Exploring WordPress Certifications

Over the years, there have been a few discussions about creating formalised certifications for WordPress, most notably in 2013 as seen on Torque and WP Tavern. While those discussions are nearly 10 years old, they are still relevant and, now that an open learning platform for WordPress exists, this is a good time to revisit those conversations.

Before we get anywhere near implementation, let’s take a step back and gather some initial thoughts on how a WordPress certification should be approached. Certifying open-source software has some inherent challenges, but also some wonderful advantages. With that in mind here is some interesting content to review:

Feedback

Since this is an exploratory post and not a proposal for anything concrete, please comment with your answers to the questions below, as well as any other thoughts you have about this topic:

  • What benefits would certifications provide?
  • What would be some effective ways to use certifications in the WordPress space?
  • What potential pitfalls need to be kept in mind, should we proceed?

Request for Testing: Slides Plugin

The Training team is on the lookout for simplified way to create slides. We need:

  • An interface similar to writing a WordPress Post
  • A centralized location to access slides
  • Means to audit and revise slide content as WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. updates
  • Consideration for accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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) and translation
  • Means to download or use the slides without internet connectivity

We have historically tried tools like Google Slides and Shower.js (similar to storing Reveal.js slides in GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/). We found some of these options worked, but still were a barrier for new contributors to use.

Use Case:

During State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/. 2019, Matt’s presentation used a blockBlock Block 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 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 to create the slides, with quite a crew of folks that helped build the plugin and his presentation.

Get Slides Plugin:

You can find the Slides and Presentations plugin on Plugins:

Benefits

This Slides plugin looks especially interesting because it would offer us :

  • Using slides in the WordPress editor experience
  • A centralized location for auditing and empowering to update later as the revision tools become available on Learn
  • Options to download the slides
  • Templating for design, accessibility, and good 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.
  • No pre-required skills with GitHub to create or present the slides

Testing and Feedback

  • Install the plugin
  • Create a simple slide presentation
    • Add additional slides
    • Add media
    • Use the speaker notes
  • Save the slides
  • Display in browser
    • Does your theme conflict with slides displaying? (having the plugin on Learn would use the Learn theme – possibly with custom styles for that post type, solving any theme conflicts)
  • Export the slides

Comment below with feedback