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
In order for the team to continue a data-informed content planning strategy, let’s brainstorm what learner trends we should start observing in order to best serve their needs. In the comments below, please note the following:
What data would be relevant for the Training Team to surface?
How would surfacing that data better serve our learners, team, and community?
What considerations would be needed in order to surface that data?
We’ll close the initial round of comments on February 25th and consider next-steps.
While the WordPress project aims to have native multilingual features in Phase 4, with the understanding that this is still a few years away, I’d like to explore interim solutions together to facilitate multilingual management on Learn WordPress.
I understand that numerous plugins are available that could enable us to better handle multilingual functionality, but we need the one that best suits our specific needs. Given our current requirements and Content Translator work, we are more inclined to those plugins that offer effective translation management rather than automatic translation.
To help bring perspective to this conversation, I’d like to invite you to share if you have any experience with such translations plugins on WordPress? If you have, please share your experiences and recommendations. Specifically, we’d like to know:
What 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 did you use?
How user-friendly and efficient it was in managing translations within WordPress?
What notable benefits did it bring to your site?
Were there any drawbacks/limitations?
Are there any other recommendations or considerations you can share?
Your insight will be incredibly valuable in helping us decide the best temporary solution so we can continue our mission to cater to a broader, multilingual audience as soon as possible.
Thank you team in advance for your invaluable help. 🙂
Welcome! Please post in the #training channel or reach out to a team member to help you with contributing. Resources to check out our onboarding program, and our Guide Program.
We’re looking for volunteers to take notes each week through the rest of February. Would anyone like to volunteer for the team? Please post in the #training channel
Who would like to facilitate an Online Workshop this year? Come and apply to facilitate. Or if you have any questions about Online Workshops, feel free to reach out to a Faculty member.
@digitalchild hosted his first Dev Squad Triage session last week.
Reviewed PR – #2172 (Add script to count unique learners in Sensei)
No issues waiting to be triaged
Closed #832 [Related Course: Create a Custom 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. Theme #1] How Classic and Block Themes Are Developed – Lesson Plan
Closed After fixing – #850 [Course Exercise] Creating Template Parts: Headers and Footers
Once the goals are published, we’ll be looking for folks to lead the different projects through the year. Keep your eyes out for the post coming soon.
Faculty Updates
Faculty members were asked to review and answer the following questions
What have you been working on and how has it been going?
Anything you’ve accomplished since the last meeting?
Do you have any blockers?
Can other Faculty or Training Team members help you in some way?
Open Discussions
Item submitted by @devmuhib was discussed – @bsanevans asked if anyone have comments about how best to move this forward?
@courtneypk shared an update with everyone. Starting next week, she will be shifting her focus back to the #community-team and just be less present in Training Team spaces. Folks thanked her for her contributions so far and wished her a great year ahead.
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.
In 2024, the Training Team will shift Learn WordPress from theory to outcome/project-based learning, explore new streamlining technologies, improve team processes and increase global community/contributor engagement.
Values
The Training Team’s values are DEIB, Collaborative, Sustainable Growth, Impact, and Empathy. Folks can read more about them on our Team Values handbook page.
Goals to roll over from 2023
Listed below are goals session participants thought would be good to roll over into the 2024 goals.
Create a Marketing Campaign for Learning Pathways with Marketing
Work with the Community team to promote Learning Pathways
Establish monthly recurring onboarding Online Workshops in different time zones for training team roles
Continue involvement with the redesign work happening on Learn
Audit Handbook
Milestones
The new goals session participants would like to see the Training Team work on this year are listed below. The next step is for folks to volunteer and take ownership.
Q1 – January to March 2024
Create a Marketing Campaign for Learning Pathways with Marketing (Complete Q2)
Welcome to another edition of the Training Team’s Contributor Spotlight! In this series, the Training Team introduces you to one of our many valued contributors, and you can learn more about their contribution journey.
Introducing Tracy!
Today’s featured contributor is Tracy Rhodes! Tracy is a Faculty Member with the Training Team, contributing as an Administrator, Content Creator, Editor, and Subject Matter Expert.
Tracy’s Background
Tracy brings a unique perspective to the WordPress Training Team! He is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and served 20 years in the USAF as a pilot and Aeronautical Engineer. After retiring from the Air Force, Tracy was a pilot for Northwest Airlines (and Delta Airlines after the merger) for a total of 22 years.
Tracy has always enjoyed technical subjects. He earned a BS degree in Engineering Sciences and an MS in Aeronautical Engineering. His early programming experiences were using Fortran (and punch cards), then around 1985 he bought his first computer—a Zenith 100 desktop—and taught himself Basic/Visual Basic.
When not in the WordPress world, Tracy is immersed in the world of aviation. He owns a small 2-seat airplane that he flies and maintains. He is also the president of the local chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association and volunteers as a FAA Safety Team Lead Representative with the Reno FAA Flight Standards District Office. He and his wife also take care of their two dogs, a Border Collie and an Australian Shepherd.
WordPress Origin Story
Tracy’s journey with WordPress began during a challenging period in the aviation industry around 2005. As major airlines declared bankruptcy and renegotiated employee contracts, Tracy experienced a significant reduction in salary and potential retirement income. In an effort to regenerate some of that loss, he and his wife decided to start a business focused on selling homemade dog toys at events and through an ecommerce store.
This new venture required Tracy to acquire skills in ecommerce development, and SEO/marketing. He started out studying 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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php., 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., CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site., and MySQLMySQLMySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/. databases. He pursued online courses, consumed programming manuals, and attended programming and marketing conferences.
It wasn’t long before Tracy discovered WordPress as a CMS that simplified website creation. This discovery marked a turning point in his trajectory. Upon retiring from airline flying, Tracy established his own single-member LLC and began creating WordPress websites for clients.
First Contributions
Tracy’s enjoyment of teaching played a big role in his decision to contribute to the Training Team. With his background as a flight instructor, Tracy has been giving civilian flight instruction since 1972, making teaching a natural inclination for him.
Inspired by his experience at the Reno-Tahoe WordCamps in 2011 and 2012, Tracy, along with a few others, started up the Reno WordPress meetup. Soon after, he started leading discussions within the group then became a co-organizer for the 2013 Reno-Tahoe WordCamp.
For Tracy, joining the Training Team was a logical continuation of his participation in promoting and teaching WordPress to new users. His first contribution was part of the Training Team’s onboarding process, engaging in a content review for a Tutorial. Tracy found the process to be very rewarding, as his comments and suggestions were received well and appreciated by the Tutorial creator.
“It felt great to be a contributing part of the team and to be able to help out, even a little bit.”
Overcoming Challenges
When he began contributing, Tracy struggled to find a clear path to becoming a better contributor. Having come from regulated industries with clear paths to success, he found it frustrating to not have clearly outlined steps on how to progress with the Training Team. However, this challenge was greatly mitigated by the efforts of the team in the past year.
“This first challenge has been largely taken care of with the tremendous changes this year that can be found in the Training Team Handbook. Thank you to all who have contributed to that effort.”
Tracy also encountered challenges in determining his level of participation. As a self-taught programmer in WordPress languages and without prior experience working in a website agency, he wasn’t familiar with aspects such as pull requests and code development as part of a team. Due to this, Tracy had to dedicate lots of time and effort to research and catch up in this area. Yet, even when he became a training team faculty member with the ability to carry out significant tasks within the Training Team systems, he initially hesitated.
“At first I was very reluctant to participate because even though I had the ability to do things I wasn’t sure if I really should. Discussions with and questions to @courtneypk, my self-designated ‘faculty mentor’ have helped me through this challenge. Many thanks for the guidance, Courtney.”
The Rewards of Contribution
Conducting WordPress Meetups, where Tracy had the opportunity to assist new users in solving the problems they have been facing has been rewarding for him.
Additionally, witnessing the success of WordCamps has also been rewarding. Seeing the tickets sell out and the event come together is satisfying, as it shows the valuable impact and interest that the WordPress community generates.
Tracy also enjoys helping presenters and developers with Online Workshops. The appreciation expressed by attendees through their comments and words of thanks is a great feeling, and serves as a reminder of the positive impact that the team’s contributions make within the WordPress community.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started with contributing to WordPress?
“The WordPress Training Team is an international volunteer organization and as with any volunteer organization, what you get out of the organization is directly related to what you put into the organization.
If you really want to know what WordPress and the WordPress project is all about then become part of the project by participating in one of the many teams that make up the project.
Are you new to WordPress and don’t feel you have anything that you can contribute? You are wrong. There are many things just on the training team that you can accomplish as a new user. Take a look at the Training Team Handbook and get started with your training team onboarding process today.”
Thank you Tracy, for sharing about yourself, your contribution journey, and advice with us! The Training Team appreciates all your contributions and your dedication to the WordPress Open SourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. Project.
If you are interested in getting started with contributing to the Training Team, please check out our Getting Started guide and/or join the Guide Program to be mentored by an experienced contributor. We’d be happy to have you join us!
TL;DR: A survey was conducted among the Training Team Faculty members to gain insights into their experiences and perspectives. Main takeaways are to continue improving documentation, collaboration, and communication. Improvements to Faculty onboarding are also suggested.
As we established last year, a regular check in with all Faculty members was conducted again this year to gain insight into their experiences and perspectives on the Faculty program. This also included asking their estimated amount of contribution hours they could dedicate to Faculty tasks, so we could determine if there is a need to train new Faculty members.
Faculty check-ins were accomplished by sharing a check-in survey with Faculty members. This post serves to share the findings and insight from the survey.
Training Team Faculty at a glance (as of 30 January, 2024):
Number of Faculty members: 37
Number of completed surveys: 27
Faculty roles:
13 Administrators
16 Content Creators
13 Editors
15 Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
10 Translation Coordinators
*Note: Some Faculty members fulfill more than one role on the team, which is why the numbers add up to more than the total number of Faculty members.
Let’s explore what our Faculty members had to share. Please read on for more details!
Welcome! Please post in the #training channel or reach out to a team member to help you with contributing. Resources to check out our onboarding program, and our Guide Program.
February 1 – @aanchals09 February 8 – need volunteer February 15 – need volunteer February 22- need volunteer
We’re looking for volunteers to take notes each week through the rest of November. Would anyone like to volunteer for the team? Please post in the #training channel
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 2024 Help the team brainstorm contribution ideas Closes January 30.
Call for Hosts!! Who would like to facilitate an Online Workshop this year? Reach out to 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..
Congratulations to @Benjamin Zekavica for receiving the Training Contributor badge for his German translation contributions. If you would like more information on how you can receive one of the two badges the training team offers. Badge Requirements
Discussion in the thread about the review process. @sierratr question- After completing the third review if you are a faculty member can you move the issue to Preparing to Publish? Comments: @bsanevans– “If you are a Faculty member go right ahead” @psykro – ” I would welcome anyone who moves an item into the preparing to publish.”
@sierratr question- How do we handle reviews that are submitted with the review checklist? Comments: @bsanevans – Suggested pinging the person to encourage the reviewer to use the checklist and re-submit.
2024 goal planning sessions. Just another friendly reminder to add your comments. What are some goals for the training team?
Faculty Updates
Asked faculty to check in and answer the following questions.
What have you been working on and how has it been going?
Anything you’ve accomplished since the last meeting?
Do you have any blockers?
Can other Faculty or Training Team members help you in some way?
Open Discussions
@devmuhib question- Someone has translated several pieces of content, all of which seem to be directly copied and pasted from Google Translate. I have personally reviewed this content and can confirm that the translations are not good in quality and, at times, not readable. Despite multiple requests to modify the content and maintain a certain standard, the issues persist, and the content remains unreadable. What is the appropriate course of action for such translations? @bsanevans had a few suggestions
Raise some specific items in the translation
If in the same timezone, work on a translation together.
@psykro and @bsanevans have added comments on the issue 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/.
@bsanevans brought up- Faculty members are added to the Learn Content Triage team on GitHub. This gives them access to triage issues, change statuses, and most importantly, check-off boxes automatically added by automation. (More info about this group in this handbook page.)
What do folks think about extending this permission to vetted content creators, too?
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.
Below is my proposal to kick off the discussion. Let’s discuss this in the comments below until February 5th. Team reps will then summarize the discussion by the team meeting that week.
Prioritize Learning Pathways content
The Learning Pathways project is a priority for the Training Team this year, with a scheduled launch for July 2024. Considering the limited number of content creators we have on the team right now, we do not have enough resources to meet that deadline and create a lot of release-related content at the same time.
Proposal around priorities
Continue to prioritize developing Learning Pathways content.
Identify no more than 3-5 pieces of high-impact content related to the release and clearly list these in the team.
Find opportunities to onboard additional content creators who can assist with this content development work.
Modifying 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/ triaging processes
Historically, Training’s focus during releases has included identifying content needing updates as a result of the release. This has been done by reopening GitHub issues and, if the original assignee is unresponsive, re-assigning issues to new assignees.
As the team has started to track and analyze GitHub data (see Training Team 2023 Year In Review), we’re finding this process of reopening issues and changing assignees skews important metrics that represent team health – such as the “time to close” on an issue. To ensure the team can track and report accurate metrics, I propose the following changes.
Proposal around changes to GitHub triage processes
We should no longer re-open closed GitHub issues to report content needing updates.
Instead, if content needs notable updates, each update should be submitted as a new issue, using the Feedback issue template.
