During 2020’s State of the Word, Matt reminded us of our overall roadmap for GutenbergGutenberg The 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/. Much of that roadmap is on a multi-year timeline, and it can be hard to know what’s next with such a distant North Star. This post contains some near-stars for the year, but there are some things you should know before you read them.
These are intentionally broad
There is more to WordPress’ success than the code we write, or the open sourceOpen Source Open 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. freedoms we share. While the goals below are focused on shippable projects, I understand that there are supporting contributions (translations, testing/triage, accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), support, etc) that are part of these project goals.
These are intentionally incomplete
There are always small projects that arise over the course of our year. And there are big projects that we move forward in pieces over the course of multiple years. This project is too big for me to see everything all the time, and I rely on the information from team reps and the vision from project leadership to help navigate any surprises.
Just because a project isn’t written here, doesn’t mean it is forgotten or has no value to our overall success.
The Big Picture
- Full site editing: Bring into the Gutenberg pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, and subsequently WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., the ability to edit all elements of a site using Gutenberg blocks. This will include all in-progress features designed to help existing users transition to Gutenberg as well. Scope/Timeline: MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia in the plugin by April 2021, v1 in Core by WordPress 5.8.
- LearnWP: Enable WordPress skills-leveling by providing workshops, pre-recorded trainings, and self-serve learning opportunities on learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/. Scope/Timeline: regularly publish new workshops and lesson plans, maintain a high pass rate on workshop quizzes to establish learner success and comprehension.
- Contributor tools: Decrease the manual overhead of maintenance work for teams through better tooling. Scope/Timeline: Varied, and pending additional testing.
How can you help?
As I mentioned above, I know that our code isn’t the only measure of our success. If you already know what sort of contribution you’d like to make, you can check out this list of teams (with links to their community sites) and team reps. If you’re not yet sure, here are the areas that each team falls into:
- Development, Technology, Code: Core/Editor, Mobile, CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress./Tide, Security
- Design, Product, UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it./UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing.: Design, Accessibility, Test, Triage
- Community, Extending WP, Education: Community, Themes, Plugins, Polyglots, Training
- Contributor Experience: MetaMeta Meta 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., Docs, Hosting, Privacy
- Communications: Marketing, Support, WPTV
A Note on Specialized Groups
There are a couple of coordinated efforts that provide essential support to the progress of multiple teams.
- Triage: The triage effort happens across multiple teams and has two purposes. One purpose is to make sure tickets are sorted and have all the elements needed for someone to work on them. The second purpose is to determine priority. Not everyone has the information to set priority, but anyone can help sort and replicate reported bugs!
- Test: The testing effort also happens across multiple teams and has two purposes. One purpose is to try out features before they get to our users. The second purpose is to bring high quality feedback into our process early. A lot of that coordination happens on make.wordpress.org/test, but there are also frequently calls to participate on make.wordpress.org/core.
