Recap of March 29, 2016 Meeting

Slack Log (Requires 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/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account)

1. Welcome
2. Announcements
   1. Jen is transitioning out of work with the project. Please 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.” @chanthaboune on Slack if you have any questions.
3. Lesson plan updates
   1. @chanthaboune finished working on the Content Editor Overview and @meaganhanes will copyedit it.
   2. @toniaslimm will copyedit the Setting a Static Page as Your Homepage plan.
   3. @bethsoderberg will do a second copyedit of the General History of WordPress plan.
   4. @Becks979 is working on the What is WordFence Security lesson plan.
   5. @wpaleks is testing some of the training on April 7th and a few days later with two audiences: folks new to WP and some colleagues who are developers.
4. Discussion of next set of lesson plans
   1. We referenced our P2 post discussion on lesson plans for “tier 2”.
   2. Troubleshooting Related Plans
      1. @bethsoderberg reached out to @ipstenu, who shared the troubleshooting resources from the workshop held years ago. They are located at breakfix.elftest.net and we have permission to use the labs to base lesson plans off of.
      2. We need to go through these samples and make sure it’s all still accurate (@bethsoderberg thinks these date to 2012 or so). We think the first step is to inventory what is there and make a list of lessons that could be made out of it and then piece together what needs to happen from there.
   3. 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 Related Plans
      1. @wpaleks brought up question of focusing on specific plugins versus talking about the functionality that some plugins offer.
      2. The plugins that have been listed thus far are the top rated ones from the repository as of 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. US, per @meaganhanes.
      3. @taupecat brought up the issue that not mentioning that a premium version of a plugin exists within the lesson plan about a plugin seems like we’re ignoring information that students should know. We think we can include a sentence indicating that there IS a premium version, but not getting into what features offered through it.
      4. @chanthaboune asked “Would it makes sense for us to have Plugin lessons that are roughly analogous to Anatomy, Activation, Evaluation, Finding?” roughly corresponding to the structure outlined for theme-related plans. There is already a plan in tier one that covers finding and activation.
      5. @bethsoderberg proposed an approach that focuses on plugin intent (e.g. caching) and then gives examples of those types of plugins. From there we could still  have individual plans for plugins.
      6. Overall, we are rethinking our approach to the plugin related plans to have general lesson plans about functionality and sub-lessons that go over individual plugins.
   4. Theme Related Plans
      1. The areas we cover for themes are: Anatomy, Activation, Evaluation, Finding them… and Testing.
      2. Tier 2 theme related plans that have been brainstormed/worked on thus far are:
         • Anatomy of a Theme (ready to test)
         • Activating Themes on Your Site (in spreadsheet)
         • Evaluating a theme (in spreadsheet)
         • Finding a Theme for Your Site (in spreadsheet)
         • Intro to Theme Testing (in spreadsheet) – we all agree we need to better define what this plan would be about.
      3. We did an intro to the customizer plan in Tier 1 that could be part of this workshop as well.
      4. Roughly we’re good with the plans we have listed in bullet two, but would like some more configuration/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. stuff too.
   5. Modifying Code
      1. This section was envisioned as “child themes, customizing with CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site./Jetpack, looking at plugin code.” We think that this might be a step beyond what we’re currently looking at as Tier 2. We’re thinking of T3/bonus lesson plans for T2 for these lessons (and others that may straddle the line between T2/3).
   6. @chanthaboune observed that this plan (as we’re looking at it) would adjust the basic themes of each tier to this: T1=setting up, T2=configuration/extensibility, T3=editing/contributing to themes/plugins, and T4=magical complex code things.
5. In general we want to make our website better, especially on mobile.
6. @melindahelt asked if we still have access to 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./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. workshop materials that were referenced at WCUS. @chanthaboune will check around to see what she can find.