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
The Training Team is excited to announce a new role to the Faculty Program – Translation Coordinators. If you have experience translating content for the Training Team and are excited about helping even more people get involved, then Apply to Join today!
Background
The Training Team recently concluded the Content Localization Foundations project, which kick-started efforts of translating content for Learn.WordPress.org. During this project, it was noted that renewing the previous “Locale Ambassador” role as a fifth Faculty role, and renaming it to “Translation Coordinators”, would be good next steps as the team iterates on its translation processes. (A full recap of the project can be found on Recap: Content Localization Foundations Project.)
Introducing Translation Coordinators – a new Faculty role
The Faculty Program is a team of dedicated volunteers who work to achieve the goals of the Training Team. The new Translation Coordinator role aims to add to the team those who are experienced with translating content for 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/, have a strong connection with their local community, and are excited to help others join the team’s translation efforts.
You can read more about the Translation Coordinator role in the handbook page below. If this is something you are interested in, come apply to join today!
While applications for the Translation Coordinators role are open to those who have a strong record of being leaders in their communities, the Content Translators role is available for anyone to join at any time!
Content Translators translate content that has been published on Learn.WordPress.org into their own locale. If you’re interested in joining the Training Team as a Content Translator, come walk through the Training Team’s onboarding program.
I’m pleased to announce that the two new 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/ project boards discussed in this proposal have been created. Read on to see what’s new.
Streamlined processes to vet content topic ideas
A new project board titled LearnWP Topic Vetting has been created specifically for vetting content topic ideas. This is in response to feedback submitted by Faculty SMEs earlier this year about how it was difficult to sift through submitted ideas to find those related to their area of expertise.
With the new project board, content ideas are now filtered by topic, allowing SMEs to find items related to their area of expertise easier. Below is a list of topics, linked to their respective view:
A new handbook page has been created, detailing how this project board works, and listing steps SMEs can take to vet topic ideas. We invite all SMEs to read through Vetting Topic Ideas, and in particular, the section “Vetting topic ideas”.
While the new project board doesn’t introduce major changes to content localization processes, it should make identifying and tracking localization issues much easier. We invite all Faculty Admin to read through the new handbook page:
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.
Please let 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. know if you’d like to take notes, too!
On January 23rd, the Training Team will be conducting two 2-hour exercises to discover our shared values. These exercises are open to anyone interested in participating, and will be recorded.
Here are the session details:
Monday, 23 January 2023 at 07:00UTC to Monday, 23 January 2023 at 9:00 UTC, facilitated by @bsanevans
Tuesday, 24 January 2023 at 19:00UTC to Tuesday, 24 January 2023 at 21:00 UTC facilitated by @angelasjin
What you’ll find in here are the links to GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ changelogs. We anticipate Gutenberg versions 14.2 – 15.1 to be merged into WP 6.2. There are links for CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. which would be all things not Gutenberg, or beyond FSE. We expect more yet to come in between now and Feb 7, but ideally on Feb 7 when 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. 1 releases, we can start work on this.
Before we start the work, folks can volunteer for any issues tagged as 6.2. Just hold off on screenshots and videos until then.
This is a new dedicated Slack channel for notifications about Tutorials, Lesson Plans, Online Workshops, and Courses that have been recently published.
This project thread expands upon our Project Proposal: Content Localization and seeks to outline the tasks we aim to complete to accomplish the project’s goals to increase and expand availability of content on Learn WordPress to a variety of non-English locales.
Project members have been added as Contributors to 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. so that they can create and edit their translated content directly on the site prior to publication.
@piyopiyofox is working on a guide outlining content translation creation -> publication with videos and will have a draft ready this week.
3 pieces of content have been published! Congratulations @pitamdey and @sagarladani!
There are more published translations to come! @piyopiyofox is reaching out to Local Ambassadors this week to see how we can get other translators in other key languages activated for the project.
We discussed what a good way would be for contributors to add themselves to a list of contributors for each area of contribution. We’ve decided to create a Google Form which would be connected to a Google Spreadsheet team admins can maintain. The form would be embedded into the onboarding docs. Here is how the project is going.
We also discussed what would be good “first contributions” for each of the five onboarding paths. Ideally, these “first contributions” would be things people can complete in 30-60 minutes. We will be creating guides for each process in the Handbook, and linking to them from the onboarding documents. These are the first contributions we decided on.
We are working to create a needs analysis document to help determine the most high-impact resources to provide on Learn WordPress. Please see the post Project Overview: Learning Needs Analysis for a more in-depth background and overview.
The deadline for the survey to be completed is on the 15th of February. The marketing team was briefed by @courane01 at their January 17th meeting of our need to have a marketing push before the cutoff.
Looking For Feedback
@amitpatelmd is looking for feedback on these two handbook pages:
@victorr has forked the original Slides 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-partyreferenced in this post and is in the process of unit testing and prioritizing Core 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. supports for the plugin.
We attempted to reach out to the original plugin dev but had no responses.
By sourcing this as a custom post typeCustom Post TypeWordPress can hold and display many different types of content. A single item of such a content is generally called a post, although post is also a specific post type. Custom Post Types gives your site the ability to have templated posts, to simplify the concept. on Learn, it will give contributors an interface they are familiar with.
Thank you @victorr and staff have contributed towards the development work, and @meaganhanes for some scoping and testing.
There is a huge checklist for content creation at this time. We are thinking to revise this checklist so new contributors can easily understand the workflow. any suggestions are welcome. Please use these links to see Lesson Plan and Tutorial template issue on 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/.
You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.
Training Team Mission
The WordPress training team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through synchronous and asynchronous learning as well as downloadable lesson plans for instructors to use in live environments, via learn.wordpress.org.
Getting Involved
Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.
(Requires SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. login to view. You can set one up if you don’t have a Slack account.)
Please let 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. know if you’d like to take notes, too!
2022 Year in review / Achievements
The team took some time to recognize our achievements from 2022. (See Training Team Goals for 2022 to see what those goals were.) Here are the achievements we listed:
We move our Project board from 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. to Github
We increased content in non-English languages
We increased team engagement in the APAC region
Many Online Workshops facilitated each month, including some in non-English languages
Check out the post above to understand the history and progress of the team’s desire to conduct a Needs Analysis. And if you haven’t taken the Individual Learner Survey yet, please do!
Bite-Sized Content on Learn
Conversations have started around creating 1 minute long videos on Learn. (Similar to TikTok videos, but about WordPress and hosted on Learn.) There is interest in collaborating with the Marketing Team on these, too. A blog post on the topic will come soon.
Change considered regarding the Settings icon in the editor sidebarSidebarA 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.
Discussions are happening around the settings icon seen in the editor. Please contributed directly to this GitHub thread with your thoughts.
The Training Team Onboarding Paths project members have a check in call next Monday. They should have draft onboarding documents ready for the team to review next week.
Open Discussions
Should we move the Learn WordPress feed out of the training Slack channel and into a new channel?
Each time a new piece of content is published on Learn WordPress, there is a notification in the training Slack channel. This was initially set up to notify team members of activity on the site when there wasn’t a lot of activity yet in the channel.
However, now that there is more activity in the Slack channel, and much more content getting published regularly, the idea was raised to remove these notices out of the training channel and into its own new channel.
If you have thoughts about this, please comment below.
You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.
Training Team Mission
The WordPress training team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through synchronous and asynchronous learning as well as downloadable lesson plans for instructors to use in live environments, via learn.wordpress.org.
Getting Involved
Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.
The Training Team has wanted to make contributing localized content for Learn WordPress easier. As of today, you can now find a page in our handbook that will walk you through both translating existing content, and creating new content in locales other than English!
The workflows listed are a combination of processes currently used by Training Team members, and some new ideas to better track contributions and maintain consistency across translated content. The team is looking for contributors to try these new workflows and help us identify how we can make them even better.
Please share your experience creating localized content for Learn WordPress with these new workflows in the comments of this post. If you have any suggested improvements to the newly created handbook pages, please share those below, too! We will continue to update the processes as we receive feedback.
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.
