Dev-squad GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that 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/ triage: Thursdays 07:00 UTC
A handful of folks who regularly contribute to the Training Team attended the recent Community Summit. Anyone can read the official notes from each session on https://make.wordpress.org/summit/. With almost 30 sessions that took place, though, there is a lot of information to consume there.
Training Team reps discussed how it would be great if those who attended the Community Summit could share their observations and learnings that pertain specifically to the Training Team with the team. The goal is to highlight important information to Training Team members who were not at the summit, and may also not have the time to read through the different notes.
If you attended the Community Summit: Come leave a comment below with any observations you came home from the summit with that would pertain specifically to the Training Team.
If you did not attend the Community Summit: Follow this post from the button below to receive an email notification anytime someone comments.
Anyone is welcome to add questions or additional comments on what other people have written also. Thanks!
The Training Team’s efforts have historically been focused on creating content for Learn.WordPress.org in the English language. The Content Localization Foundations project was the team’s first efforts to onboard contributors who speak other languages and translate content into different locales.
Over the course of 5 months, 28 volunteers created 36 pieces of localized content across 10 locales. Additionally, volunteers translated some of the Training Team’s handbook pages related to content translation into 5 locales.
The project achieved some of the objectives initially laid out. Many points were learned that would improve the entry to localizing content on Learn.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 necessary changes for the Locale Ambassador role were also identified. The team will continue to iterate on content localization processes to respond to these findings.
Project Achievements
The following are what this project achieved in its six month duration from November 2022 to April 2023.
Content Translation
Goal: Translate 10 priority learning content into each target language (Inclusive of Lesson Plans, and Tutorials)
Completed: The team translated the following pieces of content:
Locale
Published content
Translations waiting review
Translated handbook pages
Project contributors
Arabic
1 Lesson Plan
–
–
2
French
1 Tutorial
–
2
2
Greek
–
9 Tutorials
–
2
Gujarati
4 Lesson Plans, 1 Tutorial
–
14
5
Hindi
6 Lesson Plans
–
2
4
Indonesian
1 Lesson Plan, 2 Tutorial
–
–
3
Italian
2 Lesson Plans
1 Lesson Plan
5
3
Japanese
1 Online Workshop
–
–
3
Khmer
–
1 Lesson Plan
–
1
Tamil
6 Lesson Plans
–
2
3
Total
20 Lesson Plans, 4 Tutorials, 1 Online Workshop
2 Lesson Plans, 9 Tutorials
25
28
Number of content translated, by locale
Learnings: The project wasn’t able to translate 10 pieces of content in any one language.
Part way through, the project recognized the process of translating a Tutorial (recording and editing a video) was more involved than most translators were able to contribute to. The project changed priorities to translating Tutorial subtitles instead, but not early enough to reach the goal of “10 pieces of translated content” in any locale.
Next steps: Continue translating content in different locales, but focus on text-based content as a priority.
Onboarding and Documentation
Goal: Create a workflow of onboarding and how-to guides that take folks through the journey of joining the Training Team to publishing localized content
Learnings: Feedback was provided on how it was difficult for many contributors to track translation items in GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that 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/ amongst other content creation issues.
Additionally, we received mixed feedback regarding using GitHub to manage translations. In general, those with experience using GitHub found the documented processes easy to follow. At the same time, others with little/no experience using GitHub showed hesitation to getting involved.
Next steps: To make tracking issues easier, we can move content localization issues into their own GitHub project board.
As for the perceived difficulties of GitHub itself, we can either improve the current onboarding to provide more assistance, or the team can consider using a different tool to manage translations (such as translation plugins, or Computer Assisted Translation tools). This is something the team will investigate further.
Goal: Bring in at least two new Training Team Members from the following locale communities: Spanish, Japanese, German, French, and Italian
Results: The project had 28 contributors across 10 locales that contributed to publishing content.
Learnings: The project was able to bring in project contributors from 3 of the 5 most used WordPress locales. 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 was a good onboarding opportunity, where we saw multiple contributors from other locales join the project. Many contributors joined either through the Contributor DayContributor DayContributor 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/. event or after hearing a presentation from @bsanevans on the Training Team’s localization efforts. (View slides here.)
Next steps: These results encourage the Training Team to continue having a presence at different events – especially WordCamps and Contributor Days – where the team can present the need for content localization to different communities.
Enlisting Locale Ambassadors
Goal: Establish the Locale Ambassador role. Enlist at least five Locale Ambassadors.
Completed: The Locale Ambassador handbook page was published. 6 contributors (in 5 locales) volunteered to be Locale Ambassadors for this project. Of these, 2 locales were able to publish content.
Notably, @piermario and @margheweb did a fantastic job as Italian Locale Ambassadors. They actively onboarded contributors and translation reviewers. They also represented the Training Team at Contributor Day at WordCamp Torino, leading a table focused on translating content for Learn.WordPress.org.
Learnings: The project received the following feedback about the Locale Ambassador role:
Some are hesitant at joining the role as its definition includes a broad range of responsibilities. (A Locale Ambassador is someone who bridges their local community and the Training Team through various initiatives such as, but not limited to: bringing contributors into the Training Team, onboarding contributors to the Training Team’s processes and providing language support, creating localized content.)
Some would become a Locale Ambassador if they weren’t alone in the role in their locale.
Currently, Locale Ambassadors continue to rely on Faculty Administrators to triage GitHub issues or provide translators with website access, causing a bottleneck in the translation process.
Next steps: The project suggests renewing the Locale Ambassador role in the following ways:
Renaming the role to “Translation Coordinators” to better describe the main focus of the role.
Positioning “Translation Coordinators” as a fifth role in the Faculty Program.
While this adds a vetting process to joining the role, it will provide the role with the same GitHub/website access as Faculty Administrators, empowering them to conduct the various tasks that currently rely on an Administrator to perform.
It will also connect Translation Coordinators with others already in the Faculty program, providing better support.
Website Development
Goal: Enable locale tagging for Courses, Tutorials, and Online Workshops
Goal: Have localized content show first on the Learn WordPress homepage when someone visits the page in their native locale
Completed: Localized Tutorials show on the homepage when viewed in a locale that has one.
Next steps
While this project will now be closed, the need to localize content on Learn.WordPress.org continues. The project suggests the Training Team continue to iterate on the content localization process, starting with these points:
Renew the Locale Ambassador role as a fifth Faculty role: “Translation Coordinators”.
Focus localization efforts on text-based content.
Create a dedicated project board within the team’s GitHub repository to track content localization.
Continue raising awareness of the localization needs of Learn.WordPress.org at events.
Contributor dayContributor DayContributor 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/. started on 17 February 2023, 9 AM at ICONSIAM, Bangkok, Thailand. The day started with our Table Leads Benjamin Evans (@bsanevans) and Chetan Prajapati (@chetan200891) introducing the Training Team to attendees. Around 20 people joined the Training table that day, with more than a dozen new contributors joining the team for the first time. Here’s what we achieved:
New members completed the team’s onboarding program, and then went on to continue contributing to Learn WordPress in their interest areas.
Create a dev road map for the Learn siteLearn siteThe Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site..
Get involved with the redesign work happening on Learn.
Figure out a method to manage localized content translation.
Nurturing the Locale Ambassadors program (making sure people who show up have people they can connect with).
Create a Learn newsletter for learners.
Here is a summary of folks who attended, and some other contributions they worked on:
Courtney Robertson (@courane01) – Cross-collab w/ Marketing on Individual Learn Survey & crafting social media content promoting Learn WordPress. Brainstormed ideas on elevating Learn WordPress resources to MeetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers.
We are thankful to 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 organizers, our team repTeam RepA Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts.Pooja Derashri (@webtechpooja) who also attended, and especially all contributors who participated that day – both in-person and online.
Memories
Bonus: Here are 5 past and current Training Team reps who were able to catch a group photo together!
Hosting a release party for WordPress 6.2 with a group of people on Zoom.
Courtney shares her screen to show the coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. channel and explain that the policy is not to publicly speak about what’s going on during the release party until the release post ends.
Courtney updates her test site using the 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. 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 and shares the link with the group. They encourage everyone to leave comments and indicate their participation in testing.
Courtney discusses some issues that might change close to the end of the process, such as the Openverse integration and box shadow around buttons. They suggest checking the WordPress source of truth document and the make.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//test help test 6.2 for more information.
Courtney recommends doing a run-through for every beta release and paying attention to areas of the project that are changing, such as open verse.
Exploring WordPress Beta Testing
Beta testing is an important part of the development process for any software, and WordPress is no exception.
On January 23, 2023, members of the Training Team participated in two, 2-hour exercises to discover shared values. Background for this exercise can be found in this announcement.
What we did
Prior to the workshops, participants were asked to reflect on an amazing past team experience, and to envision the very best version of the Training Team. With these two questions in mind, participants shared their experiences and thoughts in discussion, before writing ideas into this presentation.
By reflecting on what values were present in previous, amazing team experiences, and what values would be present in the very best version of the Training team, participants identified five top values. Afterwards, we discussed how the values would be applied in different situations and how they would be kept present in the Training Team.
You can watch the recordings of these sessions in the brand new handbook page: Team Values
Top five values
The top five values identified for the Training Team are:
DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging): We create an inclusive environment that reflects the global, diverse community. We create accessible content that appeals to different learning styles.
Collaborative: We foster trust and cooperation, through mentorship and respect. This is a supportive place that encourages reliability and motivation.
Sustainable Growth: As individual contributors and as a team, we hope for constant improvement! However, we aim to accomplish this by maintaining sustainable, innovative, and adaptable practices that uphold the team’s energy as well as the consistency and quality of content.
Impact: To help WordPress enthusiasts really learn, we desire to make an impact. This means that we connect with the right audiences and meet their needs. We deliver quality content and consider how this fits into the future of WordPress.
Empathy: Contributors are often led to the Training team by personal passion for teaching others. We maintain that joy by maintaining a spirit of helpfulness and kindness, and readily celebrate each others’ successes.
Now what?
Now that the team has come together to form our values, our next steps will be to schedule a 2023 goal setting exercise. During the goal setting exercise, we will evaluate the Training Team Goals for 2022 to see if anything should be carried over, and formulate new goals for the Training Team to accomplish this year. A post will be published shortly with details.
And finally, if you have any questions or comments about these team values, feel free to comment below.
On August 17th and 24th, @piyopiyofox and I co-hosted the Training Team’s first Japanese Online Workshops. These were also the team’s first non-English Online Workshops! The workshops received positive feedback, and we’re already seeing people sign up to the third and fourth workshops happening in September!
This post documents the process we took to plan, publicize, and execute the first non-English Online Workshops. We hope this will give others some ideas as to how they can host Online Workshops in their locales, too!
Preparation
Destiny and I had both previously been vetted as Online Workshop facilitators. Anyone interested in hosting Online Workshops can submit an application here: Applying to facilitate (handbook page). We had also conducted Online Workshops in English, so we were familiar with the general processes behind Planning an Online Workshop.
The process of scheduling the workshop was mostly the same as scheduling English workshops (Scheduling an Online Workshop). A few things we did differently were:
Created the meetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. event in Japanese: ブロックエディターでホームページを作ろう!(English: Let’s make a homepage with the 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.)
Included information in English that the event would be hosted in Japanese.
We added this information to the event thumbnail on Meetup.com, and in the event description itself.
We published the event a few weeks in advance so that we had enough time to publicize the event to the Japanese community.
Publicity
People can find out about upcoming Online Workshops in a few different ways:
None of these would get the word to the Japanese community about the workshops, though. So, we took some time to spread the word through other means.
We published a blog post on the Japanese team blog to inform the community about what Online Workshops are, and announce the planned workshops: Learn WordPress のオンラインワークショップを紹介します.
We were particularly excited to see the organic publicity the tweets generated!
Results
We were interested in finding out when the best time to host workshops would be for the Japanese community, so we hosted the workshop twice spaced out over two weeks; both on a Wednesday, but one at 2 PM and another at 5 PM JST. We had a total of 14 people attend the two sessions, with a slightly higher number at the session hosted in the evening over that hosted early afternoon.
At the end of the second session, we took time to announce the next Japanese Online Workshops we’ve scheduled for September. This seems to be a success, as one participant mentioned in the session that they would be back, and we see a couple have already signed up to attend! These next sessions are being planned and tracked on the Training Team’s GitHub repository.
Session title: 10 種類のテキストブロック 〜使い分けのコツ〜 (English: The 10 Text blocks ~tips to choosing the best block~)
In English sessions, we generally turn Live Captions on in Zoom, and use these to generate subtitles for the video recording we submit to WordPress.tv. Unfortunately, Zoom does not yet have live caption capabilities in Japanese. While we weren’t able to turn live captions on during the session, we were able to generate good quality subtitles through Sonix.ai after the session concluded. You can now find a recording of the workshop on WordPress.tv: ブロックエディターでホームページを作ろう!
Conclusion
As a team, we are excited about growing the non-English resources we provide on Learn. The experience documented above shows it is possible to host Online Workshops in other languages, too!
The biggest hurdle we had to cross was publicizing the event to the Japanese community. If you have any ideas as to how we could do this better, we’d love to know!
The Training Team Faculty members are ready to help launch Online Workshops in other locales also. If you are interested in hosting an Online Workshop, come apply to become a facilitator! Faculty members are ready to help you facilitate in your locale, too.
Erica, Angela, and Hari gave us a look at how workshops have been vetted so far. This is shifting to a Training Team role, so learning how this has been handled was fantastic. If you missed the meeting, catch the replay above.
Below you will find many links mentioned during the meeting.
The Training team made a lot of progress at Contributor DayContributor DayContributor 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/. this weekend. We on-boarded several new members, completed several TrelloTrelloProject management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. Cards, and collaborated with the Design and Marketing teams to develop the plan for our front-end lesson plan site.
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. US 2018 Contributor Day. Image Credit @harryjackson1221
Call for Your Comments
One of the largest-scope discussions involved the development of our 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/ front-end site. Currently, our dedicated URLURLA specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org is learn.wordpress.org, but a proposal was made to change to teach.wordpress.org.
The reasoning behind the proposal is that our content is— in fact— focused on how to teach WordPress topics, rather than learning. We’d like to open the discussion on this since it will be a rather large change. Please make a comment on this post with your feedback on the proposal so that we can discuss it in our upcoming meetings.
GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that 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/ Restructuring
As we collaborated with the Meta team with the goal of translating our Lesson Plans in GitHub to the front-end, we reached the conclusion that a restructuring of our repositories will be needed.
In order for the front-end to be most easily kept up-to-date, as well as provide a mechanism for a final editorial review before content is published, a new master repository will be created with individual lesson plans as submodules within it. This will allow our current workflow to remain mostly unchanged, and the Team Leads can perform an editorial review before pulling into the master repo. @jessecowens has volunteered to spearhead this project.
We’re still looking for folks who have the time and expertise for a few vital roles in the Training Team:
Taking notes from team meetings.
HTMLHTMLHTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites.- and CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.-proficient writers who can develop new Slide Decks for lesson plans.
Instructional designers or educators familiar with BloomBloom's TaxonomyBloom's Taxonomy is a way of writing lesson plan objectives using specific words so that the objectives can be measured. See https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/guidelines/blooms-taxonomy/ for more details.’s TaxonomyTaxonomyA taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies..
Wrangling the team’s style guide.
Priority Projects Moving into 2019
Finish the copy and design of the learn.wordpress.org (or teach!) and deliver it to 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.
Clean up the Training Team Handbook with the vision of creating a one-stop-shop for new contributors.
Identify priority lesson plans to highlight on learn.wordpress.org when it goes live.
Greetings! This is the post where we’ll keep track of all work contributed to the training team at 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. NYC’s contributor dayContributor DayContributor 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/.. Please leave your notes/random thoughts/etc. in the comments!
Greetings from San Francisco where people are freaking out over the Giants.
We got SO MANY THINGS done at the contributor team meetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. this week.
One huge new thing is we moved lesson plans in development from regular pages to the handbook plugin. The handbook has better formatting and navigation between lessons and sections.
If you are currently working on a lesson plan you will now find it under Handbook in the admin. I reassigned the authors to their respective lesson plans.
A bigger post recapping the meetup is coming soon!