Author Archives: Siobhan

Siobhan 8:20 pm on July 22, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 6

I’ve now answered just over a hundred support topics on the forums. This may not seem a lot to some of the more experienced mods, who seem to be able to answer a hundred in an hour, but we’ve all got to start somewhere and I’m happy with the problems that I’ve helped to solve and with the feedback I’ve received from users.

In addition to this, helping out with support has helped me to increase my knowledge of WordPress, hone my own skills, and of course, has made me really appreciate the WordPress community as a whole. There’s such diversity in people’s disciplines, backgrounds, and skills, I feel that there is something that I could learn from everyone.

A major thing that I will take with me from this internship is that contributing to CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. isn’t the only important thing you can do to give back to the community. Support really does play a big part in making WordPress what it is.

One of the first people I met at 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. UK last week wasn’t a developer, but a complete beginner to WordPress. She attended Mike Little’s “WordPress for Beginners” talk and went to the Happiness Bar, at the end of the weekend she said she’d gained “the WordPress bug.”

WordPress has always been built with the user in mind, and it’s arguably this that has given it its edge over other open-source CMS solutions in the market. Support plays an important role in helping to maintain this user-focus and in attracting new people to the community. I’m glad to be a part of it. 🙂

I’ll be watching the live stream at WCSF this weekend and will be attending the Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. on Sunday via IRC. Hope all of you who are lucky enough to attend in person have fun, and I look forward to seeing what comes out of the Contributor Day.

Siobhan 9:04 pm on July 15, 2013  

Fifth Weekly Update

Hey everyone. Another quick update:

I attended Word Camp UK in Lancaster this past weekend. Lancaster is a beautiful city, and the organisers did a brilliant job in choosing the venue. There was plenty of positive feedback in regards to the talks too and I definitely learned a lot.

It was great to meet people from such a wide variety of disciplines all using WordPress in different ways: I met marketing managers, bloggers, developers, designers, trainers, and support staff. It feels good to be part of such a diverse community, and I look forward to meeting more of you at future Word Camps. 🙂

Siobhan 11:56 pm on July 8, 2013  

Support Internship Update: Week 4

Last week I hit a bit of a rocky patch work-wise. However, after a weekend of rare sunshine and GB sporting success, followed by some words of encouragement from my mentors in our catch-up today, I’m geared up for a productive week. Here are some things I have planned:

  • One of the original goals of my internship was to help with the on-boarding process of new contributors by creating documents and training materials. I’ll be concentrating a little more on this goal now that I’m a few weeks into my internship and more familiar with how Support works.
  • In terms of offering help on the forums and the IRC channel, I’m going to try to branch out of my safe-zone and help more with topics like multi-sites and installation.
  • I’ve recently been approached regarding a project to get rid of the last bits of English found on the Welsh version of WordPress: https://cy.wordpress.org/.  Any tips on internationalisation and localisation would be much appreciated.
  • I’m also looking to join the Theme Review Team this week.
  • My first 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. is this weekend! If you’re about in Lancaster for WordCamp UK, please do come and say hi to me.

As always, any comments or thoughts on what you think I should be doing with this internship are very much welcome. Have a good week all. 🙂

Siobhan 7:50 pm on July 1, 2013
Tags: gnome opw, support internship   

Two Weeks Down, Onto My Third…

Hey everyone, just a quick update this week.

Things are going well with the internship: I’m learning so much from helping others on the forums and it’s great being able to give back to the community.

I was hampered slightly in my first couple of weeks due to migraines, but have been feeling much better the last couple of days. So hopefully you’ll be seeing me about much more this week. 🙂

Additionally, I’d like to say that I’m very grateful for the time that people have put into commenting on my posts and helping me out so far. I’ll be at 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. UK next weekend and it would be good to meet some of you in person, let me know if you’re going!

#gnome-opw, #support-internship

Siobhan 8:42 pm on June 24, 2013
Tags: , , internship, opw,   

Week One Of My WordPress Internship…

So many posts! Where to start!? The sheer amount of unanswered posts in the Support forums was a bit daunting at first. My first week as a WordPress Support intern was all about getting myself accustomed to the forums:

On my first day, I spent three and a half hours racking my brain and creating all manner of complex JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. to eventually solve an error in a user’s jQuery. It turned out that it was a very simple fix (the user was calling the wrong selector) – it shouldn’t have taken me nearly as long as it did to spot this.

I fell into this trap of spending too long on one problem several times throughout the week. I’ve soon realised not to leave it so long before reaching out for help or moving on from a post.

At the end of my first week, I feel as though I am a little quicker at spotting bugs in other people’s code and better at identifying the forum posts that I’m able to answer.

Week two: I’m going to continue with forum support and will also be contributing to the Codex.  Any advice/tips would be much appreciated. 🙂

P.S: I missed the weekly IRC Support chat on Thursday (sorry!) but will make sure I’m at the next one. Look forward to speaking with some of you then.

#forums, #gnome, #internship, #opw, #support

Siobhan 10:35 pm on June 17, 2013
Tags: , internship, opw,   

Support Internship: Introduction

Hey everyone.

I’m Siobhan. I’ll be interning at WordPress this summer as part of the Gnome OPW. My internship will be centred around support (forums, training, documentation) and my mentors are Mika Epstein and Hanni Ross, with Jen Mylo and Andrea Middleton acting as program administrators.

A little about me: I’m from Barry, South Wales and studied Computer Science at the University of Reading. Last year, I was lucky enough to spend a few months working as a developer at a digital agency in Florence, Italy – it was here that I started learning more about and getting involved in Free and Open-Source Software. I have since gone on to work on various WordPress projects on a freelance basis.

I feel very lucky to have this opportunity to get involved with and give back to the WordPress community.

I’ll be posting updates on my internship here every Monday for the next three months, and you’ll also be able to find me lingering on the #wordpress, #wordpress-sfd, and #wordpress-gsoc IRC channels.

As a final note: I’d like to wish the other seven WordPress GSoC/Gnome OPW interns a great summer. Good luck everyone!

#gnome, #internship, #opw, #support