Our Three Big Ideas for 2022!

2022 is going to be a big year for WordPress as we get more and more people to use the new editor (and as a result make the editor even better)! We’re also going to be gearing up for a our 20th anniversary next year 😮 —I can’t believe this project has been around for so long!

For easy tracking, here are the big focuses for this year:

  1. Drive adoption of the new WordPress editor (though education, awareness, and better content for new WordPressers).
  2. Support 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. alternatives for all site-building necessities (through supporting Openverse, our suite of directories, and the way we present ourselves to the world).
  3. Open Source stewardship (through maintenance of our community programs, leading by example, and other project as we find them).
  4. Bonus: Get ready for WP20!

Read more about these big ideas and more specific goals for each or, if you’re a team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts., send me your thoughts on how your teams can join the effort!

#goals #planning

Big Picture Goals 2021

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

#goals

Update: Progress on Goals

At the end of last year, I posted an update on the goals we had for 2019. While I mentioned that most of those goals will continue into 2020, I didn’t have a full concept of what we should target and when. I have a better idea now that everyone has started working on things.

WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.

I’ve organized our remaining projects around our remaining releases for the year. In each group below, there are three different states of readiness: Feature PluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. for things that are still in testing, Complete for things that are stable and ready to merge, Ship for things that are final and being packed in the release.

These are educated guesses. For most of them the sooner we can get them ready for testing the better!

WP5.4 – March Release

  • Feature Plugin: Automatic updates for plugins and themes.
  • Complete: Functionality for navigation block behind experimental flag in the 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.
  • Complete: Block directory in testing behind experimental flag in the plugin.
  • Complete: Convert the Customizer to support blocks
  • Ship: Update WordPress Core to include current releases of the 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/ plugin.

WP5.5 – August Release

  • Feature Plugin: Automatic updates functionality for major WordPress Core releases (opt-in).
  • Complete: Convert the widgets-editing areas complete.
  • Complete: Functionality for full site editing complete behind experimental flag in the plugin.
  • Complete: Global styles behind experimental flag in the plugin.
  • Ship: Update WordPress Core to include current releases of the Gutenberg plugin.
  • Ship: Navigation menus blockBlock Block 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. in Core.
  • Ship: Automatic updates for plugins and themes in Core.
  • Ship: Block directory in Core.
  • ShipXML Sitemaps 
  • ShipLazy Loading 

WP5.6 – December Release

  • Ship: Automatic updates for major WordPress Core releases (opt-in).
  • Ship: Update WordPress Core to include current releases of the Gutenberg plugin.
  • Ship: Widgets-editing and CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. support in Core.
  • Ship: Full site editing in Core.
  • Ship: Global styles in Core.
  • Ship: Default theme.

WordPress Programs

These goals don’t depend on the Core release cycle, so it’s harder to assign dates to them. My best guess is around our major regional events, but I’m open to suggestions.

Contributor Experience

  • Reduce number of open issues in TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/..
  • Updates to the theme directory.
  • Speaker feedback tool.
  • SEO updates to WordCampWordCamp WordCamps 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. network.

User Experience

  • Block patterns
  • Block-based themes

Where We Collaborate

Coordination of work on WordPress Core can be found in #core and #core-editor (though there are a lot of feature-specific channels as well). Much of the contributor experience coordination is done in #meta and #meta-wordcamp. User experience coodrination happens in #design and #themes. All contributor teams document their efforts on their team sites. 🙂

For a concept of the long term roadmap, keep an eye on the Roadmap page; it’s updated frequently.

#planning #goals #updates