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Weekly Meetings
As well as discussing support issues here on the blog, we use Slack for group communication.
Our weekly meeting is held fortnightly on Thursday at 20:00 UTC, with agendas published below. The next will be at Thursday, 20:00 UTC(your time zone) in #forums on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
Tag Archives: weekly chat
Marius L. J.
2:14 am on March 17, 2020 Tags: weekly chat
Many countries are starting to experience the Daylight Savings Time (DST) changes these days, and although a lot of teams change their meeting time when this happens, the support team hasn’t done so for many years, and will keep it’s 17:00 UTC time slot.
Adjusting the meeting format a little
Although a pre-existing weekly time slot, we had no published agenda this week, and just winged it. This turned out to be a popular format, as it allowed for more users to get a word in that would normally feel compelled to sit idle by when an agenda existed.
In light of this, we’ll be looking to do an informal agenda-less meeting regularly, likely once a month, to help spur further such good conversations.
Upcoming changes to WordPress 5.4
The newly introduced full screen editing by default that’s slated for WordPress 5.4 was discussed at length, and although it’s inclusion in the release is still up for debate, we will plan for a scenario where it is included.
The primary concern is users feeling lost, how do we help them find their way back to their usual flow, and the desire for a simple solution to users.
It was mentioned, but has since been discovered to be incorrect, that a keyboard shortcut would let you toggle the mode, this is not the case as of this writing.
Pre-defined replies
The support team has a list of pre-defined replies for regularly occurring scenarios (available at https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/contributing-to-the-wordpress-forums/stock-answers/) which got updated this past week to allow for easy copy-pasting, and also got expanded with a new entry.
Old topic notifications
Discussions about how to handle older topics which may or may not be relevant followed suit, and one of the better ideas that came forth from this discussion was to add a notice, much like plugins does for older plugins, that information in this topic is more than X times old, and may not be accurate any more.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of our broader community from Sweden, Russia, Bangladesh, and India took part in the lively discussions this week, and a thank you for that, as broader views are unimaginably valuable!
One who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger.
BetaBetaA 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. 2 is out as of yesterday.
The Beta Tester pluginPluginA 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 has had an update to make beta testing easier and more obvious. RCRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. (Release CandidateRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge.) is scheduled for March 3rd. Marius (@Clorith) requests that support volunteers continue testing and making notes for any stumbling blocks that users might hit to be added to the “Master List” when the release is out.
The Site Health feature will include a new dashboard widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user., so be aware that users might find it and be confused as to its significance. Also to be aware of is the Calendar widget markup is changing. Tara (@t-p) asked about apply_shortcode and what the difference is, if any, to the old do_shortcode. While it is currently simply an alias, we should be encouraging the usage of the newer apply_shortcode going forward to match documentation and best practices to prepare the ground for the eventual deprecation of do_shortcode.
The discussion wandered off into the weeds at this point, so @Clorith brought us back to the path with the next agenda item:
International Liaisons
Each week we check in with the international teams. All reports that came back indicate no major issues, although the Swedish forum has seen at least one user with a completely wiped site, and Yui ゆい (@fierevere) of the Russian forums noted they have also seen a spike in hacked sites. There have also been cases reported in the English forums. Marius mentioned there have been a couple of high-profile plugins with security vulnerabilities in the past few days, which could be related. Watch out for ongoing issues with these.
Open Floor
There’s been a lot of activity around some plugins. While sharing information about ongoing issues is good, we need to make sure we remain neutral and keep things professional.
Tara asked about ThemeGrill as to whether the problems are fixed. Version 1.6.2 includes the relevant changes required to mitigate the issues. Yui ゆい reports that Duplicator has also been fixed for similar related issues. Joy asked about whether the WP Importer was impacted; Marius stated that there are no known issues there. James (@macmanx) points out that we’ll be seeing threads about these issues for some time yet, considering the number of sites impacted.
There was a good, albeit wandering into the weeds again, discussion about automatic updates and users updating manually or not. Also mentioned was backups and their importance. There was a suggestion that the Site Health feature could highlight the importance of updating WordPress and installed plugins and themes.
WordPress betaBetaA 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. 1 has been released (https://wordpress.org/news/2020/02/wordpress-5-4-beta-1/). Marius (@Clorith) requests that support volunteers test this release so that we’re ready to help users with the changes. Specific areas to test are the Editor, Site Health, The Editor, and The Editor. (Roadmap for this release is at https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-4/)
International Checkin
The regular International forum liaisons’ checkin all report things are OK in their respective forums.
Yui ゆい (@fierevere) expressed our collective sadness about the cancellation of 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. Asia, though we appreciate the concerns for public health. Daniel (@diddledan) noted that public health is priority.
Marcio (@marcio-zebedeu) spread the good news that we now have a new Portuguese Angola (pt_AO) localised forum (https://pt-ao.wordpress.org/support/forums/), and requested help with ideas to form a strategy for providing ongoing support. Marius (@Clorith) suggested that spreading awareness of the new forum to local meet-ups would be a good first step. We all agreed that sharing on Social Media, such as LinkedIn, is an excellent idea.
Open Floor
Joy (@joyously) Requested feedback about a CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. ticket because they were unclear on the changes and how to help the user. This appears to be fallout from WordPress 5.3 that we need to be aware of. James (@macmanx) pointed out that we can’t, as support volunteers, control changes to Core and the ramifications to understanding but suggested that we simply take note of the changes. Marius (@Clorith) said that it’s not a good idea to spam the ticket with agreements or me-too comments.
As we did last year, we’ll be having a bug scrub of 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. tickets relating to the support forums.
The primary purpose is to evaluate the validity of the tickets, are there items we no longer feel as strongly are needed, or are there items that should be prioritized differently?
For anyone who’s never taken part in a bug scrub/ticket triage before, what essentially happens is that the facilitator (in this case, @clorith) prepares a set of tickets ahead of time they’d like to consider.
During the hour, the tickets are provided, a quick summary of what they are about is provided, and then input from the other participants is taken into account to make sure the best choice is made for how to proceed with it later.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of our community from far and wide took part in this weeks support chat, including (but not limited to) Russia, Italy, Bangladesh, Netherlands and Brazil!
Open floor
During open floor, a hearty discussion about how we approach users, and how words may be conceived in different situations by various users was conducted.
The outcome of this is that volunteers will try to look more closely at the words that are used, and help let each other know if they may be misinterpreted in any way. Hopefully a more balanced pre-defined set of replies to common questions can be constructed from this to help maintain a good relationship with the users.
Most of this weeks meeting time was taken up by discussions about amendments to the support guidelines, and a very good discussion ensured relating to changes in guidelines relating to the use of links in pluginPluginA 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 theme related support topics.
As the subject can be hard to cover, a separate post will be made outlining the changes, and how they may (or may not) affect the average user.
Checking in with international liaisons
Representatives from our non-English parts of the community in Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Greece, Sweden, Brazil, Bangladesh, and India were present this week, and helped broaden our horizones.
Reminder that if you are from a non-English speaking part of our community, we would love to hear from you, as shared experiences are worth more than we can describe!
We’ve changed up the agenda post (and summary!) to give it a little bit of color and fun.
That was a side-effect, the primary focus of the new approach is to make the agenda post more accessible to potential new users, by being more detailed about agenda items we remove the veil of mystery.
Goals for 2020
Better recruitment is a recurring theme, even across rosetta sites, how this will happen isn’t fully fleshed out yet, but there are exciting ideas being shared and if anything comes to fruition it will be shared in depth.
Look to onboard more people familiar with the new 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. editor, this is an area which is lacking as very few individuals have experience with it that go deep enough for support related tasks.
The idea of a support day, much like the already established translators and 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) days was brought up as a potential goal to achieve for the year.
Many of the rosetta sites have also set translations of the support handbooks or HelpHub as their goals for the year, which should be exciting!
Checking in with international liaisons
Members of the support community from the Netherlands, Italy, Russia, Bangladesh and Spain took part and helped us flesh out some goals moving forward.
In closing this week, some inspirational words from Moana, don’t be afraid to try that thing which calls you, who knows how far you’ll go!
No particular announcements this week, as we’re coming off the holiday downtime, but a reminder of ongoing discussions relating to the validity of reviews and spam prevention. Watch for relevant 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. tickets relating to this.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from our international community took part this week, and we saw them joining from Russia, Sweden, Spain, Bengali and Greece. And yes, there is a new face in there, I love seeing new attendees, everyone is welcome, and we’re always interested in hearing how things are going outside of the international forums, it helps provide a broader understanding of our users, and encourages us to look at things from other perspectives.
Open floor
The pre-defined replies that are recorded in the support team handbook have gotten an update.
A remark on recurring issues relating to errors when saving posts was brought up, some discussion shows that this primarily happens to sites with WP_DEBUG enabled, as this makes the JSONJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. response from the save-function become invalid when it contains error notices and similar, often caused by plugins or themes.
The bbPressbbPressFree, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. slowdowns have, for the most part, been resolved right now (some moderation tasks may still be slow at times, this is being looked into, but for the average user, it should be fine), and notifications have been re-enabled on the international forums (they were disabled for a period due to incorrect recipients).
Health Check
Our favorite support tool is the Health Check pluginPluginA 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, but it has some drawbacks (or amazing features, depending on how you look at it); It currently supports WordPress 4.0 or higher, that’s a lot of versions to account for when working on the plugin.
There’s a request for input on thoughts relating to splitting things out, keeping a “Legacy Health Check” for those users on older versions of WordPress (for example, many folks actually use it before updates to help check that they can upgrade without major issues).
The details on the proposal can be seen at https://github.com/WordPress/health-check/issues/365, and input can be left there, or in the comments below.
There many be many pros and cons to this, the two major ones brought up so far is that yes, it provides better parity with coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. in an up to date release, with less restricted by older core versions, but it may be confusing to have two similarly themed plugins/names.
Checking in with international liaisons
We had lovely community members from Sweden, Russia, Netherlands, Urdu, Brazil, India, and Italy (and possibly other spaces who did not get a chance to say hi this time), and some of them stepped up and helped out a new member get situated with the Bengali forums, so thank you @fierevere and @tobifjellner 🐱🏍
Feeling overwhelmed? Walk away, you are a volunteer, and don’t need permission to take breaks or to walk out on any situation you are no longer happy or comfortable with.
We had a short and quiet meeting this week, folks are busy preparing for holidays and such, so this isn’t a surprise at all 🙂
Announcments
WordPress 5.3.1-RC1 is scheduled for this week, on December 11th.
Checking in with international liaisons
Members from some of our international parts of the community, including Russia, Italy, India, Brazil, and Sweden, were available during this weeks meeting.
Open floor
Slowness on the forums
A question about the bbPressbbPressFree, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. update, and current slowness on the forums was brought up.
The current slowdown on the forums is relating to missing caching for certain actions. This is notably the case when moderators perform certain tasks, like approving pending posts, or when users post replies to topics.
The bbPress team are aware of the issues, and will be looking into this.
HelpHub role assignments
There’s currently a limitation in HelpHub, which means it’s not possible to add a HelpHub editor or manager to someone who has not previously participated in the forums in some way.
A ticket, #meta-4890, was made for this and can be watched for future updates on the matter.
As has become customary, our weekly musical marvel is by the wonderful Sigrid.
bbPressbbPressFree, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. 2.6 was released this week, and has been deployedDeployLaunching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. to the various forums. Please note that an upgrade notice will show up in wp-admin if you have the appropriate access, don’t click this, the 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. team will handle the upgrade routines accordingly once they’ve been tested in our large setup scenario.
WordPress 5.3
The new version of WordPress, version 5.3, was released this week.
As is customary after a major releaseMajor ReleaseA set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality., the WordPress 5.3 Master List has been published, and is a living document being updated with anything we find that breaks WordPress for users.
Discussion on linking to off-site support platforms
A hot topic this past week has been linking to support-topics that are outside of 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/.
Some good conversations were covered during the weekly meeting, and a make/support post has been published outlining what we discussed, and allowing for input from those unable to attend the weekly meeting.
