News

Contributor Day at WordPress US was a huge success. Contributor Days are a collaborative community outreach with amazing opportunities to get involved in Making WordPress. Contributor Days happen at camps both large and small. We’d like to encourage you with an update that will inspire your community as well.

This year’s Contributor Day for WordCamp US was held on Sunday, December 3 and was well-attended and productive.

Contributor Day Wrap Up #WCUS https://t.co/rJ2aT2V6Mz

— WordCamp US 2024 (#WCUS) (@WordCampUS) December 3, 2017

ACCESSIBILITY

Team leads: Rian Rietveld (@rianrietveld on Slack), Andrea Fercia (@afercia on Slack), and Joe Dolson (@joedolson on Slack)

The a11y group provides accessibility expertise across the project. They make sure that WordPress core and all of WordPress’ resources are accessible. Learn more about the Accessibility team.

As always, we had a few different tasks. We gave info on how to test for accessibility and reviewed and discussed work from developers and designers. We also tested Gutenberg, on-boarded new developers in the team, and talked to the other teams about common issues.

Full recap: Contributor day at WordCamp US 2017

COMMUNITY

Team lead: Andrea Middleton (@andreamiddleton on Slack)

If you’re interested in organizing a meetup or a WordCamp, the community blog is a great place to get started. There are groups working to support events, to create outreach and training programs, and generally support the community. Learn more about Community.

At WordCamp US contributor day, we did a lot! Here’s a tidy list:

• Experienced community team contributors trained newer contributors on how to order swag for WordCamps and meetups.
• We held a couple of in-person meetup and WordCamp orientations.
• Brand new contributors reviewed our meetup organizers handbook for clarity.
• A group of experienced organizers worked on some new documentation on how to review speaker applications.
• 23 people attended a discussion of recruiting diverse speakers and 8 attended a workshop on a new initiative to train people who are underrepresented in tech how to develop, propose, and give conference sessions
• New and experienced contributors took part in an application vetting sprint.

CORE

Team lead: Adam Silverstein (@adamsilverstein on Slack)

The core team makes WordPress. Whether you’re a seasoned PHP or JavaScript developer or are just learning to code, we’d love to have you on board. You can write code, fix bugs, debate decisions, and help with development. Learn more about the Core team.

The core team helped onboard numerous new contributors and huddled around focuses including the REST API, JavaScript, and Gutenberg. Several commits landed and contributors submitted patches to core or tested existing patches. The JavaScript group brainstormed about how to structure core JavaScript to maintain backwards compatibility while also enabling merging and building features like Gutenberg. We managed to break and then fix our build and we updated our recommended PHP version to 7.2.

DESIGN

Team lead: Mark Uraine (@mapk on Slack)

The design group explores solutions for various problems throughout the WordPress open source project. It’s a home for designers and design-lovers alike. Regular design discussions span UI & UX, information architecture, and computation design with emphasis toward user testing and inclusion. Learn more about the Design team.

The Design Team talked about the importance of contributing to WordPress and the opportunity designers have right now to influence the direction of this open source project. We explored what design meant in the world of WordPress, and how design can be contributed in many different ways; Documentation, Core, Meta, etc. After lunch, some broke out to help other teams while others learned more details on Trac, tickets, and the contributing process.

DOCUMENTATION

Team lead: Jon Ang (@kenshino on Slack)

Good documentation lets people help themselves when they get stuck. The docs team is responsible for creating inline documentation for core, as well as content for the theme and plugin development handbooks, and more recently, HelpHub. Learn more about the Documentation team.

The documentation team worked on the following

• Listing out tasks that have low entry barriers (maybe things that can be completed in 15 mins by volunteers). This way more people can contribute to Documentation without having to onboard onto a complicated setup.
• We created at least 5 trac tickets
• Worked on Helphub
• Continued work on Migration of Codex to DevHub
• Fixed styling on DevHub
• Had various discussions on PHPdocs standards – perhaps to suggest the actual PHP PSR standards to adopt what we’ve created
• Had a chat with Matias about Gutenberg documentation – of which we’ll follow up closely
• A total of 15 people contributed and half of them were new
• We’re almost done with the Docs Roadmap we created 4 years ago!

Lastly, we had a great chat about possibly participating in WriteTheDocs event in Prague where we will work with other project ‘documentators’, learn from them and have a retreat for our team to create a new roadmap for the next 5 years.

MARKETING

Team lead: Bridget Willard (@gidgey on Slack)

The Marketing team focuses on making WordPress marketable in all sorts of contexts, from the WordPress.org side all the way to core and the wider community. Learn more the about Marketing team.

Our vision for the Marketing Team is to be the go-to resource for strategy and content for other WordPress teams.

We were excited to have a well-attended group of people who were enthusiastic about marketing. Multiple people mentioned this was their first WordCamp and their first Contributor Day. They were so elated to be part of the community making WordPress. It was amazing to see so many people new to the community step up and become part of the new generation of Contributors.

We worked on fresh copy for the German Community called CMS Garden, which is an open source advocacy group publication encouraging developers and users to explore WordPress as their CMS of choice to meet their business goals. We’re excited to help them improve copy and have begun work on a press kit.

Another team has started work on a WordPress.tv project. They are interviewing people about their Gutenberg User Testing experiences. This marketing effort will help the Gutenberg project gain support throughout the entire WordPress community.

We use Trello to project manage and are happy to have added ten new projects to our in-progress list including Contributor Day email copy, public policy guide for governments, and promoting the donation page for the WordPress Foundation.We’re so proud to have added over 20 new contributors to the Marketing Team and look forward to a brighter future together!

META

Team lead:

The Meta team makes WordPress.org, provides support, and builds tools for use by all the contributor groups. Learn more the about Meta team.

During Contributor Day at WCUS 2017, the Meta team had 12 people working on various things. Three new people were onboarded with an overview of the tools and how to provision the development environment, two Meta Trac tickets were closed out completely with patches committed, and several other tickets received attention and made good progress.

MOBILE

Team Lead: Cate (@cate on Slack)

The mobile team builds the iOS and Android apps. Lend them your Java, Objective-C, or Swift skills. The team also needs designers, UX experts, and testers to give users a smooth experience on every device. Learn more about Mobile.

The Mobile Team at Contributor Day has decided to focus on improving accessibility within the mobile experience of WordPress. They’re going through the app using voiceover (like someone who is blind would) and reporting bugs as they go along. They’re fixing already-known issues that are marked as “accessibility”, such as changing font size based on what the OS settings. Through usability testing and design improvements, they’re working hard to make sure WordPress isn’t only responsive, but responsive AND accessible.

We were able to collaborate with the API team during Contributor Day to agree upon providing a short term solution for a simple authentication method. We onboarded two new contributors and had pull requests submitted during the day for review. A number of accessibility issues were addressed including improving adoption of Dynamic Text on iOS and resolving a TalkBack issue in Android.

PLUGINS/PLUGIN REVIEW

Team leads: Mika Epstein (@ipstenu on Slack) & Samuel Wood (@otto42 on Slack)

The Plugins team focuses on everything revolving around plugins submitted to the WordPress.org plugin repository. Learn more about the Plugins team.

The plugin team made serious headway on supporting visible pages for closed plugins, allowing users to now see if a plugin existed (and not wondering if it vanished). We also released our proposed updates to the plugin guidelines, which are open for review by anyone.

POLYGLOTS

Team lead: Remkus de Vries (@remkus on Slack)

WordPress is used all over the world and in many different languages. If you’re a polyglot, help out by translating WordPress into your own language. You can also assist with creating the tools that make translations easier. Learn more about the Polyglots team.

The polyglot team is responsible for translating WordPress into every language and locale. The team is organized into two groups: the translation team and the technical team. The technical team is in need of multilingual developers able to code at a core level.

The polyglot team is currently working to translate all WordPress sites across all language with gender neutrality.

SUPPORT

Team lead: Marius Jensen (@clorith on Slack)

Answering a question in the support forums or IRC is one of the easiest ways to start contributing. Everyone knows the answer to something! This blog is the place for discussion of issues around support. Learn more about the Support team.

The Support Team at WordCamp US Contributor Day is focusing on onboarding new volunteers. Year round, the worldwide community of volunteers on the Support Team works hard to help WordPress.org users through support forums and IRC. During Contributor Day, the team developed improved processes to help new volunteers get involved in The Support Team. They even did a test orientation and onboarding session over Slack to evaluate their new processes, with great success! Thanks to this team, people new to WordPress or seeking more advanced help can find a friendly community online.

For the support team at WCUS CD, we tested our new onboarding process via Slack to include those who couldn’t make it to the event and that we’d like to get feedback on for future online-only use. We also went through the more pressing pain points on the forums and looked at possible ideas for improving on them.

THEME REVIEW

Team lead: @thinkupthemes and @rabmalin

The Theme Review Team reviews and approves every Theme submitted to the WordPress Theme repository. Reviewing Themes sharpens your own Theme development skills. You can help out and join the discussion on the blog. Learn more about the Theme Review team.

A number of experienced theme review team members attended WordCamp US. New reviewers were introduced to the NS Theme Check plugin which is a tool that aids reviewing of themes by automating many of the checks. New reviewers were supported in the #themereview Slack channel by members of the team in addition to those in the room at WCUS. New reviewers made progress particularly with completing reviews for child themes.

TRAINING

Team leads: Beth Soderberg (@bethsoderberg on Slack), Julie Kuehl (@juliekuehl on Slack), and Melinda Helt (@melindahelt on Slack)

The training team creates downloadable lesson plans and related materials for instructors to use in a live workshop environment. If you enjoy teaching people how to use and build stuff for WordPress, immediately stop what you’re doing and join our team! Learn more about Training.

WCUS Accomplishments

• Began to define new processes to make them more scalable
• Set up GitHub repository
• Audited all the lesson plans in preparation for migration, including those missing images or in need of updating
• Brainstormed new lesson plans due to changes in WordPress
• Started a new handbook

2018 Goals Defined

• Create handbook based on new workflow
• Move lesson plans into GitHub
• Reorganizing our website
• Fix the broken images
• Update for 4.8/4.9/Gutenberg
• Make workshop recommendations from existing plans
• Accessibility workshop
• Consider team roles

WORDPRESS TV

Team Lead: Cemal Tashan (@tashan on Slack)

The TV team reviews and approves every video submitted to WordPress.tv. They also help WordCamps with video post-production and are responsible for the captioning and subtitling of published videos. Reviewing videos is a great way to learn about WordPress and help the community: experience is not required to get involved. Learn more about TV.

Today, the TV team is captioning videos for WordPress.tv. Thanks to the library of content on WordPress.tv, WordCamp talks and meetup presentations from around world are not only documented but made available for everyone to enjoy. Captioning is a way to make these videos accessible and get them ready for caption translations. Thanks to the team behind WordPress.tv, we can all learn from the wealth of knowledge within the community.

WP-CLI

WP-CLI is the official command line tool for interacting with and managing your WordPress sites. Learn more about CLI.

Contributing – WP-CLI

Team Leads: Daniel Bachhuber (@danielbachhuber on Slack) and Alain Schlesser (@schlesseraon Slack)

• The WP-CLI team could successfully onboard several new contributors, one of them very new even to WordPress itself. We had two successful pull requests and, while working on these, could identify a recent regression as well.
• Finally, there were a lot of discussions about the state of the current onboarding experience for WP-CLI and how it could be further improved.

 

Note: This post was written by Bridget Willard of the Marketing Team for the Marketing Team blog and is reproduced here with permission 

The crew at WordPress TV is working hard to get all of our speakers’ sessions uploaded. Fifty of the  WCUS talks have been posted already, with more anticipated shortly.

We will be adding links to each speakers’ profile for both their slides (when available) and their talks when they are uploaded.

Our team of volunteer photographers captured hundreds of images of our event. Head on over to our WCUS Facebook page (like it while you are there) and check out the first 700 that were uploaded with more to come.

Make sure that you are following WCUS on each of our social media platforms to keep up with the latest WCUS news. We use the #WCUS hashtag on all platforms.

Slack:  #WCUS Channel

Twitter: @WordCampUS

Instagram: @wordcampus

Facebook: WordCampUSA 

 

We had many first-time contributors on Sunday, December 3 on Contributor Day, with  every team represented. Here’s how our Contributor Day Organizer Aaron Campbell described what Contributor Day was all about, “WordPress powers more 28% of the top ten million sites on the web, but WordPress is powered by volunteer contributors. Contributor Day is a day for existing contributors to work on projects together as well as for people to learn how to contribute back to WordPress for the first time.”

If you want to see how you can contribute to the WordPress Open Source Project, visit make.wordpress.org and find something that appeals to you. You don’t need to know how to code to participate.  Newcomers are welcomed at any time.

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Top photo by: David Needham

 

All the sessions at WordCamp US will be livestreamed, so if you won’t be in Nashville, you can still join the fun!

How to watch

First, get your livestream ticket.

Then, visit the Livestream Attendee Test page to make sure you’ll have a smooth and enjoyable experience when the stream starts.

Once you’re ready, the main livestream page links to each of the available streams. Enter the email you used to register for your ticket to gain access to the content.

Have a question?

If you need help, head to the livestream support page.

Captions

All of the streams will have captions embedded.

WordCamp US kicks off in Nashville this week. Here are some updates regarding our venue and ways to make your trip easier and more enjoyable.

Early Badge Pick-up

If you are in town early, and you would like to pick up your badge on Thursday, November 30, we will have a table set up in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel located at 611 Commerce Street from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm.

Registration and Badge Pick-up

Once you arrive at Music City Center on December 1 or 2, come to the registration desk in the main lobby near the 5th Avenue South and Demonbreun Street entrance.

We’ll give you your attendee badge and lanyard. From there, we recommend checking out our hallway track area (see it described below) to grab some coffee, check out our sponsors, and then be in any one of our three speaker rooms for opening remarks at 9:00 am.

Our free t-shirts and swag items (1 per attendee) will be available in the Hallway Track starting in the late morning.  We’ll Tweet out the exact time when we are all set up.

If you need to be in touch with us during the event the best place to do this is via Slack or Twitter.  You can use the contact form, but we will not be checking this as regularly.

Volunteers wearing bright blue shirts can help direct you to the correct person on site for any matters of urgency or emergency. Organizers will all be wearing rainbow colored lanyards. Our Code of Conduct is in effect at all WCUS events.

NOTE:  All badges must be picked up before lunch on Saturday, December 2. Badges will be available for sale at Music City Center for last minute attendees. No one can attend the After-Party unless they have a badge, please plan accordingly.

Music City Center: Venue for Sessions and Contributor Day

Music City Center is a large convention center, and we are only using part of it for our amazing schedule of speakers and events.

We recommend that you enter at the corner of 5th Avenue South and Demonbreun Street.

If you need to park there are a variety of local options in the area. The closest facility is located directly across the street on the corner of 6th Avenue South and Demonbreun Street with P2 being the most convenient section.

Additionally, Spot Hero has offered WCUS attendees the following deal at other parking facilities within walking distance at excellent rates. One (pending it filling up) is across the street from the official hotel, the Renaissance. Visit the WordCamp US SpotHero Parking Page and book a spot with rates up to 50% off drive-up. They also have a coupon code if you are a first time user on their mobile app. Enter code WORDCAMP for $5 off your first spot.

The Hallway Track

Aside from having our regularly scheduled speaker sessions, there is also what is commonly known as “The Hallway Track.” We even did a GoWCUS episode where we talked about it.

The Hallway track consists of the following:

• Gutenberg Usability Testing Booth: User feedback on  Gutenberg
• Happiness Lounge: Need help with something WordPress? We can assist.
• Get Involved Table: Learn how to contribute to WordPress.
• Swag Area: Items both free and for purchase
• Coffee, Water, and Snacks
• Job Board: Postings for those seeking and offering employment
• Sponsor Area: Printer’s Alley, Union, Broadway Sponsors there all day
• Sponsor Bazaar: Jefferson Sponsors 8:00am -10:00am and 1:30pm – 3:30pm
• Shared Swag Table: Info from Charlotte Sponsors along with others
• Community Bazaar: Highlighting Communities from the Americas and Asia  8:00 am -10:00 am and 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

The Layout of WCUS

We will be on several floors of Music City Center. All are fully accessible. There will be lots of signage and volunteers to help you to get where you want to go.

Floor 1:

• Registration (where you grab your badge and sign in)
• Speaker Session Rooms:  Banjo, Fiddle, and Guitar
• Lost and Found

Mezzanine Floor 

• Swag (where you grab your free WCUS t-shirt and other free swag)
• Happiness Lounge
• WordPress Get Involved Table
• Coffee and Snacks
• Community Bazaar
• Sponsors
• Job Board
• Nursing Room
• Quiet Area
• Gutenberg Usability Testing Booth

Floor 3

• Lunch: Hot lunch each day, and live jazz band entertainment

Floor 4

• State of the Word: Plenty of seating for all attendees to hear WordPress co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, speak on Saturday afternoon. In the State of the Word, Matt will share his thoughts on where WordPress has been, where it’s going. He will also take questions from the audience.

After-Party

Our after-party will take place at Adventure Science Center located at 800 Fort Negley Blvd. Nashville, TN 37203 from 8:00 pm -11:00 pm on December 2. We will have beverages, light hors d’oeuvres, and desserts. We advise attendees to eat dinner first.

No one can attend the After-Party unless they have a badge. All badges must be picked up/purchased by lunchtime on Saturday, December 2 at the Music City Center. Please plan accordingly.

Contributor Day is December 3

On Contributor Day, you can help give back to the WordPress Open Source project. Newcomers are welcome. You don’t have to know how to code to participate. Swing by the “Get Involved” community table in the hallway track on Friday or Saturday to find out more about all the ways you can participate.

What to Do in Nashville: Food, Attractions, and More

Our GoWCUS Google Hangout has covered what to expect in Nashville. Short episodes that are 15-20 minutes have talked about: food, drink, the hallway track, and more.

We also have a couple of posts that you might want to check out that feature the best that Nashville has to offer.

• Downtown Nashville WCUS Google Map highlighting key locations
• Cory Maas’ Printable Walking Tour Guide
• Our Ultimate Nashville Guide  (includes info on places dietary needs friendly)
• Mama Meza Recommends. Best vegetarian places in town with personal recommendations by co-organizer, Dustin Meza’s mom who is a vegetarian
• The annual Christmas Tree Lighting is Friday night 6:00pm-7:00pm

Traffic, Parades, and Road Closures

I-24 closure throughout the weekend:

If you are driving in from outside the city center, you will likely need to add 15-20 minutes to your drive time. There will be detours, but Nashville is a small city with a circle around the center. All detours will still be very easy.

http://www.tn.gov/tdot/article/interstate-24-bridge-rehabilitation-timeline

Christmas Parade Saturday, December 2. Affecting those walking and driving in.

Nashville’s annual Christmas Parade will pass directly in front of the convention center. Please secure reserved parking ahead of time if you are driving in, and plan extra travel time due to crowds.

Pedestrian advisory December 2  from parade organizers: 

• At 8:45 am – foot traffic across Broadway must cross at 8th Avenue South or higher
• Foot traffic will not be allowed across the parade area until after the parade is over
• Please leave extra time coming from area hotels due to crowds attending the Christmas parade and street closures as listed above

Sunday December 3: Football game

If you are coming to Contributor Day we advise to you leave extra time if you are driving in from outside the city center, and to reserve parking. The Titans have a football game starting at noon and the incoming traffic is legendary.