Triage 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: Biweekly on Thursdays 07:00 UTC
Welcome to another edition of the Training Team’s Contributor Spotlight! In this series, we introduce one of our many valued contributors and invite you to learn more about their journey.
Meet Jonathan!
This month’s featured contributor is Jonathan Bossenger from South Africa. As a developer educator sponsored by Automattic, he creates many super helpful videos on WordPress.tv, ensuring everybody from various ranges of expertise can learn WordPress easily.
Join us as we chat with Jonathan about his experience in the WordPress community!
***
Hi Jonathan! Can you briefly introduce yourself and share a bit about your background?
Sure, so as you know, my name is Jonathan. I live in Cape Town, which is in South Africa, a country right at the tip of Africa. For most of my youth, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life until I found my way to programming/software development. 2024 marks my 20th year writing code.
Outside of WordPress–professionally or in your spare time–what do you usually like to do?
I’m a husband and father of two growing boys, aged 9 and 12, so much of my spare time involves family activities.
When I do have time to myself, I spend it either staying fit and moderately healthy at the gym or working through my Steam gaming backlog, which built up over the years when the boys were very little, and I had no free time 😀
One of my other interests is martial arts, and I’ve been actively involved in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for the better part of the last 17 years.
How did you first discover WordPress, and when did you decide to use it for your projects?
When I first started web development in 2009, I was teaching myself PHPPHPPHP (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. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. from a book (you know, the way we learned before online learning was a thing!), and I wanted somewhere to document what I had learned. So I bought a domain and, after a Google search, installed Drupal on that domain. I went looking for alternative content management systems, and found WordPress.
Here’s the original blog post I published about the PHP script I wrote to migrate all my blog posts over to WordPress.
What motivated you to start contributing to the open-source project?
In 2015, I went to my first 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. in Cape Town. One of the talks, by Jenny Wong, was about how and why to contribute. This was something I’d been thinking about for a while, and so I was lucky to be able to chat with Jenny afterward, and she guided me further. After that WordCamp, I went home, found the Make WordPress site, and started looking for my first contributions.
I’m a volunteer by nature, and I’m a big believer that if I get something for free from an open-source project, I need to give something back. So, contributing to one of the Make teams made sense.
What drew you to the Training Team?
My journey to the Training team is a bit of a long story, so I’ll try to keep it short.
In 2020, when Learn WordPress launched in the format we know it today, I was learning to build WordPress blocks. One of my WordPress friends, Hugh Lashbrooke, was part of the team working on launching Learn WordPress with the newer tutorial videos (we called them workshops back then).
Hugh and I had spoken at a few local WordCamps together, so he knew that I liked presenting WordPress development topics. He asked me if I could create a developer tutorial, and so I did, on building your first block. I enjoyed creating that tutorial, but I never got another chance to create more.
About a year later, I moved to another company as a developer educator, creating online content for WordPress developers. However, that content was very specific to our WordPress products. I wanted to make more general WordPress development videos, so I joined the Training team channel, and the rest is history.
What was your first contribution? How did you feel seeing your work reach so many people?
My first contribution was helping to copy pages from the Codex to the new user documentation pages that now exist at Documentation team’s website (also known as HelpHub). I’ll be honest: I never really thought about the impact, it was just very cool to be contributing in this way.
Could you share any challenges or obstacles you faced when starting to contribute to the open-source project and how you overcame them?
My biggest challenge when I first started contributing was finding information. I hope the folks in the Docs team didn’t find all my questions annoying, but if I’m lost, I ask questions.😊
Were there any specific resources that helped you along your journey as a contributor?
That’s also my biggest piece of advice to new contributors: if you’re stuck, or you’re not sure, ask. Someone will reach out and help. Each of the WordPress Make teams has a 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. or two, and they’re usually the right folks to reach out to.
Can you share any memorable moments or achievements while contributing to WordPress?
There have certainly been a few.
Speaking at my first WordCamps, first in Cape Town and then in Johannesburg.
Getting to present a workshop at WCEU is also a pretty big highlight.
Oh, and recently someone shared with me that I have the highest number of contributions on WordPress.tv videos, at 179.
What advice would you give to someone interested in contributing to WordPress?
I’ll share the same advice Jenny shared with me: Go to the Make WordPress website, read about all the different teams there, such as the Training team, and pick a few that interest you.Then join the Make WordPress’s Slack, and poke around in a few of those teams’ channels. Ask questions, and you’ll soon find the right place for you.
***
(In)Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the one thing you would like people to know about you?
While I love talking to people, I also need to recharge my batteries quite regularly. So, at large events, I often won’t stay in one conversation long. Please don’t think I’m being rude, it’s a defense mechanism.
What’s your favorite WordPress feature (can also be a 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. or 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)?
I really like the Site Editor. I recently had the opportunity to use it to make some changes to a WordCamp site, and it’s come so far in such a short space of time.
Name three things you must pack for WordCamp.
Lip balm, headache tablets, power bank.
Thank you, Jonathan, for all your dedication and contributions to the Training Team and the WordPress Open-Source Project!
Are you interested in contributing to the Training Team? Check out our Getting Started guide or join the Guide Program for mentorship with an experienced contributor. We’d be happy to have you join us!
Usually, the team will have a poll as part of the selection process. However this year, there were only 2 people who accepted their nomination. As we were looking for 2 reps, we skipped the poll and both candidates were vetted directly. So, we were able to choose the next reps about 3 weeks quicker than usual
Come and Contribute
We have various ways that you can contribute to the Training team. Including development, content creation, editing and more. We have various open issues available for you to get started.
As you can see we’ve got a number of open issues available. If you are interested in contributing in any of these areas, but you need help getting started, please feel free to ask questions here in the #training channel.
Project updates
We have a few projects happening right now. I invite the leader of each project to share an update below.
The next step is to start creating TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets for each item so that design and other teams can start considering them. Would anyone like to help create tickets for these? I won’t be able to work on them until next week.
Muhibul and @Prem Tiwari had volunteered to work on this earlier this year. Muhibul has started work on this again so that we have something to share with the team soon. Thanks for working on it, Muhibul
The Learn WordPress Study Hours were popular last week! We had 10 people show up and many requested we have them regularly.
These are SUPER easy Online Workshops that require little preparation. If we could have a few facilitators rotate this every 2 weeks, they would make some great Online Workshop programming.
Open Discussions
@digitalchild: I have been thinking about this for a while. One thing that I think our content could be extended to is including real world use cases. For instance a course on how to setup a WooCommerce store. A lesson or online workshop on how to create a landing page or marketing site for your business .
@digitalchild: We already have the content on how to use WordPress and will have the marketing and SEO aspects covered so it would be good to take the next logical step
@digitalchild: I used to do a woocommerce start to finish 2 hour workshop once or twice a year at our local 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. before Covid
@west7: We do have a few practical lessons planned for the Designer learning pathway.
@lakshmananphp: Can we include Learn WordPress online meetups/workshops etc in this widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.? Allowing the users to show/hide via screen options
@sumitsingh: I am thinking to some improvement list of strategies that can boost contributions for the WordPress Training Team and help the community worldwide:
Clear Onboarding Process: Step-by-step guidance for newcomers.
Highlighting the Impact: Showing how contributions benefit the global community.
Success Stories: Sharing experiences and growth of current contributors.
Interactive Contributor Events: Regular live sessions for real-time collaboration.( Which is doing)
Recognition and Rewards: Public acknowledgments to appreciate contributors.
Mentorship Programs: Pairing new contributors with experienced mentors.
Flexible Contribution Options: Tasks for various skill levels and time commitments.
Outreach on Social Media: Expanding awareness through social channels.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Partnering with other WordPress teams for shared projects.
Centralized Resource Hub: Accessible resources and FAQs for easy support.
These strategies create a welcoming and engaging environment, making it easier and more motivating for people to contribute and make an impact.
I think we can encourage new contributors to share their own contributions on social media. Then, we could share their posts on our channels. Having them talk about their own experience will make it more impactful.
Also, some people might prefer we don’t share information about them. So, having the new contributor post first let’s them make the decision.
@digitalchild: This is a great list we definitely need to promote and encourage contributions and collaboration.
Most of our contributors give their time, skills, and passion completely free of cost – no sponsorships, just pure dedication to growing the community! To all of you selfless contributors: thank you for everything you do!
One simple way we can give back is by sharing and celebrating their contributions on social media. A quick post, a thank-you tweet, or a shout-out goes a long way. Let’s show our appreciation and make them feel valued – after all, seeing their names out there is a small gesture that brings big smiles!
Let’s keep our community strong and connected by lifting each other up.
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
We will be repeating the items we listed in last week’s meeting as they are still open for feedback.
Handbook page regarding creating quizzes/activities @cnormandigital has drafted a handbook page about creating quizzes/activities for content on Learn WordPress and is looking for feedback.
Please leave feedback directly in this 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/ issue: Feedback – Creating Lesson Module Quizzes/Activities section of handbook #2946
Looking for thoughts about how to add Facilitator Notes to Learn
Designers and developers are discussing how best to implement Facilitator Notes to Learn WordPress. The team will be concluding discussions and moving to implementation soon.
Retiring the Subject Matter Expert (SME) role in favor of the GitHub Editors group (continuation to last week’s discussion)
The Training Team has tried using the SME role for two tasks: vetting content topics and assisting content creators. We’ve not seen SMEs vet content topics in a while. And we believe assisting content creators can be done in an editor capacity. To simplify team roles and remove friction, team reps recommend removing the SME role and relying on the GitHub Editors group instead.
What do folks think about this proposal?
If anyone has feedback on any of the above items, please feel free to leave them in the comments of the relevant blog post/GitHub issue or Slack thread.
There doesn’t appear to be any other news this week.
Come and Contribute
There are various ways that you can contribute to the Training team. Including development, content creation, editing, and more. We have various open issues available for you to get started.
we’ve got a number of open issues available. If you are interested in contributing in any of these areas but need help getting started, please feel free to ask questions here in the #training channel.
Contribution Acknowledgement
@digitalchild, gave props to @psykro for running the triage squad solo last week while I was away.
@kaitohm, gave props to @psykro for running last week’s team meeting while both team reps were unavailable
@west7, gave props to @enkansah for completing the SEO: Part 1 lesson and also writing the script for Part 2.
@psykro, props to @michelleblanchette for her continued work on lesson content and for sharing regular progress updates, which are more valuable than gold.
They’re open study sessions where folks will individually work through Learning Pathways on Learn, but at the same time. If you want to study along with other folks, this is a great opportunity to try something new.
We’re always looking for people to run new workshops. If you’re interested in running a workshop or co-hosting you can find more information in the Training team handbook – Online Workshops section.
Open discussions
@digitalchild, If you have topics you’d like discussed in the meeting, please leave them as a comment.
Current team reps have reached out to all those nominated, and we’ve heard back from those who have accepted their nomination. We’ll be posting next-steps on the team blog this week
The Team Representative selection period each year is a special time where folks in the community affirm work ethic and confidence. The Training Team’s processes is designed to ensure fresh leadership and new perspectives guide the team while upholding team values from year to year. This year, the team is looking for two new reps to join current 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.@digitalchild in 2025.
In October, members of the Training Team nominated seven contributors from the team. Current team reps (Jamie Madden and Kaito Hanamori) reached out to each nominee to confirm whether they accept their nomination before being added to the poll. Of these seven nominated, only two accepted their nominations. Two others mentioned that, while not being available to be a full-time rep, they’d like to be listed as a backup rep, should the need arise.
As only two nominees accepted their nomination and the team is looking for two additional reps, current team reps decided to skip the poll and move directly to the vetting process. We believe both nominees meet the criteria of a team rep and would be excellent representations of the Training Team to the WordPress project.
It is with great excitement we announce Jonathan Bossenger and Muhibul Haque will be joining Jamie Madden as Training Team reps for 2025! Keep reading below to find out more about next year’s team reps.
Jonathan Bossenger was born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. He currently lives in the suburbs with his wife and two growing sons. After spending his first 5 years of life after high school working in retail, Jonathan pivoted to software development and hasn’t looked back.
In 2011, he started doing some WordPress development work, and in 2015, he attended his first 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. in Cape Town. This led to contributions in the areas of documentation, coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., and, finally, community, where he was the most active. As a Community Program Supporter (aka Community Deputy) and WordCamp mentor, Jonathan’s focus was helping to grow WordPress meetups and WordCamps in Africa.
Jonathan joined the Training Team with the 2020 launch of 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/ and contributed the first developer-focused video tutorial on Learn. In 2022, he was hired at Automattic as a sponsored contributor to the training team, hosting workshops and creating video lessons for developers.
After hours, Jonathan enjoys spending time with his busy family and their extracurricular activities, keeping fit with regular workouts, and practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu. His hobby is gaming, and he is currently working through his backlog of ever-growing Steam games.
Muhibul lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he enjoys life with his wife and their three-year-old son. He started his professional career in 2011, focusing on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While working in SEO, he realized the importance of having skills in web development, which sparked his interest in this field. In 2014, he made the full switch to work as a WordPress Developer, applying his skills in customization and development. Since then, he has been building his expertise and enjoying the creative challenges that come with developing dynamic websites.
Muhibul first became active in the community at WordCamp Sylhet in 2023, which inspired him to get involved with open-source projects. Since then, he is active on Training team and taken different roles like Training Team Administrator, Content Creator and now Training Team Representative. He is also active on Core, Themes, Docs, WPTV and Community Team as contributor.
When not working, he enjoys spending time with his family and loves to travel. Seeing new places and experiencing different cultures gives him fresh energy and inspiration.
Jamie Madden has been involved in open-source long before WordPress’ first release. He made his first contribution to the Red Hat kernel in 1999. Since then, he’s been contributing to the WordPress documentation, testing, and, of course, Training Team.
Jamie has been an active contributor in the Training Team since July 2022, and joined us as a Faculty Member in September that year lending his Subject Matter Expert and Editor expertise to the team.
You can reach out to the Training Team Reps in the #training channel in the Make WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
For those who are new here, the WordPress Training Team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through educational content hosted on Learn.WordPress.org.
Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes in this handbook page.
@cnormandigital has drafted a handbook page about creating quizzes/activities for content on Learn WordPress and is looking for feedback. Thank you for drafting this page, Cynthia
Please leave feedback directly in this 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/ issue: Feedback – Creating Lesson Module Quizzes/Activities section of handbook #2946
Looking for thoughts about how to add Facilitator Notes to Learn.
Designers and developers are discussing how best to implement Facilitator Notes to Learn WordPress. The team will be concluding discussions and moving to implementation soon.
Retiring the Subject Matter Expert (SME) role in favor of the GitHub Editors group
The Training Team has tried using the SME role for two tasks: vetting content topics and assisting content creators. We’ve not seen SMEs vet content topics in a while. And we believe assisting content creators can be done in an editor capacity.
To simplify team roles and remove friction, team reps recommend removing the SME role and relying on the GitHub Editors group instead.
There was no triage squad last week. Join us this coming Thursday at 07:00 UTC in #meta-learn where we will triage any new PRs, dev issues and content awaiting validation issues.
Other News
There doesn’t appear to be any other news this week.
Come and Contribute
Find the rest of the ways you can contribute in this:
The cohort sign up closed last week. Also during last week, the cohort documentation was updated.
This week @lakshmananphp and @psykro will start gathering all the sign ups, adding them to the #training-cohorts Slack group, and preparing for week 1.There were 42 sign ups, of which 39 had valid profiles and Slack accounts. We will be inviting all 39 participants, making this the largest cohort we’ve run so far.
@kaitohm is hosting open study sessions. These are opportunities to work independently on your Learning Pathways, but in a group setting. It’s a great way to stay motivated and learn from others.
Faculty Updates
What have you been working on and how has it been going?
Anything you’ve accomplished since the last meeting?
@kaitohm said that nominations for 2025 Training Team reps had closed. He added that he and Jamie had reached out to all nominees to confirm their acceptance. He also mentioned that a poll would be ready by the following week’s meeting.
@west7 reported that they had run an online workshop and created a new lesson for the Beginner Designer Learning Pathway.
@psykro stated that he had been reviewing contributor scripts for the 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 Developer Learning Pathway, working on his own scripts, and checking in with contributors who had been inactive.
Do you have any blockers?
Can other Faculty or Training Team members help you in some way?
@kaitohm said that he would love for people to read through and comment on the brainstorm document about introducing Learning Pathways to users during onboarding. He added that this was an opportunity for the team to add Learn references to every WordPress installation and that he would love to hear people’s thoughts on these ideas.
Open Discussions
There were no further discussions in last week’s meeting.
If you have topics you’d like discussed in the meeting, please leave them as a comment on this issue.
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
It’s that time of year again! We’re looking for nominations for 2025 Training Team Reps.
Nominations close this Friday. Please nominate next year’s team reps on the post by October 25th.
@cnormandigital has drafted a handbook page about creating quizzes/activities for content on Learn WordPress and is looking for feedback.
Please leave feedback directly in this 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/ issue: https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/2946
Looking for thoughts about how to add Facilitator Notes to Learn
Designers and developers are discussing how best to implement Facilitator Notes to Learn WordPress. The team will be concluding discussions and moving to implementation soon.
Retiring the Subject Matter Expert (SME) role in favor of the GitHub Editors group
The Training Team has tried using the SME role for two tasks: vetting content topics and assisting content creators. We’ve not seen SMEs vet content topics in a while. And we believe assisting content creators can be done in an editor capacity. To simplify team roles and remove friction, team reps recommend removing the SME role and relying on the GitHub Editors group instead.
What do folks think about this proposal? Leave your thoughts (and questions) in the thread.
Looking for volunteers
There were no projects that required volunteers this week.
Triage Squad Updates
The Dev-squad has been renamed to the Triage Squad to better represent the role of the squad within the Training Team.
As part of this change, the squad will include content issues awaiting validation as part of its tasks.
This is a reminder to content creators that we have a //review workflow set up in our GitHub repo. When an issue is ready to be reviewed, simply type //review in a comment on the issue.
That will add review instructions and a review checklist to the issue for reviewers to reference.
@west7: We are making progress. I would appreciate it if more folks could review the content. Two lessons have been published, and two more are ready for review. We will also be reusing some lessons from the user learning pathways.
I am also working on a new lesson and have written two scripts that are being checked by an SME.
Those last two are a new type of Online Workshop I thought I’d try. They’re open study sessions where folks will individually work through Learning Pathways on Learn but at the same time. I see folks have started signing up for these already, and I’m interested to see how they go.
Open discussions
@psykro: I’ve been in discussions with @jamesmarsland (the new head of WordPress YouTube) around re-creating one of our lesson videos, but based on Jamie’s experience creating videos for YouTube. We plan to have this experiment launched by the end of October and hope to be able to apply some of what we learn from it to future Learn WordPress lesson videos.
And then a short documentation update: the course cohort documentation has been updated based on the leanings from our last two cohorts in preparation for the next cohort.
For a number of years, community members have have had the idea of sharing learning resources with users in the wp-admin dashboard (example 1, example 2, example 3.) The idea came up again in recent brainstorming sessions by the team – Drawing new learners to the new Learn.WordPress.org. These ideas have so far revolved around adding a widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. to the admin dashboard. While a great idea, this requires a bit of developer/design time and so far hasn’t been achieved.
In this post, let’s brainstorm other ways that learning resources can be shared with users in their dashboard without needing to create a widget. Let’s discuss by Friday, November 8th. Any ideas we like we can then take to designers and developers to workout a solution with them.
Why introduce Learn during onboarding to the CMS?
Learning Pathways are proving to be Learn’s most successful content to-date. In Learn WordPress site remake: First two months, @zoonini shared how Learning Pathways are seeing completion rates higher than industry standards, video retention rates that continue to grow, and high leaner satisfaction reporting.
The Beginner Learning Pathways are ideal for someone starting out in their journey with WordPress. By adding reference to these in one’s onboarding experience, we anticipate better engagement with the CMS and better retention through onboarding.
Current reference
Currently, I could only find one instance of Learn referenced in the WordPress dashboard. This was under the About menu in the top-left. While a start, this link is difficult for users to find and lacks content of what information is presented when clicking on the link. I believe we can introduce Learn resources better.
Ideas
Add a reference to Learn in the Help box
Every wp-admin page has a Help box one can open from the top-right. We could add “Learning resources on Learn WordPress” under “For more information:”
Add a link to the Beginner User Learning Pathway in 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 Welcome Guide
The Welcome Guide is clearly aimed at new users. This would make it an ideal location to link to the Beginner User Learning Pathway specifically. We could achieve this by adding a slide to the guide.
Add references in the default comment on a new install
A new install of WordPress comes with a default comment. Most experienced users probably do not read this comment any more. But it would be another location we could highlight the Beginner User Learning Pathway to new users. A reference could be added under the GravatarGravatarIs an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/. introduction.
Share you thoughts
How do these ideas sound? In what other ways could we introduce Learn resources to new WordPressers during their onboarding to the CMS? Please leave your thoughts below by Friday, November 8th.
It’s that time of year again! We’re looking for nominations for 2025 Training Team Reps. This year, I complete my 2 year term and will be stepping down. We’ll be selecting two new reps to join @Jamie Madden .
Please nominate next year’s team reps on the post by October 25th.
We’ve got some brand new content in the works! Come help out with scriptwriting, voice recording, video editing, content creation, and reviewing.
If you’d like to help out, please leave a comment in this 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/ issue: https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/2889
If you’d like to know more before signing up, please reach out to @westnz, or ask your questions here
Looking for volunteer to take over testing of GatherPress for the Training Team.
Joining GatherPress Slack channel and staying updated on the project’s progress.
Report back to the training team on a regular bases.
Run testing scenarios and provide feedback to the GatherPress project team.
Dev Squad
Join us this week in #meta-learn for the dev-squad, there has also been some discussions on expanding what we cover in our triage to include content as we have over 40 issues in the content area that can be worked on as well. What are peoples thoughts on this?
Online Workshops are free interactive learning sessions hosted by volunteers of the WordPress community. Here are some workshops we have coming up this month
@Jonathan: props to @Lax Mariappan for his continued work hosting online workshops, and facilitating the next cohort. Also props to @Sumit Singh for offering to co-host Lax’s workshop tomorrow, as I’m not available.
@Wes Theron : Props to @Emmanuel for the script writing and video editing of the SEO Part 1 lesson, Props to @Rico for publishing his first lesson in German.Props to @noruzzaman for completing the previous Training Team Meeting Recap.
@Joey Brinkman: Props to @Jamie Madden for helping me out and clarifying the local dev environment use-case. Thank you for your patience and kindness!
Project updates
The most recent update on the progress of the 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 developer learning pathway https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/2044#issuecomment-2411261876 Thanks to @Agil Julio, @Cyrille C, @webcreativeng, @Elliott Richmond, @Michelle Blanchette, @Jesse Owens for their continued work on this pathway’s content.
As a 2nd follow-up on creating a module quiz/activity review process, I’ve created this issue which contains a link to a Google doc. This document is currently a draft and I invite anyone to leave a comment there. https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/issues/2946
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
Welcome to another edition of the Training Team’s Contributor Spotlight! In this series, we introduce one of our many valued contributors and invite you to learn more about their journey.
A pillar of the Italian WordPress community, Margherita is a great example of the magical things that can happen when you dare to say, “Why not?”.
Let’s get to know her.
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Can you briefly introduce yourself and share a bit about your background?
Hi! I’m Margherita, born and raised in a small town in Italy, where the landscape is made up of hills dotted with wheat fields, sunflowers, vineyards, and olive groves. There is no traffic noise and that is good, but the downside is that I often struggle with a bad internet signal.
A freelance web designer since 2013, Margherita is active across the community, contributing to several teams:
A Translation Coordinator for the Training Team.
A Project Translation Editor (PTE) of 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. Learn WordPress Project in Italian.
An editor of the Italian Rosetta website and a manager of the Italian Community’s social channels.
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. co-organizer and speaker.
What do you do outside of WordPress (professionally or in your spare time)?
I share my life with Lorenzo, my husband since 1996. I have two sons, Filippo (28) and Pietro (17), and a cat named Dori.
I enjoy traveling and learning about places, people, foods, cultures, and traditions. I have also been singing in a choir since 1991.
I collect lipsticks (or other make-up) and stationary—pens, colored pencils, and notebooks (can you see why I love going to WordCamps?!). And I’m always up for pizza night.
How did you first discover WordPress, and when did you decide to use it for your projects?
I started to work as a web designer in 2012, after taking a professional course. In that course, they taught us how to use Joomla, so for a year I worked in a small agency churning out, on average, a classic 5-page site a week. One day, a client showed up with a very specific list of requests for her site. Searching the various marketplaces, I managed to find a WordPress theme that matched all those requests; I didn’t even know WordPress existed before then. And so, with a good dose of audacity, I said “Why not?” and launched into installing WordPress.
I was surprised to find that there were already plenty of resources and tutorials in Italian on various tech blogs.
The second thing I was amazed at was how fast the installation was. At that time, we used to upload the files via FTPFTPFTP is an acronym for File Transfer Protocol which is a way of moving computer files from one computer to another via the Internet. You can use software, known as a FTP client, to upload files to a server for a WordPress website. https://codex.wordpress.org/FTP_Clients.. We did this manually for each client. With WordPress, I uploaded half (or maybe less) of the files compared to Joomla, so I was already saving time. And then, once the files were uploaded, it took only three clicks to complete the installation.
Since that day, I have never gone back.
What was your first contribution?
I started contributing in 2016, organizing the meetup in the small capital city of my province, Ancona. I toyed with the idea in my head for a long time. It seemed strange that no one had done it before, and it took me a year to convince myself to do it.
With time, I realized that organizing a 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. was a way of contributing, as much as writing code.
What motivated you to start contributing to the open-source project?
One reason was to avoid feeling lonely when working at home, which is typical among freelancers living in remote areas. In my neck of the woods, going to work in a coworking space with other people, just to not be alone, means driving 30 kilometers (~19 miles) of curves to get to “civilization.” This would not be sustainable in either ecological or economic terms. But once a month, for the meetup, it can be done 😃
How did you feel seeing your work reach so many people?
I wrote to various local online news outlets to publish the first meeting, and about 40 people showed up, mostly out of curiosity. I had never attended any WordCamps or Contributor Days, nor had I spoken in public, but now I had to—I was the “hostess.” I am, and always will be, grateful to WordPress and the community for enabling me to evolve, grow, and empower myself as a person and as a professional.
Perhaps only recently, after so many years of contributing, do I really get the sense that those extra hours I spend at the PC translating strings, writing posts, or posting on social media reach many people. Now and then, I am filled with giddiness, thinking about both the “responsibility” and the collective usefulness of what I do. And I am deeply grateful for that.
What drew you to the Training Team?
On this, too, we could write a book. Heavens, I do not have the gift of brevity! In 2022, I participated, without any expectation about the outcome, in the selection for the WordPress Foundation’s Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. I ended up being one of three recipients.
It was a dream come true: Me, embarking on a 16-hour intercontinental flight almost solo at 46 years old, with very poor English-speaking skills, to attend WordCamp US in San Diego. I felt like I was in a fairytale.
I may have already seen something online about Learn WordPress, but I didn’t really know what the team was doing. The only certainty I had was that no one else in Italy was working with them. And since I was living my “American dream,” I once again thought, “Why not?”. Why not try to get other people in Italy involved in translating existing training material and producing tutorials in Italian?
Finding training content in your own language is one of the best ways to democratize publishing: Language is a great tool for bringing people together, and not knowing English well is an insurmountable obstacle. With this in mind, I came home from WCUS 2022 set on doing something—even just a first step—to ensure as many people as possible can enjoy Learn WordPress.
Could you share any challenges or obstacles you faced when starting to contribute and how you overcame them?
I don’t think I faced any particular obstacles in the beginning. These came later. First, during the pandemic. Carrying on with the meetup was difficult. While everyone was connected online, giving webinars and workshops, I felt overwhelmed by too much content being offered online. It was difficult to resume meeting in person, just getting out of the house and meeting in groups with people.
The other obstacle I face now is just a lack of resources—both in terms of people involved and time. There are so many things I would like to do, but the Italian community, as active as it is, is very small and almost 100% volunteers; there are very few people sponsored. So I often find myself doing boring, repetitive yet paid activities, when I would much rather be working on WordPress projects.
Were there any specific resources that helped you along your journey as a contributor?
More than tools or documentation, it was the people I met who made a difference in my contribution journey. Without them, who have been a source of stimulation, inspiration, and empowerment for me, I would not still be here. I would like to name names, but the list would be very long, and I would risk forgetting someone. To them, I often dedicate thoughts of love.
Can you share any memorable moments or achievements while contributing to WordPress?
Well, receiving the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship was one of the unforgettable moments of my life. Another was being able to start a small “chapter” of the Training Team in Italy. We are slowly beginning to get organized to produce content in Italian.
What advice would you give to someone interested in contributing to WordPress?
Get started: no matter which team you pick, the important thing is to get started. And if you have any doubts, always ask because you can always find someone willing to sit, even virtually, and explain how things work. A good way to do this is to participate in the Contributor Mentorship Program.
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(In)Frequently Asked Questions
Which tutorial changed the way you work with WordPress?
I don’t know if this can still be found on the site, but learning how to work with WebP images in WordPress has helped me to optimize image management on the websites I build, and teach my clients, as well.
Thank you, Margherita, for all your dedication and contributions to the Training Team and the WordPress Open-Source Project!
Are you interested in contributing to the Training Team? Check out our Getting Started guide or join the Guide Program for mentorship with an experienced contributor. We’d be happy to have you join us!
You can read more about them and how they got involved with WordPress in this post: 
