Tag Archives: Meeting Notes

dingo-d 6:13 pm on November 12, 2019
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting Notes for Tuesday 12th November 2019

A meeting was held with the proposed agenda.

The following is the recap of the meeting, you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Updates

In the past seven days:

  • 352 tickets were opened
  • 354 tickets were closed:
    • 333 tickets were made live
      • 5 new Themes were made live
      • 328 Theme updates were made live
      • 3 more were approved but are waiting to be made live
    • 21 tickets were not-approved
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded

Suspended themes submission

It was agreed that if the authors’ theme was suspended you cannot submit it again with a different name and account.

Theme Review Team Badge Assignment

We got the access to the badges so we are calling people to comment if they did the review so that we may give them the badges 🙂

They need to reply to the pinned slack message, and we’ll look at the reviews and decide: if someone did a poor, incomplete review, that we had to reopen for very basic issues, then no badges will be rewarded.

We need to check the review quality and dedication. A complete review is necessary in order to get the badge.

Get Ready for WordPress 5.3

Theme authors should get ready for the upcoming WP 5.3. You can read more in the make post.

If there will be any problems we encourage theme authors to contact us on 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/..

Open floor

The ticket for the core to read 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. version for themes was opened (and closed shortly after). The coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. themes were updated to move required fields to style.css instead of readme.txt.

The fields the theme authors should have in the style.css are

Requires PHP and Requires at least.

Core won’t be affected if those fields are in the style.css but your theme will benefit from having them, so we recommend authors adding them.

@aristath recommended using the code from Justin Tadlock’s theme for handling graceful failures: https://github.com/justintadlock/mythic/blob/master/functions.php

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. is undergoing some updates and the releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. will be out soon. One of the changes will be the above validation – readme.txt will no longer be checked, only style.css will be checked.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 6:23 pm on October 22, 2019
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting Notes for Tuesday 22nd October 2019

A meeting was held with the proposed agenda.

The following is the recap of the meeting, you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Updates

In the past seven days:

  • 300 tickets were opened
  • 305 tickets were closed:
    • 276 tickets were made live
      • 12 new Themes were made live
      • 264 Theme updates were made live
      • 3 more were approved but are waiting to be made live
    • 28 tickets were not-approved
    • 1 ticket was closed-newer-version-uploaded

We removed some inactive reviewers from trusted lists and added one new reviewer who has the ability to self-assign the tickets.
The trusted reviewers who were inactive for more than 6 month period were removed.

How to make an interest in Review Shindig?

The idea of a Shindig was to inspire people to do more reviews, but also to give new contributors a chance to ask questions and introduce themselves.

One idea was to maybe rename them to ‘workshops’ and make it more about teaching. Also, we could do shindigs where we make introductions about how sniffer works, and how sniffs work.

There was no concrete solution, but for now, we won’t do them until we sort out other priorities (automation tools, etc.).

Follow Up – Featured page issue

The suggestion that was made at the last meeting was that a curated list of themes would be made and that a group of people would decide on which theme gets featured.

This issue was polarizing because of the possible corruption it would bring. How to check the people who are deciding on which theme would be featured?

In the end, the following was decided:

We’ll try with the curated list. Once every 2 or 3 weeks, we’ll hold a meeting where people can recommend themes based on their unique looks, code quality and other merits (to be fully agreed upon by the team reps in the following days). The reps will then decide which to put on the featured list. We’ll see how this works for a few months, gauge what the community thinks about this and see how it goes.

The team reps will hold a meeting where we’ll agree on the fine details about this decision and publish this on the make post.

Other news

@aristath made progress on the color-alpha package. The color-alpha control ended up a bit more complicated than initially planned and it will have 2 modes of operation:

  • Simple (default)
  • Advanced (opt-in)

Both modes look, feel & work exactly the same, the difference is in the way the data is saved.

There are some details in the README.md file and more details/instructions/examples will be documented in the releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. post on make blog.

The triage meeting will be postponed (I cannot attend it due to personal reasons).

The look of the themes front page was changed to look a bit more like the plugins page.
In addition to styling changes, the upload button was removed from the top bar to prevent uploading themes by mistake – people used to use it thinking that would upload themes to their own websites.

We still haven’t seen a decrease in the erroneous theme uploads so we need to see how to further prevent this.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 5:01 am on October 16, 2019
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting Notes for Tuesday 15th October 2019

A meeting was held with the proposed agenda.

The following is the recap of the meeting, you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Updates

In the past seven days:

  • 238 tickets were opened
  • 233 tickets were closed:
    • 208 tickets were made live
      • 3 new Themes were made live
      • 205 Theme updates were made live
      • 0 more were approved but are waiting to be made live
    • 15 tickets were not-approved
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded

Handbook update regarding child themes

The current handbook is not presenting the recommended practices of how a 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/. should handle loading the styles and overwriting the parent theme styles.

The argument is that child themes shouldn’t have to load the parent stylesheet using enqueue.
The handbook should explain the loading order and the non.overriding the stylesheet handle.

The proposal is to open up a google doc and make a draft of what would go to the handbook, this could then be discussed and added to the handbook.

Next review shindig planning

The last shindig had a low turnout, and there is a problem of having only one person doing it in one time zone. There was not much involvement from the community.

For now, we won’t continue with the monthly shindigs, unless people show more interest in it.

Featured page issue – proposals for solving it

During the last triage, there was a discussion regarding this ticket.
One proposal was to have a curated list of the themes featured for a certain amount of time.

A number of issues were discussed:

  • What are the criteria based on which the themes will be chosen?
  • How often will the themes be on the popular page?
  • Who will choose the themes?

We’ll need to come up with the rules regarding the featured themes (minimal upsell, unique design, good coding practices).

The TRT representatives will try to see if they can get an initial proposal regarding the featured page, the post will be made on the make page and we can continue discussing the details there, and finalize the discussion on the next meeting.

Other news

Next triage will be held on Wednesday October 23rd, 17:00 UTC

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

williampatton 6:10 am on September 24, 2019
Tags: , Meeting Notes, theme-review,   

Meeting Notes for Tuesday 24th September 2019

Theme review team holds twice-monthly meetings. All members are encouraged to attend and new faces are welcomed.

This meeting we had an announcement about a new team structure as well as discussions about the future and the team’s purpose, according to the proposed agenda.

The following is the recap of the meeting, you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

New Team Structure:

Team no longer has leads – the team now has respresentatives and it is a flat team structure with loosely defined roles and responsibilities where individuals can contribute in ways that they feel strongly about.

More about that in this post: New Theme Review Team Structure

Ticket Graph:

You can see the latest stats and the graph on the themes trac system.

In the past 7 days

  • 304 tickets were opened
  • 301 tickets were closed:
    • 291 tickets were made live
      • 12 new Themes were made live
      • 279 Theme updates were made live
      • 4 more were approved but are waiting to be made live
      • 10 tickets were not-approved
  • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded

Update on Twenty Twenty

the single post mockup of the twenty twenty theme

The latest default theme Twenty Twenty Theme was ready to roll into the 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. package and is now confirmed as on track for releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. in 5.3.

Lots of contributors as you can see on this trac ticket. Big thank you to everyone mentioned in the props.

Uncommon Theme Queue Issues:

@acosmin mentioned there has been an issue with mistaken theme uploads lately. We need to investigate this further, but a trac ticket was opened that seeks to solve this issue.

Review Shindig:

There was a discussion on when the shindig would happen. A weekend event with a focus on Saturday was proposed. Potentially 1st Saturday of the month. No fixed date was decided on.

The point of the shindig is to share review tips and review themes together. It can take place in the #theme-review 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 with optionally a voice/video call if people are interested in that.

You are encouraged to leave comments below if you missed the meeting.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt

dingo-d 6:21 pm on September 10, 2019
Tags: , Meeting Notes,   

Meeting notes from September 10th, 2019

A meeting was held with the proposed agenda.

The following is the recap of the meeting, you can read the meeting transcript in the slack archives (a Slack account is required).

Updates

In the past seven days:

  • 399 tickets were opened
  • 374 tickets were closed:
    • 357 tickets were made live
      • 7 new Themes were made live
      • 350 Theme updates were made live
      • 5 more were approved but are waiting to be made live
    • 17 tickets were not-approved
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded

Proposal: Revive monthly review shindigs

@djrmom Suggested that we revive the monthly review shindigs (https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2016/12/05/december-shindig-recap/)

For those who don’t know:

Every first weekend of the month we do a queue push where we try to review as many themes as we can. Please keep in mind that it is not just about numbers but we want to focus on quality reviews as well so don’t feel like you have to do 10 themes over the weekend.

Jose Castaneda (https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2016/11/04/november-review-shindig/)

It was agreed that we should schedule it, and see how it works.

Plan for the next team leads

@joyously wanted to know when was the last time since new leads were elected. Current team lead @williampatton had an announcement that we’ll share here

I have been acting as lead and dealing with various duties for a long time. An awful lot longer than I ever expected.

This month marks the 18 month point. Originally the intention was that a term should last 6 months only.

With uncertainty about what 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/ would hold and the future for themes I felt lead transitions would be highly disruptive and I wanted to avoid that. Perhaps it was not my place to make such a decision however I have done what I thought best at all times.

There will never be a perfect time to do lead transitions and with that being said: now is as good a time as any.

Please think about who you want to be leading TRT going forward and decide how best to guide them the direction the Team wants to go in. As is always the case I am available through transition to assist where that may be needed or useful. I’m not going anywhere, just stepping aside to let someone else have their turn.

Let’s try to have the transition process underway by the end of this month at the latest.

For me now is the right time for 2 reasons.

1. First and foremost it is time for someone else to have a turn at this. Being a team lead has been an incredibly rewarding experience which has allowed me to grow as a developer and feel like a very welcome part of our amazing WordPress community. Someone else deserves to be able to have that experience as well.
2. Secondly, I cannot guarantee availability as-and-when needed in the same way that I used to be able to. The more limited time I have here I want to be able to spend on things other than admin or management tasks. I have projects in mind I want to pursue but have not had the time to do it.

William Patton

It was proposed that an election for the new position is held. Anybody that is interested should directly message @kafleg, he will consult with the senior and key reviewers and will try to sort out the list of names for the election.

William mentioned that he would like to have a Theme Review Team reps instead of leads.
There are many people here with lots of various skills but have issues with the time commitment. Nobody really has a guarantee on how much time they can manage.

@poena mentioned that reps should be people who know what they do best and do that.

In the end, it was decided that a list of possible rep roles will be made and proposed rep leads in those areas.

Some questions remained unanswered and will be covered in the next meeting, such as a decision about ‘starter themes’ in the repo, impact of skip links and keyboard navigation requirements and the existing themes in the repo.

Triage meeting reminder

And in the end a small reminder about the Theme Review Triage meeting that will be held tomorrow.

#meeting, #meeting-notes, #trt