A Mid-Year Look at 2022 Goals

At the start of the year, I proposed several big-picture goals for us to collectively work towards in 2022: 

  1. Drive adoption of the new WordPress Editor 
  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
  3. Embracing stewardship of open source principals 

As I shared in the latest episode of the WordPress Briefing, Five for the Future’s True Intentions, “Building our culture of generosity helps us to better recognize and celebrate each other for all of our contributions.” Rather than review progress towards metrics, I want to take this opportunity to recognize each Make team’s generosity and contributions to our common goals. 

What struck me when speaking with our Make teams is that the return to in-person events has created new opportunities for contribution. From the CLI team onboarding a new committer (welcome Jan-Willem Oostendorp) to the Community team reactivating WordPress meetups around the world and training organizers and deputies to support those events to the Training team launching the Faculty Program to new teams Core Performance and Photos making their first Make presence in 2022. 

These efforts both uplift our open source community’s principles while driving the WordPress Editor’s adoption. I see that in milestones often not celebrated: 100 block themes in the theme repository, 3,300+ photos in the Photo Directory, growth of the WordPress social media presence by 23,000 followers, and 56,893 translation contributors, ensuring that 56% of WordPress sites are translated.

It’s inspiring to see what we can accomplish together; there is much more to do. All teams noted that they could use additional eyes, hands, and thought partners. So, how can you help?

Code is just one of many measures of success and ways to get involved. If your interest is piqued, start by connecting with a Team Rep and ask how you can start to contribute. If you’re not yet sure, here are the areas that each team falls into:

For more detailed team updates, be sure to check out monthly updates here at https://make.wordpress.org/updates/.

Props to @cbringmann for wrangling and editing this post. And a big thank you to our team reps for stewarding their teams and participating in these updates!

#quarterly-updates

Quarterly Updates | Q4 2020

To keep all aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress volunteer teams, each team’s listed representative has shared an update from the start of the year. Listed below are their top priorities, as well as their biggest Wins and Challenges. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility 

  • Contacted: @sarahricker
  • Priority: The team’s focus is media; docs and 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) patterns; prepare for phasing out the accessible view in the widgets screen; increased accessibility-ready tag reviewers for the themes team.
  • Previous Priority: The main focuses of the Accessibility Team for WordPress 5.6 were:
    • Moving the WordPress Accessibility Coding Standards from WCAGWCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. 2.0 to WCAG 2.1 and improving the documentation to include more resources and describe patterns and antipatterns;
    • Making the new default theme (Twenty Twenty-One) ready for WCAG AAA;
    • Creating a feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. to add a tool to generate an Accessibility Statement, as was done with Privacy Policy;
    • Checking the accessibility of the new widgetWidget A 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. screen in 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/.
  • Challenge: There are limited team members available for the release, which contributes to the minimum number of tickets completed.
  • Big Wins
    • WordPress Accessibility Coding Standards from WCAG 2.0 to WCAG 2.1 have been updated in the handbook + the pattern library is well underway! We expect to continue contributing to the library throughout 2021.
    • The Twenty Twenty-One theme is not only beautiful but is also the most accessibility-ready theme ever delivered thanks to great inter-team efforts and communications. 
    • Accessibility Statement Feature plugin is out in the wild for volunteer testing and an advanced version of 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 is also underway. This will eventually be included in the WordPress plugin repository and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

CLI 

  • Contacted: @schlessera
  • Priority: Migrating the requests library to the WordPress GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/ repository.
  • Previous Priority: Resolution of one outstanding bug for v2.5.0.
  • Challenge: Contributions are low compared to pre-COVID levels; 2021 will see some experimental formats to find new ways to attract contributors. 
  • Big Win: All critical bugs have been resolved for the 5.7 release, PHP8 compatibility has been tested and fixed for all breaking bugs that have been found, testing and deployments have been transitioned from Travis CI to GitHubs Actions. 

Community 

  • Contacted: @camikaos, @mariaojob
  • Priority: To define 2021 team goals.
  • Previous Goal: The team’s previous priority was engagement with WordPress users and community members through continued education and connection with Learn WordPress while continuing to support WordPress MeetupMeetup All 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. and 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. organizers with online events.
  • Challenges:  As we continue into a year of uncertainty for in-person gatherings, we need to find greater ways to support WordPress contributors and users online.
  • Big win: Two new team reps were elected and have begun their term: Welcome to Kevin Cristiano (@kcristiano) and Timi Wahalahti (@sippis)!

Core 

  • Contacted: @francina, @audrasjb
  • Priority: Set-up and ship WordPress 5.7.
  • Previous Priority: Complete and ship WordPress 5.6.
  • Challenge: The team struggles with working with a small number of core committer and component maintainers. 
  • Big Win: Shipped WordPress 5.6! Another win is the revival of the Week in Core blog.

Design 

  • Contacted: @estelaris
  • Priority: The team is focused on moving old TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets and PRs forward.
  • Previous Priority: Reviewed tracking systems for design tickets, supported the release and design cohort with focused work, and iterated on the process to support the diverse contributing designers.
  • Challenge: It is still a challenge to engage new design contributors. 
  • Big Win: With @chaion07 joining as 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., APAC meetings are now happening.

Hosting

  • Contacted: @amykamala
  • Priority: The team’s priority is to support Hosts in transitioning infrastructure to WordPress 5.6, with a focus on PHPPHP PHP (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. 8 compatibility, test reporting and Hosting team infrastructure.
  • Previous Priority: Priorities included PHP 8 Compatibility for distributed hosting tests, helping inactive test reporters start reporting again, and improving the process.
  • Challenge: It has been a challenge to update the PHP Runner and Reporter to support PHP 8 Compatibility.
  • Big Win: Q4 saw expansive Handbook additions and improvements to facilitate better communication between WordPress and Hosts.

Marketing 

  • Contacted: @webcommsat, @yvettesonneveld, @meher, @maedahbatool, @harryjackson1221, @mikerbg, @OGlekler, @lmurillom, @nalininonstopnewsuk
  • Priority: Continue to support the Learn WordPress resource; assisting Polyglots with materials to encourage and sustain contributions; establish a series of contributor introductory training sessions and ongoing work on contributor event marcomms materials; and training for team members.
  • Previous Priority: Supported the 5.6 release marcomms, scheduling of internal requests, ongoing communications-related onboarding tasks to support teams, and WordPress events. 
  • Challenge: Encountered challenges included helping contributors deliver and plan their promised contributions to be sustainable and communicate more with others for collaborative tasks; assisting new contributors who may get stuck due to unfamiliarity with the WordPress, 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., and/or marketing techniques.
  • Big Win: Supported greater cross-team collaboration and delivery on multiple projects through focusing on developing internal communications, Learn WordPress for example; consistent WordPress Meetup promotions and assistance to organizers; further additions to contributor onboarding information and videos; co-ran WordPress Translation four week celebration; and continuing cross-team collaborations for release promotional materials.

Meta

  • Contacted: @tellyworth @coffee2code
  • Priority: Focus on handling incoming tickets faster, and maintain the overall level of open tickets.
  • Previous Priority: Reduced the volume of open tickets and supported the released 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. Directory.
  • Challenge: There are many open tickets, often old, comprising mainly esoteric requests and feature requests for large and medium projects.
  • Big Win: Launched the Release Confirmation feature for plugin developers.

Mobile 

  • Contacted: Matt Bumgardner (@bummytime
  • Priority: Port core blocks to reach 100% coverage on non-FSE blocks.
  • Previous Priority: Port more core blocks, improve 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. and performance, and introduce block transformations before the end of 2020.
  • Challenge: Multiple subprojects run in parallel, delaying each other.
  • Big Win: Huge performance improvements, automation improvements, and more blocks ported!

Polyglots 

  • Contacted: @nao, @ocean90, @casiepa, @tobifjellner, @evarlese
  • Priority: Based on the data we obtained through our recent survey (Polyglots Translation Research), identify areas where we can optimize contributor workflow.
  • Previous Priority: The team’s priority was core translation for WordPress 5.6 release. The secondary priority was to help inactive & under-resourced teams find new contributors and set attainable goals.
  • Challenge: Translation and review workload continue to be a big struggle for teams, as well as confusion for the process & communication method to ask/receive translation feedback. 
  • Big win: The team completed its first Polyglots Translator Research to help with identifying struggles and prioritizing solutions for current locales; wins for locales in 2020 were shared in the end-of-year recap, including 57 locale packages released for WP 5.6.

Security 

  • Contacted: Jake Spurlock (@whyisjake)
  • Priority: There is ongoing work related to migrating older branches of WordPress to Github Actions for automated testing, as Travis is no longer available. The team also has a proposal out to drop support for older versions of WordPress.
  • Previous Priority: The team prepared for the security release associated with 5.6.
  • Challenge: Balancing security needs against user experience.
  • Big Win: Core now supports auto-updates!

Support 

  • Contacted: Marius Jensen (@Clorith)
  • Priority: To land actionable plans for forums landing page (done :tada:).
  • Previous Priority: Retention of volunteers across international forums. 
  • Challenge: Handling increased public scrutiny from having challenging discussions in the spotlight, and user experiences from the past set of core updates and JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. related issues.
  • Big Win: Continued good collaboration with the team.

Themes

  • Contacted: @williampatton @kafleg @acosmin @acalfieri @aristath @poena
  • Priority: Helping theme authors transition to more block-based themes.
  • Previous Priority: The team focused on helping theme authors transition to more block-based themes.
  • Challenge: Lack of reviewers for accessible themes. The delisting functionality for the theme directory is not complete.
  • Big Win: Completed the work on the new process for themes that already are in the theme directory, that does not follow requirements.

Tide 

  • Contacted: Derek Herman (@derekherman) and Jeffrey Paul (@jeffpaul)
  • Priority: Our goal is to provide automated PHP Compatibility reports for every theme and plugin in the WordPress.org repository and the infrastructure needed to create other types of reports once we have a stable version 1.0 of the Tide APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways..
  • Previous Priority:  To update the underlying infrastructure from Golang to Node.js, allowing for broader contributions and make maintenance more feasible.
  • Challenge: The last quarter of the year was focused on removing technical debt from the team’s path. The decaying infrastructure, documentation, audit servers, and API all needed to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to ensure the components’ likelihood of being useful. There were many challenges, but arguably the lack of time was the hardest challenge to overcome with such an ambitious rebuild.
  • Big Win: Wins include a new automated staging environmentStaging Environment A staging environment is a non-production copy of your site. This is a private place to build the site -- design, copy, and code -- until your client approves it for production or live. Sometimes used in addition to, or as a Development Environment., replacement of the underlying infrastructure, rewriting the codebase, API, and documentation to an almost complete state before the end of the year, replacement of the documentation generator, and public release target of the 1.0 version before the end of January for testing with a plan to release a stable version 1.0 before the end of Q1.

Training

  • Contacted: @courane01 and @azhiyadev
  • Priority: The team is introducing a sprint approach for 2021. Priorities for the first sprint include revising all team procedures/handbooks as a solid foundation, documenting how brands are represented on Learn, and evaluating options for slide presentations.
  • Previous Priority: The training team looked to resume the regular meeting. 
  • Challenge: Inviting the informal community/ecosystem to participate and advise, finding comparable open-source training resources delivered in a similar format for each of the languages or pre-requisite skills needed for those receiving training.
  • Big win: We are blending with Workshops and unifying our deliverables, Learn launched, and the team is active and motivated.

Triage 

  • Contacted: Jonathan Desrosiers (@desrosj) & Sergey Biryukov (@sergey)
  • Priority: Limit the total number of tickets in Trac, and ensure that every ticket is accurate and actionable. 
  • Previous Priority: Continue to bring the total number of tickets in Trac down to a more reasonable number, and/or ensure that every ticket is accurate and actionable (especially really old and really new tickets).
  • Challenge: The main team members have had their resources consumed by a combination of various active roles in recent releases, overarching project tasks (migrating automated testing to GitHub Actions, etc.), and new contributor mentoring.
  • Big Wins: The team is proud of the mentoring efforts during the 5.6 release cycle, educating release squad members about ticket lifecycles and good triaging practices. This has resulted in the addition of a new regularly participating team member, @hellofromtonya. The team has also managed to slightly decrease the overall number of open tickets in the last quarter of 2020: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticketgraph

With thanks to team reps for their quarterly updates.

#quarterly-updates

Quarterly Updates | Q3 2020

To keep all aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress volunteer teams, each team’s listed representative has shared an update from the start of the year. Listed below are their top priorities (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest wins and Challenges. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility 

  • Contacted: @nrqsnchz, @ryokuhi
  • Priority: The main focuses of the 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) Team for WordPress 5.6 are: moving the WordPress Accessibility Coding Standards from WCAGWCAG WCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. 2.0 to WCAG 2.1 and improving the documentation to include more resources and describe patterns and antipatterns; making the new default theme (Twenty Twenty-One) ready for WCAG AAA; creating a feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins. to add a tool to generate an Accessibility Statement, as was done with Privacy Policy.
  • Previous Priority: Organization of WordPress Accessibility Day; review of the admin color schemes; creation of alternative views for WP List Tables; improvement of the “Howdy” fly-out menu.
  • Challenge: The team faced challenges in polarizing discussions among members and across teams around design and architecture choices. In addition, the team had difficulty tracking all of the development in the 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. editor.
  • Big Win: WordPress Accessibility Day happened on October 2-3 2020; there was a lot of positive feedback. In addition, the team is taking steps to include new contributors in the team by using the `good-first-bug` label more widely, both on CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. tickets and on 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/ issues

CLI 

  • Contacted: @schlessera
  • Priority: There’s one outstanding bug for v2.5.0, so that version will be released soon.
  • Previous Priority: The number one priority was getting 2.5.0 released.
  • Challenge: WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ has also opted into Hacktoberfest, as every year, so I’m hoping that will give a small uptick to current contribution levels.
  • Big Win: All of the compatibility hassles are solved, and tests are green across the board.

Community 

  • Contacted: @camikaos, @mariaojob
  • Priority: The current priority is engagement with WordPress users and community members through continued education and connection with Learn WordPress while providing support to our WordPress MeetupMeetup All 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. and 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. organizers with online events.
  • Previous Goal: To facilitate the ongoing education of WordPress through online interaction. 
  • Challenges:  The team’s current challenges include a lack of consistent mentorship for organizers, uncertainty in the future of events, and discernable contributor fatigue.
  • Big win: Soft launch of Learn WordPress.

Core 

  • Contacted: @francina, @audrasjb
  • Priority: Continue to work on the 5.6 release.
  • Previous Priority: Successfully releasing 5.5 in August and preparing work for the remaining 2020 goals due in the 5.6 release later this year.
  • Challenge: Some tickets and tasks are delayed multiple times because of low engagement from component maintainers and committers. The jQuery rollout plan seems to be more difficult than expected.
  • Big Win: REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. password inclusion and kicking off WP 5.6 female-led release with over 40 women participating.

Design 

  • Contacted: @estelaris, @karmatosed
  • Priority: Reviewing tracking systems for design tickets; supporting the release and design cohort with focused work; iterating our processes to support the diverse designers contributing.
  • Previous Priority: Sync triages with releases.
  • Challenge: The ‘firehose’ and stream of meetings. Time Zones continue to be a challenge so things like having alternative meetings are being explored and limiting meeting frequency and times.
  • Big Win: Continuing to improve our documentation, and enabling tasks such as the about page to be easier for the next team.

Docs

  • Contacted: @kenshino
  • Priority: Develop an overall documentation information architecture; improve discoverability & usability on all documentation; Refine the “getting started” processes (video and text) for onboarding of contributors; apply the external linking policy in 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 Developer Handbook; Google Season of Docs projects
  • Stretch Goal: We want to research and implement best practices of documentation in other CMS projects.
  • Previous Priority: Keep up with Gutenberg updates and handbook structure and updates.
  • Challenge: A lack of capacity to document our processes; WordPress official documentation doesn’t have proper editorial controls; Cooperation with other teams and staying current to new features; there is no official strategy or target of internationalization of Handbooks or DevHub. 
  • Big Win: We have started a Gutenberg user doc team; two projects were selected for Google Summit of Docs; formed an “Onboarding” team whose task is to develop communication with new contributors; started “Coffee break” zoom meetings once a month where team members can chat and get to know each other.

Hosting

  • Contacted: @amykamala @mikeschroder @jadonn
  • Priority: Priorities include PHPPHP PHP (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. 8 Compatibility for distributed hosting tests, helping inactive test reporters start reporting again, and improving the process.
  • Previous Priority: The hosting team’s prioritized supporting communication between WordPress and WP Hosts to help assure synchronicity between the WordPress 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. Project and hosts that provide WordPress offerings, and improving engagement within the #hosting-community team.
  • Challenge: As with last quarter, the biggest challenge is consistency. The team has maintained more inertia this quarter, but there are periods of time that are more and less active, which have made long term projects harder to complete.
  • Big Win: Error reporting with the distributed tests has been improved, making it so that both errors and failures are displayed. This makes it easier to track down what test errors/failures are trending across hosts.

Marketing 

  • Contacted: @webcommsat, @harryjackson1221, @maedahbatool, @miker, @yvettesonneveld
  • Priority: Support 5.6 release marcomms, scheduling internal requests, ongoing communications-related onboarding tasks to support teams and WordPress events; improve understanding of the open source and WordPress to help new contributors get started; support for internal communications.
  • Previous Priority: Supporting the WordPress 5.5 release, marketing the diverse speaker training events, and contributor onboarding support leading to WCUS.
  • Challenge: Planning task delivery with limited advance information on contributor availability and with current circumstances affecting contributors’ hope to contribute regularly due to pressures from the impact of COVID; implementing adaptable workflows that can be replicated for new contributors.
  • Big Win: Improved cross-team collaboration, including wider Marcomms resources for 5.5, WordPress Translation celebration week, Learn WordPress launch and communications, and diverse speaker training; a more pro-active and strategic approach to social media campaigns, such as Online WordPress Meetups and Diversity Speaker Workshops

Mobile 

  • Contacted: @elibud
  • Priority: Port more core blocks, improve 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. and performance, and introduce block transformations before the end of 2020.
  • Previous Priority: Improve the block editor’s performance, add support for more blocks, and enhance currently supported blocks.
  • Challenge: The editor release process still takes a lot of time and attention, the testing infrastructure is not robust enough leading to failures/flakiness, and the ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. Native upgrade process is still slow.
  • Big Win: Robust biweekly releases with new features, blocks, block improvements, and bug fixes.

Polyglots 

  • Contacted: @nao, @ocean90, @casiepa, @tobifjellner
  • Priority: As always, the core translation for the next release is the first priority. The next priority as a global team is to help inactive & under-resourced teams find new contributors and set attainable goals.
  • Previous Priority: Getting 5.5 translated by all active locales.
  • Challenge: More than half of the available locale teams are inactive, and active teams are struggling to process the review workload
  • Big win: Successful Translation Day event; more contributor involvement at the global level & within some of the reactivated/new teams

Security 

  • Contacted: @whyisjake
  • Priority: The security team is focused on prepping for the next security release.
  • Previous Priority: The team focused on furthering the work surrounding auto-updates in plugins and themes, and then in 5.6 transitioning that same effort to core auto-updates.
  • Challenge: Right now the security team is trying to get back to a regular cadence of security releases, with the goal to bundle releases with every minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality..
  • Big Win: We are really excited about auto-updates for plugins in themes from WordPress 5.5, and auto-updates coming to WordPress core in 5.6. Application passwords look great too!

Support 

  • Contacted: @Clorith
  • Priority: Retaining our volunteers across the international forums.
  • Previous Priority: Our top priority was prepping for the next major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality., 5.5.
  • Challenge: The biggest challenge is getting new contributors.
  • Big Win: The whole team has been handling the increase in help requests after WP 5.5, giving replies in a timely manner, and the work to translate helphub on the various languages who have access to it already.

Themes

  • Contacted: @williampatton @kafleg @acosmin @acalfieri @aristath @poena
  • Priority: The team will continue to focus on helping theme authors transition to more block-based themes.
  • Previous Priority: Helping theme authors transition to more block based themes.
  • Challenge: Theme suspensions and a lack of plan for the rebuilding of the theme directory.
  • Big Win: Reduced waiting time in the review queue; default theme; a full site editing theme added to the directory.

Tide 

  • Contacted: @derekherman, @jeffpaul
  • Priority: Update underlying infrastructure from Golang to Node.js to allow for broader contributions and make maintenance more feasible.
  • Previous Priority:  Resolve rate limiting and caching issues to allow v1.0.0 release.  ETA: Prior to COVID-19 we had targeted WCEU, but team member personal and professional delays likely mean v1.0.0 by WCUS.
  • Challenge: Finding contributors with experience with PHPCSPHP Code Sniffer PHP Code Sniffer, a popular tool for analyzing code quality. The WordPress Coding Standards rely on PHPCS., Golang, and Google Cloud Platform to help with enhancing Tide.
  • Big Win: Starting the progress of Node.js foundation build-out.

Triage 

  • Contacted: @desrosj, @sergeybiryukov
  • Priority: Continuing to bring the total number of tickets in TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. down to a more reasonable number, and to ensure that every ticket is accurate and actionable.
  • Previous Priority: We focused on lowering the total number of tickets in Trac to a more reasonable number.
  • Challenge: The two main team members have had their resources consumed by a combination of various active roles in recent releases and new contributor mentoring.
  • Big Wins: Despite considerable involvement in the last few release cycles, the team has managed to keep the overall number of open tickets roughly the same. The team is also proud of the mentoring efforts underway for the 5.6 release squad, educating them about ticket lifecycles and good triaging practices.

TV

  • Contacted: @nishasingh, @casiepa, and @rahuldsarker
  • Priority: Collect the WordCamp videos from organizers and make them public. Correct the speaker’s name and tags of submitted/ published videos.
  • Previous Priority: Remove the video and subtitle backlog so that by September all is published.
  • Challenge: More people join and actively work with us.
  • Big Win: Cleared the pending review videos queue. Within 20 minutes subtitle of a submitted WPTV’s video can be created in English.

With thanks to team leads for their quarterly updates and a special thanks to @angelasjin for her help with this post.

#quarterly-updates

Quarterly Updates | Q2 2020

To help all contributors stay aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress teams, each team’s listed representative has shared an update for the year so far. Below are their top priorities (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest wins and struggles. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility

  • Contacted@nrqsnchz, @ryokuhi
  • Previous Priority:
    • We had three main focus for WP 5.5:
      • Accessible color schemes
      • Alternative WP List Tables views
      • Refine/replace the upper-right WP-Admin fly-out menu
    • WP 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) Day online event.
  • Priority:
    • Accessible color schemes for wp-admin: We started work on this but we will not be releasing anything with 5.5.
    • Alternative WP List Tables views: Currently milestoned for 5.5, but still not done yet.
    • Improve the “Howdy” menu: Still open.
  • Struggle: It’s a small team so cross-team collaboration is the key and most of our projects for 5.5 are stuck because we still need help from various teams.
  • Big Win: WordPress Accessibility Day organization team, 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. EI Online Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor 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/., and the general team cohesion.

CLI

  • Contacted: @schlessera
  • Priority: The number one priority is getting 2.5.0 released, as it contains lots of compatibility fixes. However, it is currently a moving target as WordPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is having a lot of subtle BC breaks recently.
  • Struggle: Development efforts have slowed due to reduced contributors and committers participating.

Community

  • Contacted: @camikaos@mariaojob
  • Previous Priority: To have provided documentation, resources, and support to the community to support of virtual events while in-person events are not possible.
  • Priority: To facilitate the ongoing WordPress education – how to use it, how to build it, and how to make the community a stronger place through online interaction. 
  • Struggle:  The team’s current struggles include a lack of consistent mentorship for organizers, uncertainty in the future of events, and discernable contributor fatigue.
  • Big win: The community coming together in difficult times to continue supporting the WordPress project with education and outreach.

Core

  • Contacted@francina, @audrasjb
  • Previous Priority: To achieve the remaining 2020 priorities across the two remaining releases in 2020 (5.5 and 5.6) while necessary mentoring work towards an all female release squad in 5.6 continued.
  • Priority: Successfully releasing 5.5 in August and preparing work for the remaining 2020 goals due in the 5.6 release later this year.
  • Struggle: Delaying release of 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. and widgetWidget A 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. screen in core to the 5.6 release in December.  Some tickets and tasks are delayed across multiple releases because of low engagement from component maintainers and committers.  Long-term/regular cross-team collaboration has proven difficult to set up and maintain.
  • Big Win: Shipping automatic updates for plugins and themes, block directory, XML sitemaps, and lazy loading in 5.5 beta 1.

Design

  • Contacted: @estelaris
  • Previous Priority: 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/ editor and WordPress releases: syncs to release dates.
  • Priority: The Design Team is focused on syncing triages with releases.
  • Struggle: The team is looking to increase the number of team members who can attend core/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. triage.
  • Big Win: Figma reorganization and updating components.

Hosting

  • Contacted: @mikeschroder
  • Priority: The hosting team’s current priority is supporting communication between WordPress and WP Hosts to help assure synchronicity between the WordPress 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. Project and hosts that provide WordPress offerings, and improving engagement within the #hosting-community team.
  • Struggle: Consistency. There are periods of time that are very active and then periods of time that lull, which of course is to be expected but that inconsistency makes it hard to really see long term projects all the way through.
  • Big Win: A big win for the team was moving the Hosting Handbook to GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/ and opening it up for more contributors and continuing active maintenance and development on the WordPress PHPUnit Test Runner and Reporter framework for distributed automated testing of WordPress releases across multiple hosting providers’ environments.

Marketing

  • Contacted@webcommsat@harryjackson1221@maedahbatool@miker, @yvettesonneveld
  • Previous Priority: Recruiting and training more active contributors to help increase our capacity so that we will be able to contribute more effectively.
  • Priority: Supporting the WordPress 5.5 release, marketing the diverse speaker training events, and contributor onboarding support.
  • Struggle: While a win in many ways, there is a significant number of new joiners to the marketing channel and on tasks since March 2020. Experienced contributors need the time to support them to learn about open source, WordPress, and marketing techniques.
  • Big Win: Efforts towards and during the three days of marketing contribution across different time zones with WordCamp Europe online. Also contributing to initiatives with WCEU for more marketing-orientated onboarding materials and videos.
  • Bonus Questions: The team is focused on improving the ratio between new joiners to the channel and people who pledge to the ‘Five for the Future’ project in relation to the number of consistently active contributors. Currently, 599 people pledge to contribute to the marketing team and we have 1381 people who have joined the channel.

Mobile

  • Contacted@elibud
  • Previous Priority: The team focused on creating the groundwork for implementing new blocks and new features on the block editor. To improve the page template experience (a new way to create pages from pre-defined templates): support for new blocks and improved 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..
  • Priority: The team has worked to improve block editor’s performance, add support for more blocks, and enhance currently supported blocks.
  • Struggle: Writing workarounds for some ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. Native issues can take more time than expected.
  • Big Win: Most of the mobile code is moved to the Gutenberg web repository, added support for three more blocks (buttons, pullquote, verse), and added more settings to several already ported blocks.

Polyglots

  • Contacted@nao@ocean90@casiepa@tobifjellner
  • Previous Priority: To increase the number of package releases & top 100 plugins/themes translation completion rate (ETA: ongoing).
  • Priority: The Polyglot team is focused on getting WordPress 5.5 translated by all active locales (ETA: End of August).
  • Struggle: Polyglots are looking for help in improving communication and conflict resolution skills among locale team members through better documentation and/or training.
  • Big Win: Reevaluation of our handbook by simplifying processes (SVNSVN Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS). WordPress core and the wordpress.org released code are all centrally managed through SVN. https://subversion.apache.org/. + auto-releases) and rewriting/adding new pages.

Security

  • Contacted@whyisjake
  • Previous Priority: The team’s top priority was to make progress towards the 5.4.1 release while working on some of the larger MFA items.
  • Priority: The top priority for the security team right now is furthering the work surrounding auto-updates in plugins and themes, and then in 5.6 transitioning that same effort to core auto-updates.
  • Struggle: Finding the time to work on security-specific tasks is probably the biggest struggle that the team has had in the last quarter.
  • Big Win: Seeing background updates for plugins and themes is a huge win for the WordPress community. It paves the way for a more secure and stable WordPress ecosystem going into the future.

Support

  • Contacted@clorith
  • Previous Priority: The top priority of the Support Team was forum improvements. There was not a specified ETA as it relied heavily on meta involvement and whatever time was available for specific issues.
  • Priority: Our top priority right now is prepping for the next major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality., where we hope to have our documentation/Master List ready a few days before the 5.5 release.
  • Struggle: Our struggles have been inter-team communication on enforcement approaches to various guidelines and how to interpret said guidelines.
  • Big Win: We are proud of better engagement during weekly meetings. The last quarters promotions have brought some more active participants to meetings.

Themes

  • Contacted@aristath, @williampatton, @acosmin, @acalfieri, @poena, @dingo_d, @kafleg
  • Previous Priority: Pave the way and ease transition to Full Site Editing and the new structure of themes.
  • Priority: The team will focus on helping theme authors transition to more block-based themes.
  • Struggle:
    • Recruiting reviewers
    • Difficult to plan for an uncertain future.
    • Lacking a clear plan for the rebuilding of the theme directory.
  • Big Win: Reduced wait times for theme reviews, theme-check 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 updated, more involved in Gutenberg development.

Tide

  • Contacted@derekherman, @jeffpaul
  • Previous Priority:  The team’s work was to resolve rate limiting and caching issues to allow v1.0.0 release with a realistic ETA of v1.0.0 by WordCamp US.
  • Priority: Resolve rate limiting and caching issues to allow v1.0.0 release. 
  • Struggle: Tide development is dependent on having enough available contributors with Go coding, WordPress, and WordPress Coding StandardsWordPress Coding Standards The Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. May also refer to The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the PHP coding standards. experience.
  • Big Win: Stabilizing infrastructure costs with support from Google.

Training

  • Contacted@chetan200891@jessecowens@juliekuehl
  • Previous Priority: Development of a new theme for the Learn site
  • Priority: The Training Team is aiming to resume a consistent meeting as a means of inviting more people and reforming a leadership team that can manage meetings and related logistics. (ETA: End of August)
  • Struggle: An established meeting time has been the current struggle, due to geographic and time zone differences.
  • Big Win: Two new contributors participated in WordCamp EU 2020 contributor day!

Triage

  • Contacted@sergeybiryukov, @desrosj
  • Previous Priority: The top priority was to bring the total number of tickets in TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. down to a more reasonable number, and/or ensure that every ticket is accurate and actionable.
  • Priority: The top priority continues to be decreasing the total number of tickets in Trac down to a more reasonable number, and/or ensure that every ticket is accurate and actionable.
  • Struggle: Availability/resources. The two main team members have had their resources consumed by a combination of various active roles in recent releases and personal time off.
  • Big Win: Despite considerable involvement in the last few release cycles, the team has managed to keep the overall number of open tickets roughly the same (though slightly higher). The team is also proud of the mentoring efforts underway for the 5.6 release squad, educating them about ticket lifecycles and good triaging practices.

TV

  • Contacted: @nishasingh, @casiepa, @rahuldsarker
  • Priority: Remove the video and subtitle backlog so that by September 2020, all are published.
  • Struggle: Finding time and volunteers. COVID brought fewer videos to WordPress.tv, but also less time to work on the backlog. We are slightly increasing the volunteers and actively looking for new ones. Also, finding volunteers who can work on the subtitle, means find the solution (shortcut) to submit the subtitle more.
  • Big Win: New Team reps! Also, improving the publication workflow by using AWS and new volunteers.

#quarterly-updates

Quarterly Updates | Q1 2020

To help all contributors stay aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress teams, each team’s listed representative has shared an update for the year so far. Below are their top priorities (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest wins and struggles. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility

  • Contacted: @audrasjb, @nrqsnchz
  • Priority: For WP5.5: Accessible color schemes (Plugin/repo), alternative WP List Tables views (#49715#48751#35391), Refine/replace the upper-right WP-Admin fly-out menu. And the WP 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) Day online event!
  • Struggle: The team is in need of accessibility-minded ReactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. developers to contribute to the new editing experience.
  • Big Win: WP 5.4 and having a general scope for WP5.5.

Community

  • Contacted: @camikaos, @mariaojob
  • Priority: With in-person events on hold, the current priority is to provide documentation, resources, and support to aid a shift to virtual events.
  • Struggle: There has been a decrease in volunteer participation in reaction to this uncertain climate of the global coronavirus pandemic.
  • Big Win: The team has shown great resilience and compassion in dealing with the pandemic and encouraging a shift to virtual community connection.

Core

  • Contacted: @jeffpaul
  • Priority: Meeting 2020 priorities across the two upcoming releases, WP5.5 and WP5.6, while preparing and mentoring for the latter to be an all-female lead release squad.
  • Struggle: There is a noticeable decrease in productivity of component maintainers, committers, and more senior project contributors.
  • Big Win: WP 5.4 released on time with the help of a large number of new contributors!

Design

  • Contacted: @karmatosed, @estelaris
  • Priority: Achieving timely 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/ editor and WordPress releases.
  • Struggle: There is a decrease in engagement from design contributors.
  • Big Win: Processes have been documented with the help of a new 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.!

Marketing

  • Contacted: @webcommsat, @harryjackson1221, @maedahbatool, @miker, @yvettesoneveld
  • Priority: The team is prioritizing recruiting and training contributors to increase capacity and effectiveness.
  • Struggle: Developing new onboarding practices for contributors who are unfamiliar with communication within WordPress.
  • Big Win: Supporting 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., Meetups, and marketing team members as we acclimate to new routines in response to the health crisis.

Mobile

  • Contacted: @elibud
  • Priority: Priorities include foundational work for new blocks and features in the 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. editor, improving the page template 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., and supporting new blocks with an ETA of June-end.
  • Struggle: Use of the web block editor code can cause unexpected behavior on mobile. By using integration and snapshot tests, these breaks will hopefully be identified earlier.
  • Big Win: Implemented dark mode support on WordPress Android and added support for seven new blocks: button, column, columns, cover, group, latestPosts, shortcodeShortcode A shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site..

Polyglots

  • Contacted: @nao, @ocean90, @casiepa, @petya, @tobifjellner
  • Priority: The team’s focus is to increase the number of package releases and the top 100 plugins/theme translation completion range.
  • Struggle: Improved onboarding for local teams and streamlining outreach to new translators that includes feedback and PTE request procedures.
  • Big Win: 36 local packages were created for the 5.4, with 45 developed within 24 hours of the release. Fun statistics: since January there have been 5 new GTEs, 162 new PTEs, and 2,022 new contributors!

Support

  • Contacted: @clorith
  • Priority: The team is focused on forum improvements.
  • Struggle: The 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. team isn’t always available to assist with improvements.
  • Big Win: There has been an increase in the number of frequent contributors.

Themes

  • Contacted: @kafleg, @williampatton
  • Priority: Easing the transition to Full Site Editing and the new block-based theme foundation.
  • Struggle: TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. cookie issue; a disconnect between theme requirements and what users are submitting; staying in sync with Gutenberg developments; triaging licensing, escaping, and 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 territory; and improving the theme directory without a working database in the meta environment.
  • Big Win: Despite a fair amount of challenges, the team was successful in accessing the Theme Check plugin, preventing malicious themes and authors from entering the repo, an updated theme unit test, and a transition of requirements to GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/ for an easier process of proposed changes.

Training

  • Contacted: @chetan200891, @jessecowens, @juliekuehl
  • Priority: Development of a new theme for the Learn site.
  • Struggle: Outreach to developers who could work on the new learn site theme.
  • Big Win: The last few months have had many new contributors join the training team, and all lesson plans have been moved from make.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//training to Github.

Triage

  • Contacted: @desrosj
  • Priority: Bringing the total number of tickets in Trac down to a reasonable number and ensuring that every ticket is accurate and actionable.
  • Struggle: The team’s main issue is availability with two team leads having conflicting responsibilities.
  • Big Win: The number of open tickets on Trac has stabilized, indicating that triage is happening organically!

Security

  • Contacted: @whyisjake
  • Priority: The team is currently working towards the 5.4.1 release while also working on larger MFA items. Goals include: 2FA/MFA in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., 2FA/MFA on WordPress.org, Auto-Update for Plugins/Themes, Auto-Update for Core, and decrease the Security backlog.
  • Struggle: As with many teams, the current global crisis limits the time contributors can working on pending tasks.
  • Big Win: For the first time, in large part due to @ehtis work, all tickets are under a one hour response time!

Tide

  • Contacted: @jeffpaul
  • Priority: The team’s work is resolving rate limiting and caching issues to allow v1.0.0 release with a realistic ETA of v1.0.0 by WCUS. 
  • Struggle: Tide development is dependent on having enough available contributors with Go coding, WordPress, and WordPress Coding StandardsWordPress Coding Standards The Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. May also refer to The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the PHP coding standards. experience.

Hosting

  • Priority: To facilitate org communication with companies that host WordPress websites, while working with hosts to implement automated testing on hosting environments.
  • Struggle: The team is looking for additional contributors to help maintain the hosting tests and update the handbook.
  • Big Win: More contributors have joined the team as a project geared towards improving hosting tests kicked-off at the start of the year. Now 29 hosts are set up to report (+6 since January 1), with each receiving an email notification if their tests fail.

bbPress

  • Priority: Security fixes, and Dotorg/Meta quality-of-life improvements in 2.6.5, and feature development for 2.7.
  • Struggle: The team is looking at bug fixes taking more time than can be made available to research, prioritize, and test through completion.
  • Big Win: No major regressions or issues since 2.6 was released in late 2019!

#quarterly-updates

Quarterly Updates | Q1 2018

To keep everyone aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress volunteer teams, I’ve reached out each team’s listed representatives. I asked each of them to share their top priority (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest Wins and Worries. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility

  • Contacted: @rianrietveld, @joedolson, @afercia
  • Priority: Getting the minimum 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) requirements 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/ done prior to merge. ETA is before 5.0
  • Struggle: Would like better accessibility knowledge/awareness in the project (here are a few training options for those who want to learn more)
  • Big Win: A lot of support from the community to make WordPress as accessible as it can be. All the designers, testers, a lot of developers and team leads are making an effort.

CLI

  • Contacted: @danielbachhuber, @schlessera
  • Priority: New major version v2.0.0 which restructures the packaging system to improve the developer experience (especially contributor on-boarding). ETA is beginning of July.
  • Struggle: Assembling a larger team of regular contributors/committers (which informed the team’s priority).
  • Big Win: Version 1.5.0 released at the end of January was full of useful new features and bug fixes.

Community

Core

  • Contacted: @jeffpaul
  • Priority: Gutenberg polishing and GDPR preparations
  • Struggle: Timelines are in flux, but the new editor is getting into refinement phases. GDPR is being coordinated among a number of teams, so that’s taking significant time, but the next steps are clear.
  • Big Win: Got a number of new contributors to help lead releases. A few debrief posts about learnings and possible improvements are coming.

Design

  • Contacted: @melchoyce, @karmatosed, @boemedia, @joshuawold, @mizejewski
  • PriorityTeam building, empowering designers to contribute, and continued focus on supporting CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..
  • StruggleMaking the path to contribution clearer (no designated tasks for designers to perform and contributing through TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets is very technical/can be overwhelming).
  • Big Win: A bit of new involvement on the Design team and some partnering with people on other teams as well.

Documentation

  • Contacted: @kenshino
    Priority: Releasing HelpHub (background: https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2018/02/26/state-of-helphub-february-2018/) by May 30.
    Struggle: A lot of work is short term or project-based, so it’s hard to keep volunteer engaged over long periods of time

Hosting

  • Contacted: @mikeschroder
  • Priority: Expand on current best-practice documentation (ETA is not firm), and coordinating Gutenberg plugin compatibility testing (ETA is before 5.0)
  • Struggle: This is a newer team without a lot of dedicated time to put to it.
  • Big Win: Grew list of hosts running distributed automated tests to 9. This now also keeps track of the 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/ TravisCI setup, and automatically emails hosts if tests fail on their setup but are passing on WordPress.org’s Core TravisCI.
    Read more here: https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/test-results/

Marketing

  • Contacted: @bridgetwillard
  • Priority: Top priority is finishing the handbook, ETA June 2018
  • Struggle: Need a more streamlined onboarding process for Contributor Days
  • Big Win: We’re proud of quite a bit but the Trac onboarding Guide, jargon glossary, and keywords for new landing pages for wordpress.org.

Meta (WordPress.org Site)

  • Contacted: @coffee2code
  • Priority: GDPR, Council-requested updates, supporting teams where we can.
  • Struggle: 2 people on leave at the moment
  • Big Win: Got the About Page launched

Mobile

  • Contacted: @astralbodies, @catehstn
  • Priority: Getting Gutenberg on mobile.
  • Big Win: Nailed what they hoped to ship in Q1, and excited to see what 2018 brings

Plugins

  • Contacted: @ipstenu
  • Priority: Getting off SupportPress so that more nuanced access is easy to give.
  • Big Win: Have moved to a new review system (even though it has some weird quirks).

Polyglots

  • Contacted: @petya, @ocean90, @nao, @chantalc, @deconf, @casiepa
  • Priority: Translate WP to 100% and then concentrate on the top 100 plugins and themes
  • Struggle: Getting new PTEs fast enough, and complex tools/systems. Overall, the volume of strings awaiting approval.

Support

  • Contacted: @clorith
  • Priority: Preparing for an increase in Gutenberg support (due to the potential callout, and 5.0 itself)
  • Big Win: Have been providing new workshops recently, focusing on various parts of support, as seen from various 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 theme related perspectives and roles.

Theme Review

  • Contacted: @acosmin, @rabmalin, @thinkupthemes, @williampatton
  • Priority: Reducing theme review queue and ensuring themes still meet a minimum level of acceptable quality control.
  • Struggle: Finding new reviewers and keeping new reviewers interested in contributing their time.
  • Big Win: Reduced theme review queue from several months to 2 weeks.

Training

  • Contacted: @bethsoderberg, @juliek
  • Priority: Finish audit and updates to lesson plans. ETA is May 2018
  • Struggle: Onboarding to new systems, but there are some trainings planned in the near future.
  • Big Win: Moved lessons to GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/

Interested in updates for all of 2018? You can find those here https://wordpress.org/news/2018/07/quarterly-updates-q2-2018/ and here https://wordpress.org/news/2018/11/quarterly-updates-q3-2018/.

#quarterly-updates