 6.3
    • Block themes – These themes are 100% pure block editor and uses core blocks only, making them incredibly compatible, fully editable in every aspect by users, and trivial to switch to and from.
    • 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/ – Launched a refreshed WordPress.org Showcase, a solid and evolving design system, and numerous other sections of the site, including WordPress Remembers & Memorial Profiles, WordPress 20th Anniversary, Documentation, Developer Resources, Developer Blog, Blocks, Playground, and Events.
  • Extenders
    • Developer Blog – the Developer Blog has settled as a great and official reference for extenders to complement the info provided by the handbooks and to help extenders navigate through the news in the WordPress project relevant to them
    • Better onboarding experience for block developers (Block Editor Handbook) – The Getting Started chapter has been completely revamped, providing a better learning path for newcomers. This new content has been complemented with a new hub of examples for block development block-development-examples (with live previews and downloads) referenced in the handbook.
    • Theme Handbook Overhaul – The first five chapters have been completely rewritten and published (Getting Started, Core Concepts, Global Settings and Styles (theme.json), Templates, Features). A new hub of examples for theme development block-theme-examples (with live previews and downloads) has also been shaped to complement the info of the Theme Handbook.
  • Marketing
    • Expanded live event coverage for the three major WordCamps and SotW, streaming live to 4 platforms, live-posting, publishing numerous supporting materials, and netting millions of views. Fun fact: Our video content has roughly 7.5M views this year.
    • Published over 3k posts across 8 platforms, including Tumblr (new this year), and grew our audience by over 100k followers.
    • Promoted all releases and 22 episodes of the WordPress Briefing
    • From Blogs to Blocks campaign for the WordPress 20th Anniversary
    • The Contribute page and the brand new Join page as part of our work to refine the Contributor onboarding process
    • The Get Involved tab in the Admin Dashboard driven by @OGlekler that launched in WordPress 6.3
  • Playground
    • Adoption
      • Calls for testing, like this one for Font library
      • ~60k users visited the Playground website, ~13k downloaded wp-now and the VS Code extension.
    • Integrations
      • Live previews in the WordPress plugin directory
      • Live demos in the Block Editor Handbook
      • Live Translations enable instant translation contributions
      • All WordPress core PRs now get a Playground-powered live preview link
      • Plugin Editor Block for Gutenberg was proposed by a community contributor
      • wp-now and the VS Code extension provide a single-click local WordPress dev env
      • Local directory sync turns the in-browser Playground into a development environment. Built a WordPress plugin with no local WordPress and just Playground
      • 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/ integration – submit PRs directly from Playground, “host” it in a repo, share a live preview link to the Playground you’ve built
    • Explorations started

Congratulations!

I said it at State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/., and it’s worth repeating here—what a time to part of the WordPress project! We have built so many foundations and processes, and battled our way through twists and turns in the road. And yet, we find ourselves poised for an incredibly exciting year in 2024. The work you do, unseen as it feels, makes possible the powerful and abundant ecosystem that has grown around this CMS we all love.

I look forward to seeing what else we can do from here. Cheers to 2023, and welcome to 2024!

Alex Kirk 3:57 pm on December 12, 2023  

Update on Matrix Migration: Pausing the Transition

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 migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. from 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/. 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 accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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.

Matt Mullenweg 1:13 am on December 12, 2023  

Overflow Questions from State of the Word 2023 in Madrid, Spain

Will put them in comments. We need something like Tumblr’s Ask feature. We had tens of thousands of streamers across Facebook and Youtube! Here’s the cleaned-up video with chapters: