Yearly Archives: 2012

Tom Auger 10:58 pm on November 14, 2012  

Summary: Engaging / Retaining New Community Devs

Merged discussions:

  • I can’t get no traction: how community devs can get involved in TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. culture without giving up their day jobs? – Jonathan Davis
  • State of the idea of Component Leaders – Konstantin (?)
  • How to help contributors in a good way 3.4-ish – Marko H
  • What can we do to better engage/retain new contributors? – Tom Auger

Attendees

  • Jonathan Davis (discussion leader)
  • Peter Chester
  • Chris Olbekson
  • William Davis
  • Aaron Campbell
  • Chris Jean
  • Marko Heijnen
  • Scott Taylor
  • Michael Pretty
  • Jon Cave
  • Ryan McCue
  • Nikolay Bachiyski
  • Justin Kopepasah
  • Simon Wheatley
  • Kailey Lampert
  • Konstantin Kovshenin
  • Brad Williams
  • Mike Hansen
  • Ptah Dunbar
  • Tom Auger
  • Alex King
  • Andy Peatling
  • Andrew Norcross
  • Helen Hou-Sandi

Many conversations carry on for a long time with no end in sight.

One of the problems is that code is often too toxic to proceed. Toxic code can be addressed by unit tests

One of the problems is that you submit a ticket and it just dies.

How should the process of contributing work? Trac? It’s hard to figure out who’s who on Trac. Once you know it’s easier to move tickets through.

Tickets die if coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. devs don’t buy in to tickets. It takes persistence and day job time to get your work pushed.

There’s a difference in motivation of fun vs. business. How do we support customer driven, time sensitive contributions?

Is that the right motivation? Dangerous to promise/use contributions as leverage with clients.

There are detailed tickets that are awesome and perfect. And other times when the detailed ticket is hopeless and instantly denied.

It would help if Trac profiles had ‘specialties’ so that people who are specialized in areas get routed.

Nacin: We used to have component owners, but found that this stifles contribution. I’d like to discuss building teams for components. This would help for quick response to tickets.

How do you fix a stalled ticket? Communication is key. Even if the communication is “we’re looking into it”. If 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. are your blockers, we do bug scrubs in IRC so we can move tickets forward regularly.

Nacin: We have the weekly project chat, but it’s designed for status checks and not ‘come with your ticket’. The key now is, come into IRC and pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” someone. You don’t have to ping me directly, just drop a ticket and see who chats:

I didn’t even know this stuff. It should be more clearly written out. Each P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org needs the essential info at that top of the page.

I’d like to see more chatter from us on IRC. We need to reference the IRC chat in tickets.

  • Biggest change for me was subscribing to Trac emails.
  • How many emails?
  • A lot.
  • That doesn’t seem realistic as a solution.
  • It gives you a better perspective of how much is happening and where.

We’re all contributors. We have limited time. Spending it licking a firehose is maybe not the most effective way to use our time. I think we need to know where our tickets / components are going.

For every ticket that needed a patch, there is a difficulty. First time contributors, start with ‘easy’ tickets. This made it very easy to do your first contribution.

I don’t think the problem is finding a ticket, it’s getting the ticket you want to get passed.

What about a signal that is basically, “I’m new here, I want to submit a patch. Can someone hold my hand?”

What can we accomplish in the near term?

  1. P2s need headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. with info about how to get involved.
  2. Dev handbook needs to be more prominent including how to submit a patch.
  3. Come up with an ideal flow to eventually be a roadmap to better Trac/submission/patch process

Triaging tickets could be a perfect medium task. How do we define triage? This is a bit more modular issue.

  • Bug reporting
  • Enhancement / Feature requests
  • Bug gardening

Action Item: P2s need header with info about how to get involved

Jen 7:45 pm on November 13, 2012  

Missing Discussion Notes

Hi everyone. Now that everyone has recovered from the summit (and/or the subsequent trip to Pressnomics) it’s time to follow up on all our promises to each other at the summit. To that end, we’re trying to get all the discussion group notes posted and action items coordinated. There are some discussions that don’t seem to have any notes:

  • The Downside of Theme Customizers and 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. Options Screens: Oversimplification
  • 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/ Profiles and Transitioning to bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org 2.X
  • What challenges do people face with release schedules and management?
  • Education Tools

If you were in one of these discussions and would be able to produce a summary of who was there and what was discussed (and what the action item was), that would be outstanding.

I’ve drafted a page of collected action items from the discussions. This is basically a public draft right now, covered in notes for follow-up, but I wanted to make it public sooner rather than later so that it’s clear we are actually following up on things. Once the working notes are cleared off and people are assigned to follow up on various things, I’ll add the page to the nav of this site.

Remkus de Vries 11:11 am on November 13, 2012  

GlotPress running for 1.0 candidate

In Attendence: Nacin, Remkus, Wesi, Dian, Zé, Nikolay, Scribu, Stas, Simon, Catia

Current issues with GlotPress

  • No translation memory; no fuzzy matching; no roadmap for v1.0Should we continue to use it or switch to an external solution? (doesn’t need to be in 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)

    GlotPress could become a WP 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., instead of using BackPress (low priority)

    • need to fix caching counting;
    • need to fix usability issues related to the translation workflow (existing tickets)
    • confusing translation suggestions
    • hard to do bulk operations
    • etc.

    Proposed workflow:

    • submit translation
    • approve translation
    • proofread translation (and lock string)

    Other issues:

    • 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. borks when project doesn’t have any strings
    • Need to find a GlotPress maintainer
    • Should make a commit blitz to get more people interested (possibly at next international 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.)
    • Contacted ReGlot maintainer (GlotPress fork)
    • Don’t say CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. strings are frozen when they’re not; it’s fine to have only 2 days before release of truly frozen strings
Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) 8:18 pm on November 6, 2012  

Summary: Core UI team discussion

Participants: Helen Hou-Sandi (leader), Dave Martin, Sara Cannon, Drew Strojny, Tom Auger, Ronnie Burt, Andy Peatling, Amy Hendrix (note taker)

Notes:

General question for contributors : how did you get started, were there pain points, things they wish had been there; for non-contribs: what would help you get started?

  • One person got derailed by figuring out the step after the dev chat — what’s already being worked on, make a commitment to an initiative but then what’s the communication channel?
  • overlapping efforts can be discouraging
  • we need to be better at keeping ALL discussions public (IRC or make/ui) instead of falling back to private conversations
  • we aren’t always good at saying “this is what we’re currently working on”
  • lone dev still happens
  • suggestion for newer contribs: get comfortable with IRC, learn to use the bots (the .tell command is brilliant!), ask in public rather than one person’s email.
  • Goal: get better at building small teams that play on individual strengths
  • Dave: works for Automattic, wanted to contribute, but found it super-intimidating even as an experienced dev + Automattician.
  • We can keep a list of who’s working on what projects (Make P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org is important for this, not just IRC convos), what issues are being worked on, what needs help
  • Helen: wants to improve weekly posts on make/ui – combine with meeting notes – what we did this week, what has new patches, what needs work, what to do this week

Discussed improving the wp.org site. Challenge: how to open-source portions of things (not just a 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. group challenge); we want better design and feedback for .org, but currently the workflow is that one person (Otto, Nacin, Scott) gets a request and might have time to implement it.

This is also a challenge for the team’s work in general – we have a huge range of things we touch (graphic design, 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. design, user testing, front-end engineering, 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), QA), and people with a lot of different skillsets. How can we get better granularity, and get better at breaking things down?

  • work iteratively! (this is a comfort level thing as well as a project management thing) — don’t work for a month getting something perfect, be comfortable submitting something that’s partway there but will still need more.
  • question about dealing with ticket “ownership” – do you jump in on something that people are already working on and risk stepping on toes? or do you avoid it when it might need more people working on it?
  • Make sure to give props/recognition for everyone (including non-coders)

We should have guidelines – but as general principles, almost like mission statements, rather than strict checklists. This is also useful as a decision-making tool for handling UI questions/requests.

Challenge: we don’t have a committer in our group, and have to get the attention of one that isn’t fully involved in what we’ve been discussing. We sometimes land things prematurely, back out, things get in that we didn’t intend… looks bad, breaks our processes.

Reaching out to new contribs and non-developers:

  • can we use Make P2 to post specific patches for discussion requests?
  • can we find one-hour tasks? matchmakers? people like to be asked.
  • dedicate time to training contributors (maybe in office hours?) – how to use trunk, make/apply patches, etc.

A lot of non-developers have been interested in UI work but get scared off by technical aspects OR stick around for discussing mockups but then leave at feature freeze when there doesn’t seem to be as much place for designers etc. Those would be good times to work on improvements outside the specific release – ongoing tasks, wp.org improvements

Lightning round: One improvement wanted per participant:

  • curated list of things to work on x2
  • public posting of the scope of the group
  • clarity about communication channels, who’s on what
  • channels for non-devs. we have a lot of connection to (design, a11yAccessibility 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), …)
  • testable patches
  • manage TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. better – use keywords, use them consistently (needs-ui-testing)?
  • ways to attract & keep non-developer contributors
  • preplanning for future projects (even after feature freeze – discussion dies when the feature is done or the mockup discussion is wrapped up)

Action item:

  • Review + publish a version of the contributing to UI doc in the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. contributor handbook (draft, can be abbreviated for now)
Christine Rondeau 5:38 pm on November 6, 2012  

Summary: Let’s improve the Codex

Participants: Andrea_R, Siobhan, Kailey, Dougla, Syed, Erica

Nobody loves the codex.

The codex is not useful if it doesn’t have good documentation

There are people in charge of the codex?

People are afraid or don’t feel competent enough to contribute? We need to reduce fear?

Some people are working independently and reverting changes.  It’s hard to know what people are doing. Some changes are reverted, which is a bit strange and worrisome.

The codex was put in place but simply exploded and lost it’s usefulness.

It would be great to split it from user to developer.

Things are wrong with the codex:

  • New users get freaked out by code
  • The structure of the pages needs to re-done.
  • Examples are needed. Functions, and code snippets.
  • Examples are sometimes wrong and poorly documented.
  • Notes in code would make it easier for people to understand.

Documentation can be quite varied, It tries to teach and also documents.

The search needs to be done all the time because of lack of organization.

the way the codex is indexed in Google, it’s loaded as secured and often breaks in Chrome.  Can we look into fixing the canonical links so there’s no SSLSSL Secure Socket Layer - Encryption from the server to the browser and back. Prevents prying eyes from seeing what you are sending between your browser and the server. Link.

We should have a user manual for beginners.

The front page needs to be re-organized. User vs Dev.

The front page could be mocked-up quite easily.

Who are the people who are responsible for the Codex. Who are these independent people.

Some stuff is not documented and need more work.

Every release, there should be new pages that get set up for them.

Perhaps a mentorship program could be put in place, so that more people contribute.

The Codex is huge. Right now, we’re just doing damage control.

People are paid to work in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., but why not have fundraising for finding a way to take responsibility for that?

A reward or recognition function should be put in place so that people are rewarded for contributing.

If there’s a person paid to edit, then who is in charge, and can others still contribute?

The multilingual stuff is very spotty and translation is very difficult.

One suggestion is how to tackle this. A suggestion is to just start from scratch and present it a better way,

The relationship between the writers and developer needs to be improved.

Core developers need to check the box “needs codex”.

Should we allow video in the codex? The videos need to be stripped down and can not be branded.

@Rarst has come up with Query post — which could work for the Codex.

Separating the documentation and removing the function. Better search.

Visualization for loops and all sorts of diagrams could be brought in.

Glossary – The codex has one but it’s not done right. We would then need 2 glossaries, one for users, one for devs.

Users, learners, developers

Sorting using taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. and alphabetized.

Media Wiki for developer docs

WordPress could be used for developers.

It would be nice if you could check a box, user and only see the user stuff. Vice versa.

The user guides and theme handbook could be phased out for users.

The user guides are web based only from now. If it’s turned into a pdf, it should be timestamped and updated on a regular basis.

The user manual could be added to the dashboard.

A roadmap for the codex should be put in place.

The codex is lacking in best practice information. security, apis, themes, etc…

The codex needs to be inter-inked to all the various handbooks.

Action Item: 

Road map for the Codex.

Simon Wheatley 3:57 pm on October 31, 2012  

Summary: Multi-language Plugin(s)

Re the action for me (Simon Wheatley) to 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. my multi-language 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. as part of the “i18n improvements” session.

The Babble multi-language plugin we wrote for and used on Free Speech Debate, is now available 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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/ at https://github.com/simonwheatley/babble. The plugin handles translating posts in all post types and terms in all taxonomies, though the translation of terms badly needs a workflow. Translation of widgets and menus is currently not covered by the plugin, and in the future I’d like to see a much more “work queue” style system for the translation teams in the various languages.

Please feel free to comment, raise issues, fork, submit pull requests, etc.

If you like the approach of using custom post types and taxonomies to store the translations, it’s also worth looking at the Multi-Language Framework plugin by HackLab.

Jen 11:58 am on October 30, 2012  

Today: Co-working, Shirts, and BBQ

Officially the summit is over, but about 40 or so people are sticking around until later this week to continue the in the spirit of the event.

Co-working

Most people have expressed interest in working together over the next couple of days, either working on the action items from yesterday’s discussions, working on getting 3.5 closer to completion, working on some other collaborative project, or just catching up on missed work from yesterday in the company of the wp folks. The Jitterbug opens at 8, and people are welcome to work there to get the fast wifi (tell the staff you are with the summit and they’ll give you 10% off). We also have a number of cottages that we rented for the team reps and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team to stay in, so those could potentially host some action as well.

Shirts

The shirts are here, and in my car waiting to be handed out to everyone who didn’t grab theirs last night. Unfortunately, I locked my keys in my car last night, and “emergency roadside assistance” told me to call back after 8am because there was no one open yet. So, I’m guessing I’ll be able to get me, my car and the shirts over to the Jitterbug closer to 9:30 than 8 (though cafe staff will have opened and be putting away all our stuff from yesterday). If you have to leave before I can get them out of my car, we will mail it to you this afternoon if you leave your address. Once the car has been cracked, shirts can be picked up at the Jitterbug.

BBQ

Don’t forget about Ryan Duff’s BBQ tonight! He really does need to have a count of how many people will be there, though, so if you are planning to attend but haven’t let him know yet, please do so.

Mark Jaquith 10:34 pm on October 29, 2012  

Summary of Afternoon Discussions

John James Jacoby: WordCamp.org

Action item: 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. the base theme, and then plugins that we use so people can contribute to them

  • Talked about pain points that organizers have for using WordCamp.org

Andy Stratton: Commercial Plugins and Quality Control

Action item: Should push people in support forums to the right place

  • Kill switches?

Brian Layman: How can developers with small plugins make money and be legit?

Action item: Show top downloaded, recently added (6mo?) plugins on the 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. repo to promote new authors

  • Plugin stores often do allow 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. plugins
  • Many reasons why it might be better to release it on your own: customers are your customers not theirs.
  • Freemium is a workable model but donation really is not
  • Should approach established plugin companies establish a relationship and see if they want to publish your plugin.

Cristi Burcă (Scribu): Future of MultisiteMultisite Multisite is a WordPress feature which allows users to create a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. Available since WordPress version 3.0, Multisite is a continuation of WPMU or WordPress Multiuser project. WordPress MultiUser project was discontinued and its features were included into WordPress core. Advanced Administration Handbook -> Create A Network.

Action item: wp-signup.php converted to theme templates, domain mapping in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.

  • There are two main use cases: untrusted users, groups of sites
  • Focused mainly on the second use case
  • Hard to share data between sites (though switch_to_blog() is faster now)
  • Long term goal: better support for multiple networks
  • Should set up a team for handling multisite tickets in TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.

Tom Wilmot: How WP Businesses can Give Back

Action item: Mailing list for agencies to combine resources on contributing

  • Many businesses want to give back
  • Agencies might be good at tack

Mike Adams: JS

Action item: Blog more on make/core under JS tag

  • Why are people less proficient in JS
  • Codex and handbook improvements
  • More unit tests

Daryl Koopersmith: CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. future

Action item: roadmap for core to allow for those other use cases, and have theme review team recommend using the customizer in core

  • Not just in theme switching but outside that
  • Post preview, site creation, onboarding

Michael Fields: Pain when theme switching

Action item: Push findings to community and make plugin to bulk associated featured images to post, and core fix for widgets

  • Widgets get lost
  • Featured images might be required but missing

Mitcho: Plugin performance and security

Action item: Individual plugin reviews on 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/, and Example of a bad plugin, checking of syntax errors pre commit

  • We really need three approaches: education, reviews, automation
  • Capture the flag competition?

Simon Wheatley: Abandoned plugins

Action item: Discuss and define policy for taking over a plugin by another author

  • Difficulty of reaching plugin authors
  • Forking plugins
  • Merging patches
  • Support levels for plugins? Bug, product, user queries?
  • Advertise plugins for adoption
  • Recognize a plugin as a fork

Sara Cannon: WordPress and Women

Action item: Positive code of conduct, encourage women to speak at local meetups

  • General tech problem, not just WP
  • WP Community better than most communities
  • Still want to have a positive code of conduct

Aaron Jorbin: Meetups

Action item: 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. organizers made authors on make/events

  • Could share remote programming
  • What programs work and which don’t?
  • Sustaining membership

Peter Chester: Updates

Action item: differentiate between security, major, minor releases

  • Opt in vs opt out
  • Plugin or theme upgrades
  • Security vs major vs minor
  • Ability to do rollback painlessly
  • APIs to trigger an upgrade
  • Plugins reverted when WSOD on upgrade
  • File verification
  • Data migrationMigration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies.
  • Plugins specify major/minor
  • More information on make/core — point by point plan
Ryan Duff 8:16 pm on October 29, 2012  

Tuesday BBQ

I will be hosting a BBQ event Tuesday evening at 62 Captains View. Food should be ready by 5-6pm hopefully. Pulled pork BBQ and rolls will be provided.

If you wish to participate, please leave a comment below so we know about how many to expect. Also, we’re in need of sides, etc… as well as plates, napkins, and plasticware. If you can help out and bring something please leave a comment below so that others know what items are covered. We can coordinate rides to the store if you need to run out and grab something or if you need a ride Tuesday evening.

Jane offered to donate a few cases of beer, but otherwise it’s BYOB.

Please come hang out, talk WordPress and enjoy some BBQ.

Mark Jaquith 4:44 pm on October 29, 2012  

Summary of Morning Discussions

Notes by Mark Jaquith and Brian Layman

Aaron Jorbin: 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)

Action Item: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//accessibility which will talk about successes we’re having and ways people can get involved

  • Also talked about increasing involvement of accessibility experts and ease of testing of patches.
  • Need for default themes to be good examples of accessibility.
  • 2013 should have the #1 goal of accessibility.

Helen Hou-Sandi: 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. in WP Action Item:Review the draft handboook on UI processes, decisions, philosophies and publish it.

  • Talked about communication and how to be collaborative in the development process
  • With a large pool of developers already, how to we attract and retain designers contributors?
  • Discussed pain points & doing weekly summaries on the UI blog.
  • In the P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org posts they will summarize meeting notes but will also present advancements and news and links from around the web for discussion.

Chip Bennett: Theme review team

Action Item:Better document the workflow for theme review to make that process more transparent and consistent.

  • talked about workflow, consistency, timelines

Siobhan McKeown: Improving Handbooks

Action Item:Recent rockstars will be immediately to include non-coders

  • A standard format should exist for the handbooks
  • WordPress.org profiles need to be updated to include many more areas of contribution

Ben Metcalf: Managed WP Hosts

Action Item: Formalize methods of communication between the core teams about problem plugins.

  • The lists of problem plugins that each host has should be communicated with core
  • A standardized definition of “Managed WordPress Hosting” is perhaps needed as it means different things.
  • Discussed WordPress.org/hosting

Mitcho: Making WP global

Action Item:make./global Site with a forum, and

  • Discussed where the international conversations occurs
  • Profiles should list the languages in which people work with

Nacin: i18n improvements

Action Item:Theme updates destroy translation files. This must fixed and a solution is currently under dev now.

  • Languages into core
  • Multibyte into core
  • Will be open sourcing Simon Wheatley’s multilingual WordPress code

Mitcho: Using WordPress as a framework

Action Item:Implement a stability index for our APIs like Node.js and create a development philosophy page on the codex.

  • What is the philosophy of dev in WP cycle & APIs: Should it be users first or devs first?
  • Core use cases or other use cases?
  • New things built into core should be built as 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. and shipped as a plugin
  • ForWordPress, not BackPress

Peter Chester: Contributing to Core without it being a Full Time Job

Action Item:Put a headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. on P2 themes telling you what to do to contribute to that area

  • Discussed how to not quit your day job and get business buy in to improving the core.
  • Licking a firehose is not a sustainable working model
  • Lots of mailing lists, lots of information. It is too much for a non dedicated dev to fully follow contribute effectively.
  • Could put together teams around components, modularize the communication
  • Core commits rely too much on serendipity. Hard to get a commit through without talking to the right people at the right time.
  • Should architect a workflow to increase efficiency.

Mike Schroeder: Improving Deployments on WordPress

Action Item: Create a codex page that lists the popular ways to deployDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. and discusses options that are available

  • Two problems: users being able to easily test changes, and roll back. Devs being able to push from localdev to staging to deployment.
  • Files are mostly a solved problem. Talked about GitGit Git 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/ and WP Stack. Will partially solve the issue.
  • Content is the main issue at this point.
  • There are probably many solutions available that were not released to public and these should be discussed.

Andrea Rennick: WordPress CodexWordPress Codex Living online manual to WordPress.org https://codex.wordpress.org/

Action Item: A roadmap will be created, separating different use cases for the codex

  • Codex is a mess and a mix of perspectives
  • User, Dev and end user sections need to be seperated
  • No best practices page
  • Too much stuff is missing
  • We should focus on getting data up on the Codex
  • Relates to handbooks

Remkus DeVries: Transparency of the WordPress Foundation

Action Item:Publish make/events subcommittees list

  • The foundation revolves around 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.
  • Discussed WordCamps & Foundation
  • Talked a lot with Andrea about guidelines
  • Better ways to re-word guidelines that make them more clear and explain the reasons behind them
  • Talked about make.wordpress.org/events which started but did not get followed up on

Trent Lapinski: Theme Functionality vs Plugins

Action Item:Codex page for standards, containers for common functionality, better communication

  • Themes sometimes have functionality better suited for plugins

Isaac Keyet: Mobile Apps

Action Item:Make a page that describes the apps, their place in the ecosystem, and their goals (for potential contributors)

  • Different experience from the web
  • built on native device capabilities
  • Offline usage: easier in apps than on web
  • Better communication between 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. devs and mobile devs
  • Weekly chats happening now
  • Moving forums over to wp.org main site
  • Who owns mobile apps and develops them? WP.org? Automattic?
  • It’s okay for “third parties” to have specific functionality in the WP mobile apps.
  • Make it easier to fork the apps for specific hosts.

Alex Mills (Viper007Bond): Plugin dependencies

Action Item:continue the discussion (too long for session)

  • Themes and Plugins both need it

Jared Smith: 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.

Action Item:Improved resources around GPL topics

  • Split licenses were discussed
  • Talked about GPL distribution
  • Spirit of law vs letter
  • User interests vs dev
  • community vs commercial
  • uniform application of guidelines
  • IP protection, copyright, trademark, etc
  • Have businesses embrace the GPL