We had a short and quiet meeting this week, folks are busy preparing for holidays and such, so this isn’t a surprise at all 🙂

Announcments

WordPress 5.3.1-RC1 is scheduled for this week, on December 11th.

Checking in with international liaisons

Members from some of our international parts of the community, including Russia, Italy, India, Brazil, and Sweden, were available during this weeks meeting.

Open floor

Slowness on the forums

A question about the bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. update, and current slowness on the forums was brought up.

The current slowdown on the forums is relating to missing caching for certain actions. This is notably the case when moderators perform certain tasks, like approving pending posts, or when users post replies to topics.

The bbPress team are aware of the issues, and will be looking into this.

HelpHub role assignments

There’s currently a limitation in HelpHub, which means it’s not possible to add a HelpHub editor or manager to someone who has not previously participated in the forums in some way.

A ticket, #meta-4890, was made for this and can be watched for future updates on the matter.

#support

General announcements

bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. 2.6 was released this week, and has been deployedDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it's available to visitors. to the various forums. Please note that an upgrade notice will show up in wp-admin if you have the appropriate access, don’t click this, 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 will handle the upgrade routines accordingly once they’ve been tested in our large setup scenario.

WordPress 5.3

The new version of WordPress, version 5.3, was released this week.

As is customary after a 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., the WordPress 5.3 Master List has been published, and is a living document being updated with anything we find that breaks WordPress for users.

Discussion on linking to off-site support platforms

A hot topic this past week has been linking to support-topics that are outside of 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/.

Some good conversations were covered during the weekly meeting, and a make/support post has been published outlining what we discussed, and allowing for input from those unable to attend the weekly meeting.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#support

We had our final call for changes to the WordPress 5.3 Master List, along with a call for testing of WordPress it self, as the next version of WordPress is scheduled for November 12th.

We discovered that there’s a need for a specific page for Twenty Twenty that the feature theme team has already finalized (teamwork makes the dream work!), which will be linked up properly after the upcoming release.

Fair warning as well, that next meeting we will be utilizing the meeting-opener used by many other teams. The support team in general doesn’t use the /here command, as we wish to avoid notification burnout, but we will be using it for the first meeting after a 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. to make sure we can gather any important information that surfaces from users after a release.

Checking in with international liaisons

Members of our community from Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, India, Russia and Spain were part of this weeks meeting, with some new members from a few of them stopping by!

One of the contributors asked about information on highlighting topics to see which ones need addressing still, which the support team has a tool for at https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/appendix/helpful-tools/#clearer-plugin-and-theme-support.

Open floor

A request for more details for those running a 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/. was put forth. Turns out the existing page had been edited, and left in a state pending review. This has been re-published and is available at https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.

We would like to improve the getting started documentation, so if you’ve ever held a contributor day and done support, input on what worked, what information you felt was missing, and what could be improved upon is very much welcome at any time.

If you would be so kind, please leave a response to the annual WordPress user survey for 2019.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

🎉 With the influx of new users lately, we’ll revitalize the contributor tips, a crowd favorite.

Helping out is awesome, but be selfish now and then, take the time you need to relax and unwind.

Contributor Tips

#support

First a reminder that we’re still working on the WordPress 5.3 Master List, to cover items that we foresee users being confused about, viewing as potential issues and so forth.

And of course, please help test the new version before it goes live.

Checking in with international liaisons

Representatives from Sweden, Russia, Brazil and the Netherlands took part in this weeks chat, mostly focused on the upcoming release.

Open floor

A question was brought forth on the process when requesting data deletion from 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/. Although we don’t know the exact procedure, the privacy policy does make note that historical data such as commit history for plugins, themes and WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. are all retained. There’s also a section on forum posts and topics being historical data, and removing them would cause holes that may destroy the overall understanding of information., As such the user profile is scrubbed and anonymized.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#support

General announcements

First up, the draft for the 5.3 Master List. I didn’t see any feedback on the make/support post on the preferred location for this, so I’ll go ahead with the 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/ as a start, with a make/forums post in addition pointing towards it (and letting folks who are not familiar or unable to use GitHub a place to participate). We’ll be using the shiny new Master List repository for this as well, so looking forward to that, and the post should go up some time tomorrow.

The coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. field guide isn’t released yet, which is a great asset when picking items to highlight or cover, so once that is out we’ll also be in a much better spot to filling out our own stuff.

Next on the agenda, some updates from the land of IRC.

The website that powers the WPBot IRC help bot has been updated and now also provides a handy 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/. endpoint for the pre-defined replies that are commonly used on that platform.

Along with this, the bot it self was updated to use modern 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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php., giving it a deeply sought after performance boost, and also allowing the log viewer connected to it to be updated in the same run.

WordPress 5.3 progression

For those keen-eyed individuals out there, you may have noticed that RC1 (Release CandidateRelease Candidate A beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. 1) is available!

https://wordpress.org/news/2019/10/wordpress-5-3-release-candidate/ for those who’ve not yet seen it

As mentioned earlier, the field guide isn’t quite ready yet, but RC1 is when we start working on the Master List for the forums, and it’s roughly 1 month from release at this time, give or take a couple of days.

Checking in with international liaisons

Members from our community in Sweden, Russia, Portugal, Brazil and Italy were part of this weeks discussions, with some great conversations about our check-in process, and also with updates on the HelpHub rollout.

Speaking of HelpHub; Russia, Brazil and Italy have all been added to the HelpHub lists, and have started getting these populated in their respective languages, great work team!

We had a chat about our courtesy pings to named individuals, and although the meeting leader is not a fan of the /here command, it sounds like it might not be a bad idea in some scenarios.

In light of that, we will utilize it on our first meeting after a release, both to gauge the effect, but also broaden the reach as we try to gather information on how a release went and what we should be keeping an eye out for.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#support

General announcements

The Site Health Team did the suggested upgrade version bump for PHP in core this week, and over the next week users will start seeing a dashboard 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. if they are using 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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. 5.6 or lower, guiding them towards upgrading.

A reminder that when flagging users, a moderation action limiting public display of posts until approved by a moderator, always educate the users on why this was done and what this means, there will also be more direct guidelines on when to flag users coming in the future, as the use of flags is becoming a bit too liberal, at least on the international forums.

And when writing notes on users, make sure to be descriptive enough, as they are available across all rosetta sites, and not everyone can read an archived post for example.

In other news, there’s a lively conversation going on at https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4696 relating to WordPress profiles here on dotorg.

Increased use of the topic report feature by authors for invalid reasons

There has lately been an uptick in incorrect use of the report topic feature by 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 authors, primarily because they don’t like getting negative feedback from users.

This has started to become a nuisance to the volunteers, and we would like to reiterate that the report feature is for forum guideline violations only. Continued misuse of the feature will lead to us reporting things to the theme or plugin teams respectively.

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

WordPress 5.2.3 is scheduled for release on September 4th.

WordPress 5.3 is tentatively scheduled for release on November 12th.

Checking in with international liaisons

Members from our Russian, Swedish, Brazilian and Dutch communities took place in this weeks discussions.

If you are a part of a non-English speaking part of our community, we invite you to join our weekly meetings (if you can), as we would love to get ot know you!

Open floor

Some questions are going unanswered, notably relating to the new 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. Although it’s a shame when someone doesn’t get helped, we’re all volunteers on a community forum, and it’s perfectly fine for some questions to not be answered, we’re all human, and we do what we can when we can, but nobody should feel obligated here.

The Health Check plugin was updated last week, and some of the more notable changes include:

• Changes to the grading indicator in the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. (no longer uses a numeric value, instead it’s an indicator with a string for clarity)
• A new dashboard widget when you login to give you the site health at a glance
• A new PHP compatibility checker for plugins in the Tools section

For more changes, the full list is available at https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/#developers, and yes, some of the changes in the plugin relating to the grading indicator and Site Health Checks are being tested out and intended for a core release.

Read the meeting transcript in the Slack archives. (A Slack account is required)

#support

General announcements

The Health Check Plugin has received an update which went live over the weekend between the meeting and this summary going out.

Useful new features are primarily related to the 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. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. Compatibility Checker, found under the Tools tab.

The suggested PHP version in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. is scheduled to go live on August 20th (this is for showing the dashboard 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. encouraging users to update their PHP version if they are using version 5.6 or lower).

The docs team is looking for input on what documentation is often needed, but is either missing or incomplete.

So far we’ve informed them that documentation on the new Site Health features (both checker, and fatal error protection) are desired, and that 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. documentation needs to be surfaced better as many did not know we had any.

Core updates

5.3 is tentatively scheduled to release mid-November, and a 5.2.3 release has been tentatively scheduled for early next month in the interrim.

Checking in with international liaisons

Members from Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands and India provided updates on how things are going in their regions.

Open floor

The plugins team gave a heads up that there’s a lot of trademark strikes being handled as companies are becoming more aggressive in what they do and don’t allow, which may cause some noise.

#support