Tag Archives: Meeting Notes

dingo-d 6:25 pm on May 12, 2020
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting notes Tuesday 12 May 2020

Today we held a meeting with the proposed agenda. The recap of the meeting is below and you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Weekly Updates

In the past seven days

  • 216 tickets were opened
  • 241 tickets were closed:
  • 199 tickets were made live.
    • 13 new Themes were made live.
    • 186 Theme updates were made live.
    • 2 more was approved but are waiting to be made live.
  • 42 tickets were not-approved.
  • 0 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded.

We have managed to cut down on the queue length, which is always a good news.

We thank to all the reviewers, keep doing a great job 🎉

Changing the name of the team

The representatives decided, in the light of recent changes that new editor brings to the landscape of the themes, to rename the team from Themes Review Team to just Themes Team.

We always did more than just review the themes that end up in the 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/ repository, but in recent years we started working more around themes in general – open-source packages, work on full site editing, actively participating around 2020 theme, etc.
So it was a natural progression.

Discussion regarding using “Guten” in theme names

There is a growing trend of themes starting with ‘Guten’ prefix, or containing it in their name. This, of course, alludes to the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. editor – codenamed Gutenberg.

Since that name, or part of the name, is not trademarked in any way, we won’t forbid authors from using it.

Selecting a date and time for WCEU office hours

This was a discussion regarding this post about WCEU online contributors day.

It was agreed that the office hours will be held in the same time we hold the meetings, that seems to be the most convenient time.

Closing the Theme SnifferTheme Sniffer Theme Sniffer is a plugin utilizing custom sniffs for PHP_CodeSniffer that statically analyzes your theme and ensures that it adheres to WordPress coding conventions, as well as checking your code against PHP version compatibility. The plugin is available from the plugin directory and Github. Themes are not required to pass the Theme Sniffer scan without warnings or errors to be included in the theme directory. in 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 directory

As some may have noticed we removed the Theme Sniffer from the plugins repository.
With all the projects I’m working on, it just wasn’t possible to keep maintaining it, and it had some nasty issues present that, in a way, kept reviewers jobs harder.

The plugin is still in the GitHub repo, so if anybody wants to contribute, feel free to do so.

Open Floor

Making the Tested up to and Requires PHP fields required instead of recommended in order to push folks to update the 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. versions.

Since the core blocking installs based on this value will land in WP 5.5, it will be good to let the authors know to implement this.

As explained by Marius Jensen:

If a theme says: Requires PHP 7.2, and the user has their WordPress installed on PHP 5.6, the theme will be shown in the theme search in wp-admin, but it will have a badge saying they can’t install it, why they can’t, and how to fix it. And if they try to upload it, they will get an error instead of the upload completing.

The readme tag is required, but the theme authors should be aware that they will need to add it in their style.css as well.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 6:01 pm on April 28, 2020
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting notes Tuesday 28 April 2020

Today we held a meeting with the proposed agenda. The recap of the meeting is below and you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Weekly Updates

In the past seven days

  • 232 tickets were opened
  • 248 tickets were closed:
  • 217 tickets were made live.
    • 11 new Themes were made live.
    • 206 Theme updates were made live.
    • 1 more was approved but are waiting to be made live.
  • 30 tickets were not-approved.
  • 1 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded.

Some of the live themes were reopened because of licensing issues and because they broke the rules.

Please don’t break rules in the updates, because we do a regular cross-checks.

We thank to all the reviewers, keep doing a great job 🎉

Planning for the WCEU online 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/. and office hours

There was an update about the upcoming contributor day for online WCEU 2020.

We do have two resource pages for onboarding the contributors during contributors day:

Getting Started at a Contributor Day
Preparing for WCEU 2019 contributor day

@poena also created an introduction video about the contributors day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11TbYfxuNHc

This contributors day we plan to focus on building a full site editing (FSE) based theme and explaining the changes along the way.

Besides that, we’d like to explain some rules that are important during the review session, like licensing and security issues.

Open floor

We had a small discussion about 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. primer and how to help authors understand the GPL compatibility better.

While there is a GPL primer available, as well as the text about GPL compatibility back from 2015, it’s still hard to convey the GPL compatibility to authors and reviewers.

One good suggestion is to have an iconographic that would help explain this in an interesting way.

We reached to the community team to see if something can be coordinated with the design team regarding that.

Another suggestion was to have a checkbox before uploading a theme, which is not ensuring that people would actually read it. There was a proposal to have a GPL quiz before upload, but we are not sure what happened with that.

There was also a suggestion to hold an interview before being granted the author status, but that’s not feasible since there are not that many senior reviewers, they are not paid to do that and the repository is free for all place (given you follow the rules).

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 6:15 pm on April 14, 2020
Tags: , Meeting Notes, ,   

Meeting notes Tuesday 14 April 2020

Today we held a meeting with the proposed agenda. The recap of the meeting is below and you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Weekly Updates

In the past seven days

  • 246 tickets were opened
  • 253 tickets were closed:
  • 223 tickets were made live.
    • 9 new Themes were made live.
    • 214 Theme updates were made live.
    • 0 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
  • 30 tickets were not-approved.
  • 0 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded.

We thank to all the reviewers, keep doing a great job 🎉

Theme Check – blocking common issues

The theme representatives got merge access to the Theme Check repo and @poena already started cleaning issues and adding lots of improvements.

We would like to invite experienced reviewers to help to point out the most common issues in the repo.

Also, input regarding the update of the severity of some checks is welcomed.

GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ review flow proposal

There was a proposal put in place to move reviews to GitHub.

Some interesting questions were raised during the meeting. There were some worry about this flow being too complicated to follow, and the GitHub being too complex to use. On the other hand, some said that they prefer GitHub for development and code review.

An issue that was mentioned was regarding forking the themes, especially if you have a theme in a GitHub repo already. This can be remedied using upstream remotes.

One concern was raised about jumps between the platforms (tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. and GitHub). The process seemed a bit complicated. But considering the current implementation, with some tutorials, this gap would be overcomed easily.

We would still need input from #meta team, to see how easy it is to implement this, the way it’s implemented on the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. trac.

Removing the 7 Day limit for replies during a COVID-19 virus outbreak

Current situation with the coronavirus made the reps think about loosening the requirement of having authors and reviewers having to wait for 7 days to close a theme. Some authors and reviewers may not have good internet connection, or have to take care of their loved ones, so they cannot focus on reviewing and updating themes.

Reviewers don’t have to remain assigned to a ticket if the response is taking a long time.

For a period of one month we won’t close tickets for inactivity.

Open floor

Input regarding the GPL primer page.

@kjellr added a quick background: The community team drafted that up late last year. @poena had mentioned that many theme authors don’t totally understand 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., and there’s no great resource to help them understand it in the context of themes. If we were to create one and/or adopt that existing one:

  • What content should it include?
  • What do theme authors need to know about the GPL?

Another issues that were mentioned by @joyously were:

  • What is compatible?
  • What needs a license?
  • What is the difference between GPLv2 and GPLv3?
  • What to put in the readme?

One resource that we point the users is: 100% GPL Vetting Checklist.

@aristath pointed out the following:

GPL is not the only option, there’s also MIT which is quite popular. It depends on what we want to explain.
Do we want to explain to authors what the WordPress-Core license is, and what freedom they have with WP-Core?
Or do we want to help authors choose a license and understand what the pros/cons of each license are?
If we want the latter, then the GPL thing is of little importance, a multiple-questions survey thingy which would spit out the license at the end would be better suited.

It was decided that we should take these inputs as a good starting point for the discussion for the next meeting.

Another discussion was added from the announcement comment about multiple authors referencing the same brand. There was no conclusion, except that it could be misused the system to have multiple themes submit at the same time and get around the 1 theme rule. This could also be added as an agenda for the next meeting.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 6:05 pm on March 24, 2020
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting notes, Tuesday 24 March 2020

Today we held a meeting with the proposed agenda. The recap of the meeting is below and you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Weekly Updates

In the past seven days

  • 239 tickets were opened
  • 266 tickets were closed:
  • 240 tickets were made live.
    • 16 new Themes were made live.
    • 224 Theme updates were made live.
    • 3 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
  • 26 tickets were not-approved.
  • 0 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded.

We thank to all the reviewers, keep doing a great job 🎉

New meeting calendar

The 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. team created the new and updated meetings calendar. Now you can keep track of any future meetings by teams. You can even import it in your google calendar if you wish.

Open floor

It was mentioned by @joyously that child themes part of the handbook needs updating. We’ll coordinate this update with the rep in charge of the Theme Dev Handbook @acalfieri.

It was agreed that the way this should be handled is so that the parent theme enqueues both its stylesheet and the child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/. stylesheet if active. In this case, child themes may need to dequeue the parent style if not needed, as explained by @greenshady.

@joyously mentioned that if the parent has to check for a child theme, it knows that the version number is for a child or parent and puts it in the right place. The child theme author shouldn’t have to deal with this.

There was a discussion whether the child theme needs to specify the license of the parent theme or not (since it is a derivative of it and doesn’t work without it). We didn’t reach a conclusion so if anybody has a more legal knowledge you can comment bellow.

Tomorrow will be a triage, where we’ll go over the theme check plugin, seeing what can be improved.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 6:19 pm on March 10, 2020
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting notes, Tuesday 10 March 2020

Today we held a meeting with the proposed agenda. The recap of the meeting is below and you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Weekly Updates

  • In the past seven days
    • 246 tickets were opened
    • 251 tickets were closed:
    • 237 tickets were made live.
      • 10 new Themes were made live.
      • 227 Theme updates were made live.
    • 7 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 14 tickets were not-approved.
    • 0 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded.

We thank to all the reviewers, keep doing a great job 🎉

Other updates

We have received two submissions for the experimental themes call, but so far these don’t fall under experimental themes. If you have an interesting theme please comment on that post.

Also, feel free to experiment with the theme experiments and the full site editing feature. Your feedback is really valued.

The welcome box was changed to be more in line with other welcome boxes on the make sites. It now contains more crucial information for first-time contributors. Our team reps Carolina and Ana helped with that.

Announcing the new team representative

A new/old team representative was announced today. It’s @acosmin. He has helped us with maintaining the tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. queue and tracking down people who are trying to play the system by having multiple accounts.
He knows his way around 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 will keep helping us keep the queue in check (and hopefully help make it shorter as well 😄).

Welcome aboard!

Opening up a place for theme author collaborations

Recent outbreak of COVID-19 caused some job problems, especially in Italy. A proposal was that there could exist a place where theme authors could collaborate on certain WordPress related work.

WordPress already has a jobs site so this could be possibly used to add a section where .org developers could offer their services as well as seek for possible jobs.

@franchidesign will create a proposal of what this would look like, why and how it could be implemented. Then the team reps will try to talk with people in charge of the jobs site, to see what we can do about this.

The remedial program

There is an initiative described in detail on the slack channel by @Carike, to introduce a remedial program for theme authors who have issues with understanding the requirements.
The idea is that the reps could enroll theme authors in a module that would help them understand certain requirements, like 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. compatibility, if they see issues in their themes during the review.

For this to be implemented we’d need help from the 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. team in setting the site up for these modules, and we’d need to have a way to enroll authors from the admin interface.

The first thing that needs to be done is opening a meta ticket so that we know what can be done.

Open floor

@kjellr called on people to test 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 and the TwentyTwenty theme experiment aimed at Global Styles:

https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/20530
https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/pull/26

They are a great way to see how Global Styles might work in the future.

We encourage people to test these things out. Giving feedback for these issues is very valuable to the developers, and is an important way of contributing.

And finally, a reminder that tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, there will be a triage meeting. We’ll go through the input needed issues for the WPThemeReview coding standards.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt