Writing Contributor Spotlight posts

Contributor Spotlight posts are a series of posts in which the Training Team introduces the community to one of our many valued contributors.

Volunteering to write a Contributor Spotlight post

Review the tracking spreadsheet for upcoming posts. If there is not an author assigned to a post, you can volunteer to write it! Notify a Team RepTeam Rep A 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. with your interest, and they can add you to the spreadsheet.

Note to Team Reps: Add the author as an editor on the tracking spreadsheet, and give them editor access to the “Contributor Spotlight” folder.

Interviewing the Contributor

If there is not a folder with the Contributor’s name within the Contributor Spotlight folder, please create one. The name of the folder should follow the format: Firstname Lastname - Month Year. Within this folder should be a copy of the interview questions document. If this document does not exist in the folder, please make a copy of the template Contributor Spotlight Interview [TEMPLATE] and rename it to include the Contributor’s name.

Share this new document with the Contributor that you are interviewing. Note that the interview questions in the document are just a starter set of questions, and are there to inspire you and the Contributor! You have the freedom to ask relevant questions and/or allow the Contributor to tell their story however they feel comfortable.

If the Contributor would like to share some photos in the post, grant them Editor permission to their folder and ask them to upload a small selection (2–5) of photos to that folder.

Writing the Post

Once the interview is complete, you can use the Contributor’s answers to start writing the post. This can either be drafted in another document, or in a draft post on Make/Training. If you would like to draft in a new document, you can use the template Contributor Spotlight [TEMPLATE]. Please feel free to exercise your creativity and write about the Contributor in third person, or you can choose to quote them heavily throughout the post. A mixture of both styles is also great!

Note that it is a good practice to share a draft of the post with the Contributor so they can review it for accuracy.

When you are ready to draft the post on Make/Training, Create a new post on the Training Team’s blog. To do this, go to https://make.wordpress.org/training/wp-admin and login with your 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/ account. Once logged in, select Post > Add New from the left sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme..

Using the Contributor Spotlight Pattern

1. Once inside the newly created post, type /spotlight and select the Contributor Spotlight Pattern to use the template for Contributor Spotlight posts.
2. Once the pattern has populated the post, detach the pattern (by going to the three-dot menu > detach pattern) to ensure that any changes you make will not overwrite the pattern.
3. Typically, we would use the WordPress.org profile picture of the Contributor to introduce them, but if the Contributor prefers we use a different photo, that is also okay, as long as it is a simple photo featuring themselves.
4. Please be sure to link their name in the first paragraph to their WordPress.org profile.
5. Complete the different sections of the post and save the post as a draft. Again, feel free to exercise your creativity! For example, breaking up the text with photos/images or quotes. See previous posts in the series for inspiration.

Publishing the Post

When you are happy with the post, please schedule it on (or as close as possible to) the date noted on the tracking spreadsheet.

Thank you for your help in writing a Contributor Spotlight post!