WordCamp US 2024 Contributor Day Liveblog

 Large crowd gathers for a group photo during WordCamp US 2024

Nearly three dozen groups/teams will gather for WordCamp US 2024 Contributor Day . Below, you can find what each team intends to work on that day. We will update this page throughout the day with information about what the teams have been working on.

Team Plans

Community:

Meta Meta 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. :

Training:

Accessibility Accessibility 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 )

Table Lead: Amber Hinds / Joe Dolson

  • 11:00 Update
    • Dev side: pushing hard on regression in Gutenberg Gutenberg 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/ on screenreaders, starting to isolate what has changed.  Bad one.
    • Onboarded a couple new devs to get involved and do local setups.  One patch confirmed as ready to commit for core Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. – issue #60369 , shared with media team.
    • Everyone else is doing theme review tasks – reviewing stuff in backlog.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Productive afternoon! Explored in depth five outstanding a11y Accessibility 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 ) issues, and while none reached definite resolution, they are well progressed.
    • In the theme front, reviewed many themes.

CLI CLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress.

Table Lead: Brian Henry / Alain Schlesser

  • 11:00 Update
  • 3:00 Update
    • 4 merged PRs, 4 open PRs
    • Lots of discussion around database compatibility with latest MySQL MySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/ . updates
    • Detected dead code and over-complexity from WP CLI bootstrap that will be worked on
    • Improvements to `wp config` command

Community

Table Lead: Kevin Cristiano / Taco Verdonschot

  • 11:00 Update
    • Exploring creative ways to promote and market WordPress events to attract new people.  Roundtable discussion.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Working on building calendar datasources of holidays and national events to help avoiding conflicts.

Core

Table Lead: Joe McGill

  • 11:00 Update
    • Got several folks up and running on dev environments for the first time, active work on WPCS WordPress Community Support A public benefit corporation and a subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation, established in 2016. , Perf, a11y improvements, folks troubleshooting getting started documentation, and the Fields API API 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. and dataviews.  Lots of cross-pollination.   Helping folks troubleshoot the process of getting started.
  • 33:00 Update
    • Getting started dox updates, helping many folks getting their local env set up, 12 commits to core, half dozen merges to Gutenberg trunk during contrib day.

Core Fields

Table Lead: Scott Kingsley Clark / Alex Standiford

  • 11:00 Update
    • Field of Dreams!   Working towards a couple ideas, block Block 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. bindings API ideas, dataviews – hoping to figure out what a potential core proposal would look like for a PHP PHP 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 . driven view, and block binding side, figuring out what we can do more on the PHP side – but needs more React React React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/ . wise than what PHP can necessarily offer.  Also talking about integration with the bulk core edit component.   Quickedit and Bulkedit.
  • 3:00 Update
    • We have a plan for the future!   A complete grasp on dataviews and an area to contribute to – that being dataforms, which will be the new quickedit experience.
    • Going to propose adding custom fields by registering the fields with the ability to show in quickedit.
    • Bulkedit is also as an extension of quickedit, so it should largely pull through.

Core Performance

Table Lead: Adam Silverstein / Felix Arntz

  • 11:00 Update
    • Digging into existing issues, introducing new contributors to flows and options.  One commit done already, closed out issues that were already resolved.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Looking into open issues.
    • Closed a few tickets.
    • Looking into improving the speed of the AVIF generator
  • 4:30 Update

WordPress Coding Standards WordPress 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.

Table Lead: Rodrigo Primo

  • 11:00 Update
    • Working on adding docs for various sniffs sniff A module for PHP Code Sniffer that analyzes code for a specific problem. Multiple stiffs are combined to create a PHPCS standard. The term is named because it detects code smells , similar to how a dog would "sniff" out food. , one PR open for docs on a specific sniff sniff A module for PHP Code Sniffer that analyzes code for a specific problem. Multiple stiffs are combined to create a PHPCS standard. The term is named because it detects code smells , similar to how a dog would "sniff" out food. , onboarding new folks – learning by writing docs!   Six more PRs in the works!
  • 3:00 Update
    • Continuing morning – eight PRs created for docs.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Table Lead: Kristy Burgoine

  • 11:00 Update
    • Good conversations about where DEIB in WordPress is, lots of material to review to find out where to start and make some revisions Revisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to the main contributor handbook.  Figuring out how to signup with Paradigm course form – 100 licenses?
  • 3:00 Update
    • Largely more of the same.  Some questions for DEIB survey, turnout’s been quiet.

Design

Table Lead: Rich Tabor

  • 11:00 Update
    • Onboarded lots of new people, taking a look at UI UI 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. / UX UX 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. of Editing experience, finding areas of improvements, iterating after lunch on some ideas!
  • 3:00 Update
    • Taking a look at things discussed this morning and coming up with new ideas and proposals.

Docs

Table Lead: Leonardus Nugraha

  • 11:00 Update
    • Doing onboarding of new contributors – 8 new folks so far!
    • Starting to look at a few issues, etc.  End user documentation in github GitHub 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/ .
  • 3:00 Update
    • 12 issues moving forward,
    • One of the significant ones is font library docs is ready for publishing!

GatherPress

Table Lead: Mike Auteri / Mervin Hernandez

  • 11:00 Update
    • Going really well!   Full table, we’ve got some folks squashing some first bugs in the project, Mike and Mervin have spoken with Core and Meta about cross pollinations, updates to docs and website!
  • 3:00 Update
    • Two pushes to plugin Plugin 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 today!   Progress!

Hosting

Table Lead: Lucas Radke / Jason Nickerson

  • 11:00 Update
    • Closed two PRs on the Hosting Handbook, collaborating with Sustainability team to talk about the requirements / guidelines to have a sustainable hosting environment.  Test environments, where energy is sourced, cutting down on burns, etc.
  • 3:00 Update
    • PR ready for new sustainability page on the hosting handbook!
    • In cooperation with the core team merged long-existing pr for hosting test reporter
    • 3 more issues closed from hosting handbook

Marketing – Showcase

Table Lead: Bernard Mayer / Emma Young

  • 11:00 Update
    • Not getting emails from Slack Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/ . The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ . signups – going to check in with Otto.  Two or three people reviewing Showcase submissions for the first time!   Others writing copy, adding approved submissions to write copy for.  Six hoping to be ready to publish by EOD!
  • 3:00 Update
    • More content added to the GitHub in the afternoon, also a parallel impromptu marketing track across the hall for feasibility and progress across multiple teams.

Meta

Table Lead: Bernard Kau / Otto

  • 11:00 Update
    • Setting up new team members with local environment, and looking at upcoming WordPress meetings google calendar page, trying to grey out past events to simplify things.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Working on an accessibility issue with color contrast using opacity on the button.

Mobile

Team Lead: Jeremy Massel

  • 11:00 Update
    • Chatting about things to get issues in new editor! Webview as canvas for the editor, but other aspects in native views.
  • 3:00 Update
  • Engaging with questions from attendees, no real functional changes.

Openverse

Table Lead: Zack Krida / Krystle Salazar / Madison Swain-Bowden

  • 11:00 Update
    • Several community contributions including an open PR, and a chat with the Wikimedia foundation for licensing and community management.  
  • 3:00 Update
    • PR has been merged, and we identified an issue with our local analytics testing and front-end usability bug.

Photos

Table Lead: Michelle Frechette / Marcus Burnette

  • 11:00 Update
    • Wifi is too slow to do most things.  Never had this problem in Asia, last year – I’ll see about Photography specific hotspot.
    • Possible table leads access to more private network so ability to help organizing.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Moderating as many photos as possible

Playground

Table Lead: Antonio Sejas

  • 11:00 Update
    • Picked up Nate, onboarding new contributors, created two PRs and reported a new issue, and discussing a better name for Playground Blueprints.  Want to get more feedback and input.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Introduced Playground to a half dozen new people, created five PRs, created groupings and blueprints to run WooCommerce, discovered GatherPress uses Playground as PR previewer.  People from universities are finding new ways to use Playground in educational settings to develop and use WordPress.

Plugins

Table Lead: Evan Herman / also Chris Christoff

  • Evan got through about 58 plugin reviews, plus a bunch of follow-up reviews.
  • Chris discussed Plugin Check with plugin authors and collaborated with Meta team to get a status update on the deployment of Plugin Check to WordPress.org WordPress.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/

Polyglots

Table Lead: Marija and Roberta

  • Winged it without a table lead!
  • Translated close to 100 strings with Lithuanian and Latvian.
  • Promoted to table leads!

Security

  • Security team was not meeting today.

Support

Table Lead: Predrag Zdravkovic

  • 11:00 Update
    • Working through forums – unanswered questions, using support docs for contributor day Contributor 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/ . (which was useful!) – IRC is pretty quiet.   Cherry picking a few to try together to learn on.  Started plugging some questions into GPT and reviewing the response and helping the user learn how to fish in addition to helping them get to the answer.   Debugging for users.
    • Great mix of folks helping to answer questions – not primarily developers – but collaborating to learn how to come up with answers to get folks what they need to know.
  • Support group seemed to largely disperse in the afternoon?

Sustainability

Table Lead: Louise Towler

  • 11:00 Update
    • WordCamp WordCamp 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 . Sustainability Page template
      • Looked at Drupal example (Barcelona)
      • Sponsor contest to evaluate green credentials
    • Ubraca impact report
    • Hosting team invited to contribute – went to talk about it.
      • Also went to fix WordPress subindexes on meta tables.

Test

Table Lead: Brian Alexander

  • 11:00 Update
    • Everyone’s started on something.  Shared links for things to test in core and Gutenberg.
  • 3:00 Update
    • Folks working on tickets
      • WP dev
      • Gutenberg
    • Testing
      • Local docker env
      • Playground

Themes

Table Lead: Jessica Lyschik / Tammie Lister

  • 11:00 Update
    • Going well!   Already made PRs on 2025 repo, folks are testing.  Making good progress!
  • 3:00 Update
    • Working mostly on the twenty-twenty-five theme.
    • Making sure that all is translatable.

Training

Table Lead: Laura Adamonis / Kathryn Presner

  • 11:00 Update
    • <sent in slack>
  • 3:00 Update
    • Created a github issue
    • Reviewed tutorials for deprecation
    • Four new contributors!

Props to @ georgestephanis and additional volunteers for help gathering the updates.

# wcus

Training team update – September 2024

The Training Team is using these updates to report on how the team is doing with its different projects. For a detailed list of new content recently published on  Learn WordPress , see the latest edition of the Learn WordPress Newsletter: LINK.


Content Creation on Learn WordPress

Learning Pathways

Other Projects and News


Learn  GitHub GitHub 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 Status

Reporting period: 2024-08-01 to 2024-08-31
(Figures in parentheses show change from previous month.)

Issues and Pull Requests

  • Issues created: 10 (-64)
  • Issues closed: 16 (-42)
  • Issues open: 464 (+35)
  • Pull requests created: 7 (-10)
  • Pull requests closed: 10 (-7)
  • Pull requests open: 16 (-4)

Active Members

  • Git Git Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. Most modern plugin and theme development is being done with this version control system. https://git-scm.com/ .  authors: 8 (+8)
  • Issue authors: 21 (+2)
  • PR submitters: 4 (+3)

Of these, 3 Git authors,7 issue authors, and 1 PR submitter made their first contribution last month 🎉

# learnwp , # training

Themes team update September 24, 2024

i)  🎟  Theme directory stats

Currently,

  • 0 new ticket is waiting for review.
    • 0 tickets are older than  4 weeks
    • 0 tickets are older than  2 weeks
    • 0 tickets are older than  1 week
    • 0 tickets are older than  3 days
  • 63 tickets are assigned.
    • 2 tickets is older than  4 weeks
    • 8 ticket is older than  2 weeks
    • 24 tickets are older than  1 week
    • 49 tickets are older than  3 days
  • 1 is approved but is waiting to be made live.

In the past 7 days ,

  • 748 tickets were opened
  • 747 tickets were closed
    • 738 tickets were made live.
      • 35 new Themes were made live.
      • 703 Theme updates were made live.
      • 1 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 9 tickets were not approved.
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

Note: These stats include both the new theme tickets and updated theme tickets as well.

Number of reviewers: 5 ( @acosmin @kafleg @fahimmurshed @vowelweb @rinkuyadav999 )

ii)  💻   Block Block 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.  Theme Stats

  • 18 Block themes are currently being reviewed
  • 13 The Block theme has been live for the last 7 days

iii)  💡 HelpScout Stats

In the past 7 days,

Email Conversations 13 Messages Received 16
Replies Sent 11 Emails Created 0
Resolved 11 Resolved on First Reply 91%

iv)  📊 Extras

  • Create Block Theme  plugin Plugin 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  now has 10000+ active installs. There are 57 active issues and 4 Pull requests in  GitHub .
  • Theme Check  Plugin has 12 PRs and 40 issues.
  • Twenty Twenty-Five development started.  https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentyfive/

# themes , # weekly-updates

Plugin Review Team: 23 September 2024

Plugin Plugin 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 Status Change Stats

  • Plugins requested : 163
  • Plugins rejected : 7
  • Plugins closed : 30
  • Plugins approved : 68

Plugin Queue Stats (current)

  • Plugins in the queue (new and pending)* : 2299
    • (older than 7 days ago)** : 2087
    • (2024-09-16 – 2024-09-22) : 170
    • (new; not processed or replied to yet)* : 494
    • (pending; replied to)* : 1805
    • (pending; waiting on author)* : 1642
    • (pending; waiting on reviewer)* : 148
    • (pending; waiting on reviewer, email not yet sent)* : 15

Help Scout Queue Stats

  • Total Conversations: 523
  • New Conversations: 219
  • Customers: 472
  • Conversations per Day: 65
  • Busiest Day: Monday
  • Messages Received: 360
  • Replies Sent: 697
  • Emails Created: 130

*  : Stat reflects current size of queue and does not take into account ‘date’ or ‘day’ interval
**  : Stat reflects activity only within the ‘recentdays’ from today

# plugins

Test Team Update: 23 September 2024

Test Ticket Queue 🎟

👉🏻 “(change: N)” represents changes from prior week (unless noted).

📊 Current totals ( since Sep 16, 2024 ) :

🟢 New/Changed last week:

  • Need testing info: one (change: +0)
  • Need reproduce issue: six (change: -1)
  • Need patch testing: eighteen (change: +10)
  • Need unit tests: four (change: +1)
  • Need review (have patch and unit tests): fifteen (change: +9)

🟣 Closed last week:

  • Need testing info: zero (change: +0)
  • Need reproduce issue: three (change: +0)
  • Need patch testing: four (change: +2)
  • Need unit tests: zero (change: -1)
  • Need review (have patch and unit tests): twelve (change: +5)

To discuss queries used in this report, please comment below, or connect with the Test Team over in #core-test .

+make.wordpress.org/test/

Documentation Team Update – September 23, 2024

The Documentation team meeting schedule:

A new GitHub repo is created for end-user documentation and its translations to all locales. More info about this can be found here .

Documentation Issue Tracker stats.

Current state

By status:

By version:

By project:

Past week

0 pull requests merged .

4 issues closed .

5 issues were created .

Current projects:

The Documentation team repositories:

# docs

WordCamp US 2024 Marketing Discussion

During WordCamp WordCamp 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 . US 2024, @ illuminea (Miriam Schwab) facilitated an open discussion rethinking how to market WordPress. This idea stemmed from a discussion on WP Product Talk .

Below are notes of the meeting. We recorded the meeting but are also observing  Chatham House rules  by anonymizing some participant information.

Comment on this post to stay informed regarding the next steps.

00:00:00 – 00:00:30

  • Introduction

00:00:30 – 00:01:34

  • Marketing WordPress: Overview and History
    • Why WordPress needs marketing: it has relied on early momentum but must adapt to changes in user needs and competitors.
    • Competitors heavily invest in brand awareness, while WordPress is often overlooked.
    • Importance of WordPress’s ecosystem, particularly contributor-created products like themes and plugins.

00:01:34 – 00:02:41

  • Product Marketing Necessity
    • The myth that a great product will market itself no longer applies.
    • Example: Elementor continues marketing despite having market share.
    • WordPress requires similar marketing to remain relevant.
    • Frustrations around marketing WordPress are discussed, including declining WordCamp attendance.

00:02:41 – 00:04:47

  • Decline in Event Attendance and WordCamps
    • Attendance at WordCamps is decreasing.
    • Personal anecdote: Speaker noticed fewer new faces at WordCamp Europe.
    • Discussion on how lower attendance affects sponsor interest.
    • Suggestion of creating a marketing consortium to neutrally promote WordPress and support the ecosystem.

00:04:47 – 00:06:56

00:06:56 – 00:08:29

  • Challenges Marketing WordPress
    • Recognition of the diverse contributors and marketing verticals within the ecosystem.

00:08:29 – 00:10:06

  • Roadblocks in Marketing WordPress
    • Outdated showcase pages and unresolved GitHub GitHub 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/ issues impede marketing efforts.
    • Call for momentum and reducing barriers to move marketing ideas forward.

00:10:06 – 00:12:45

  • Defining Success and Marketing Goals
    • The need for a unified marketing goal.
    • Focus shifts from market share growth to increasing current user engagement.

00:12:45 – 00:14:53

  • Analytics and Traffic Decline
    • Declining traffic to WordPress.org WordPress.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/ over the last three years.
    • Lack of concrete analytics data hinders marketing efforts.
    • Need to improve traffic and visibility on WordPress.org.

00:14:53 – 00:17:31

  • Difficulty in Measuring Success
    • Challenges in defining marketing success without clear analytics.
    • Need for measurable metrics, such as tracking installs of WordPress versions.
    • Perhaps look at traffic numbers to WordPress.org as top-level funnel indicators

00:17:31 – 00:18:41

  • Broader Market Context
    • Concern over whether WordPress’s declining market share is due to a shrinking market or other factors.

00:18:41 – 00:22:37

  • WordPress’s Engagement Problem
    • Perception of WordPress as outdated, especially among younger developers.
    • Competition from platforms like TikTok and YouTube diverts attention from WordPress.
    • Fostering excitement through innovation is necessary.

00:22:37 – 00:25:33

  • Defining Engagement and Success in Marketing
    • Discussion on what drives excitement and engagement for WordPress today.
    • Importance of aligning WordPress messaging with current tech trends.

00:25:33 – 00:28:15

  • Meetups and Events as a Key Marketing Strategy
    • Meetups historically serve as a powerful marketing strategy.
    • Challenges in organizing meetups targeted at specific groups.
    • The need for measurable outcomes like increased attendance.

00:28:15 – 00:30:53

  • Educational Programs and Youth Engagement
    • Efforts to engage younger audiences through educational initiatives like WordPress Youth Camps.
    • Slow progress in North America compared to other regions.

00:30:53 – 00:33:38

  • Training and Career Development in WordPress
    • Emphasizing training standards to foster future contributors.
    • Addressing the gap between WordPress education and job readiness.

00:33:38 – 00:36:49

  • Expanding to Global Markets
    • Success stories of WordCamps in places like Bangladesh and India, where enthusiasm for WordPress remains strong.
    • Contrast with North American markets.

00:36:49 – 00:39:11

  • The Value of Owning Your Data
    • Importance of educating younger generations on data ownership.
    • Explaining why proprietary solutions like Canva appeal to younger users.

00:39:11 – 00:46:45

  • Product Complexity and Opportunities for Youth Engagement
    • WordPress’s complexity as both a challenge and an opportunity for young developers.
    • Positioning WordPress as a customizable, open-source platform.
    • Strategies for combating the perception of WordPress as outdated.

00:46:45 – 00:53:52

  • Marketing Tactics
    • Potential of identifying WordPress with the open web and digital freedom.
    • Discussion of video ad campaigns showcasing diverse users and cases.

00:53:52 – 01:00:45

  • Wrapping Up and Next Steps
    • Agreement on narrowing the conversation and defining unified goals.
    • Suggestions for forming committees, creating communication forums, and continuing the discussion.
    • Closing comments on moving forward with solutions for WordPress marketing.

Key Takeaways

  • WordPress Needs Modern Marketing: Early momentum is no longer sufficient; to stay competitive, WordPress must adapt to modern marketing practices.
  • Declining Engagement: Both event attendance and general excitement about WordPress are declining, particularly among younger developers.
  • Analytics Gaps: The absence of robust analytics data makes measuring marketing success and planning effective campaigns difficult.
  • Marketing Consortium Opportunity: There is interest in creating a neutral consortium to promote WordPress collaboratively.
  • Youth Engagement and Education are Critical: Engaging younger users through educational initiatives and emphasizing the value of data ownership are key to future growth.
  • Global Market Opportunities: WordPress enthusiasm remains strong in markets like India and Bangladesh, offering lessons for North America.
  • Meetups and Events: Revitalizing meetups could help re-engage users and foster community involvement.

Expanded Section: Next Steps and Focus Groups

Next Steps: Some Proposed Actionable Initiatives

Focus Areas:

  1. Creation of Focus Groups:
    • Event Revival: Revamp meetups and WordCamps where participation is low.
    • Youth Engagement: Create programs that introduce WordPress in schools and universities.
    • Enterprise Marketing: Partner with agencies to market WordPress at scale.
    • Open Source Open 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. Advocacy: Build awareness around data ownership and digital freedom.
  2. Unified Marketing Goal:
    • Define a central marketing objective for WordPress, focusing on re-engaging users and improving brand awareness.
  3. Collaboration and Communication:
  4. Publish and Share Notes Transparently:
    • Summarize and share notes with the broader community, inviting feedback and collaboration.

Forming and Structuring Focus Groups

  • Establish KPIs for each group (e.g., attendance growth, youth engagement).

Group Formation:

  • Identify leaders and set clear objectives for each focus group.
  • Regular check-ins to track progress.

Defining Success Metrics:

  • Establish KPIs for each group (e.g., attendance growth, youth engagement).

To stay informed about upcoming discussions, focus groups, and further developments regarding marketing WordPress, comment on the post . This will ensure you receive updates on the next steps. The discussion, which took place during WordCamp US 2024 and was facilitated by Miriam Schwab, focused on rethinking WordPress marketing and exploring solutions to engage users more effectively.

Themes team update September 17, 2024

i)  🎟  Theme directory stats

Currently,

  • 0 new ticket is waiting for review.
    • 0 tickets are older than  4 weeks
    • 0 tickets are older than  2 weeks
    • 0 tickets are older than  1 week
    • 0 tickets are older than  3 days
  • 52 tickets are assigned.
    • 2 tickets is older than  4 weeks
    • 6 ticket is older than  2 weeks
    • 14 tickets are older than  1 week
    • 33 tickets are older than  3 days
  • 0 is approved but is waiting to be made live.

In the past 7 days ,

  • 730 tickets were opened
  • 757 tickets were closed
    • 736 tickets were made live.
      • 71 new Themes were made live.
      • 665 Theme updates were made live.
      • 0 more were approved but are waiting to be made live.
    • 21 tickets were not approved.
    • 0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded.

Note: These stats include both the new theme tickets and updated theme tickets as well.

Number of reviewers: 5 ( @acosmin @kafleg @fahimmurshed @vowelweb @rinkuyadav999 )

ii)  💻   Block Block 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.  Theme Stats

  • 18 Block themes are currently being reviewed
  • 33 The Block theme has been live for the last 7 days

iii)  💡 HelpScout Stats

In the past 7 days,

Email Conversations 14 Messages Received 15
Replies Sent 7 Emails Created 0
Resolved 7 Resolved on First Reply 100%

iv)  📊 Extras

  • Create Block Theme  plugin Plugin 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  now has 10000+ active installs. There are 57 active issues and 4 Pull requests in  GitHub .
  • Theme Check  Plugin has 12 PRs and 39 issues.
  • Twenty Twenty-Five development started.  https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentyfive/
  • Channel name # themereview is changed to #themes in make WordPress slack Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/ . The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ . .

# themes , # weekly-updates

Plugin Review Team: 16 September 2024

Plugin Plugin 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 Status Change Stats

  • Plugins requested : 169
  • Plugins rejected : 5
  • Plugins closed : 27
  • Plugins approved : 113

Plugin Queue Stats (current)

  • Plugins in the queue (new and pending)* : 2248
    • (older than 7 days ago)** : 2011
    • (2024-09-09 – 2024-09-15) : 160
    • (new; not processed or replied to yet)* : 446
    • (pending; replied to)* : 1802
    • (pending; waiting on author)* : 1628
    • (pending; waiting on reviewer)* : 160
    • (pending; waiting on reviewer, email not yet sent)* : 14

Help Scout Queue Stats

  • Total Conversations: 613
  • New Conversations: 244
  • Customers: 560
  • Conversations per Day: 76
  • Busiest Day: Thursday
  • Messages Received: 420
  • Replies Sent: 1018
  • Emails Created: 177

*  : Stat reflects current size of queue and does not take into account ‘date’ or ‘day’ interval
**  : Stat reflects activity only within the ‘recentdays’ from today

# plugins

Five for the Future Program Updates: September 2024

Since its formal launch in 2019, the Five for the Future program has significantly impacted the WordPress project by advocating for and supporting sponsored contributions. In the past few months, notable efforts have been made to improve the program and the contributor experience in WordPress. The purpose of this post is to share the current state of projects affiliated with the Five for the Future program to bolster transparency and openness. Here’s an executive summary of the current state of Five for the Future and WordPress Contribut ion Initiatives as of September 1, 2024

1. Latest Five for the Future Company Stats

Organization Count & Pledged Hours

Stats as of September 1, 2024:

  • one hundred and ninety-one total organizations have pledged contributors, with eight hundred and ninety-seven confirmed contributors .
  • A total of 7,838 hours have been pledged towards the initiative.
  • On average, a 5ftF company sponsors 39.19 hours per week with 4.87 employees each.

The dip in organization count in Q1 and Q2 2024 resulted from a thorough validity check of company status (pledge rationalization).

 Bar chart showing the growth of Five for the Future organizations over time form 2022 November through 2024 August.

Organization/Contributor Activity Levels

As WordPress grows, it is essential to improve our understanding of the impact of Five for the Future and sponsored contributions. Three key metrics were identified: sponsored contributor activity, organization activity, and organization impact. As a result  of outreach and improved metrics , there has been a significant increase (~40%) of active and impactful Five for the Future organizations since M ay 2024. 

Listed below are the stats as of September 1, 2024:

Active 5ftF Sponsored Contributors Active 5ftF Organizations Impactful 5ftF Organizations
80.33%
Percentage of sponsored contributors pledged to 5ftF who logged into WordPress.org WordPress.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/ in the past 3 months.
62.63%
(41% increase)
Percentage of organizations with at least one Active 5ftF Sponsored Contributor (with w.org profile activity in the past 3 months).
29.47%
(41% increase)
Percentage of organizations contributing to impactful projects that align with the project’s Big Picture Goals .

2. Contributor Stats

Contributor Count & Pledged Hours

Stats as of September 1, 2024:

  • 8,314 self-sponsored contributors have pledged 116,530 hours
  • 905 company-sponsored contributors have pledged 7,838 hours

3. Five for the Future Website Refresh

 The new Five for the Future website v/s the previous design.
The new homepage versus the previous design .

Contributors from Meta Meta 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. , Design, and Community teams worked hard to relaunch the Five for the Future website as part of an ongoing effort to create a consistent design language across WordPress.org.  This update introduces a block Block 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. -based child theme alongside the shared WordPress.org parent theme , paving the way for future enhancements. The main changes include converting all content to blocks and standardizing the layout, typography, and colors. The homepage was also redesigned, and new contributor testimonials were added. Since the last update, the site now features an updated handbook page and a contact page for old and new Five for the Future contributors to get support on their initiatives. More updates, such as adding case studies of participating organizations and additional testimonials, are in the pipeline. Plans are also in motion for a Five for the Future blog and newsletter. 

4. Dashboard Project Updates

 Evolution of WordPress Contributors across recent releases.

After a year’s work, the experimental WordPress Project Health Dashboards have now been published. These dashboards cover the Make/WordPress Core Core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. , Community, and Training Teams, along with an overview of WordPress 6.6 release statistics. Compiled manually using tools like Bitergia Analytics , the dashboards offer a snapshot of team performance and provide insights into their health status. Still experimental, seeks community feedback to refine and expand dashboarding efforts across more teams. Check out these individual dashboard pages which live in the Make/Project blog:

5. October Contributor Mentorship Program

The WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program’s October-November (2024 Q3) cohort received nearly 150 mentee applications and around 46 mentor applications , much higher than expected. Given this extraordinary interest in the program, working group members are working hard to select the final group of mentors and mentees. The final group of selected mentors and mentees is expected to be announced on the week of September 16th. Check out the program white paper to learn more about the Q3 mentorship cohort.

This post was written by @ harishanker with inputs from @ nao

# 5ftf , # contributor-working-group , # five-for-the-future

Test Team Update: 16 September 2024

Test Ticket Queue 🎟

👉🏻 “(change: N)” represents changes from prior week (unless noted).

📊 Current totals ( since Sep 09, 2024 ) :

🟢 New/Changed last week:

  • Need testing info: one (change: -1)
  • Need reproduce issue: eight (change: +1)
  • Need patch testing: ten (change: +4)
  • Need unit tests: three (change: +2)
  • Need review (have patch and unit tests): twelve (change: +4)

🟣 Closed last week:

  • Need testing info: zero (change: +0)
  • Need reproduce issue: three (change: +2)
  • Need patch testing: two (change: +2)
  • Need unit tests: one (change: +1)
  • Need review (have patch and unit tests): seven (change: -1)

To discuss queries used in this report, please comment below, or connect with the Test Team over in #core-test .

+make.wordpress.org/test/

# test