Author: Michele Butcher-Jones

Michele Jones is the President of 13Core, LLC, Southern Illinois premier web and marketing agency. She is a lover of all things Open Source, a WordPress Core Contributor, an international speaker, and an avid campaigner to leave the world in a better, safer, and more inclusive place. She has spent over a decade building and maintaining high performing, beautifully accessible websites that will grow your online presence. You will not find anyone in Southern Illinois who is more on the cutting edge of website management. Her passion for making the web a better place doesn’t stop there! She gives back to the WordPress Community as a Meetup Organizer for St Louis and the Lead Organizer for the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup. She is also one half of the WonderWomen in WordPress Newsletter. Michele is typically up for any type of contributing to the WordPress Community often as a speaker, volunteer, answering questions in the forums, and teaching WordPress to beginners. Now that she is an empty nester, Michele is spending her time as a photographer, traveler, emergency responder, and an avid collector of jewelry. She is currently working on her first book set to be completed in 2025, and is always down for an adventure, especially if it involves great food or drinks. Her passion for making the web a better place doesn’t stop there! She gives back to the WordPress Community as a Meetup Organizer for St Louis and the Lead Organizer for the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup. She is also one half of the WonderWomen in WordPress Newsletter. Michele is typically up for any type of contributing to the WordPress Community often as a speaker, volunteer, answering questions in the forums, and teaching WordPress to beginners. Now that she is an empty nester, Michele is spending her time as a photographer, traveler, emergency responder, and an avid collector of jewelry. She is currently working on her first book set to be completed in 2025, and is always down for an adventure, especially if it involves great food or drinks. Her passion for making the web a better place doesn’t stop there! She gives back to the WordPress Community as a Meetup Organizer for St Louis and the Lead Organizer for the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup. She is also one half of the WonderWomen in WordPress Newsletter. Michele is typically up for any type of contributing to the WordPress Community often as a speaker, volunteer, answering questions in the forums, and teaching WordPress to beginners. Now that she is an empty nester, Michele is spending her time as a photographer, traveler, emergency responder, and an avid collector of jewelry. She is currently working on her first book set to be completed in 2025, and is always down for an adventure, especially if it involves great food or drinks.

Events Happening During Contributor Day

Posted on by Michele Butcher-Jones
Anthony Burchell helping people at the Happiness Bar at WordCamp US 2015 #wcus Photo by Sheri Bigelow, licensed cc-by-nc.

In addition to joining our contributor day teams, there will be three fantastic events available to attendees during Contributor Day this year.

Accessibility Hack-a-Thon

A Hack-a-Thon will be led by Deque Systems and organized together with the WordPress Accessibility team.

Dylan Barrell and Stephen Mathieson from Deque Systems will be joining the accessibility team and WP core developers during contributor day. They will be working together to set up automated accessibility testing for WordPress.  The plan is to create a framework for testing and example test for themes (specific Twenty Nineteen) and also generate a list of tests to write.

If there is time, they will also set up a framework for Gutenberg and core to test accessibility.

For everyone who is interested in accessibility in WordPress, this is the chance to help. If you would like to join, drop by the accessibility table during Contributor Day.

Progressive Web Apps

Weston Ruter and Google have been working on a project aimed at integrating the Service Workers API (#36995) and Web App Manifests (#43328) into WordPress core, as well as expanding core support for HTTPS (#28521). Right now this effort is been advanced under the umbrella of a Progressive Web Apps  feature plugin. Now that WordPress 5.0 is going live, the team wants to start the formal feature-as-plugin process.

They will be at Contributor Day discussing the current status of the PWA feature plugin and a road map for the work ahead. If you are interested in learning more about this and to contribute to the project, please join them during Contributor Day.

For more information, check out their post on PWA at Contributor Day on Make WordPress Core.

Lighthouse WordPress Localized Advice Pack

Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. When you provide Lighthouse with a URL to evaluate (public or requiring authentication), it runs a series of audits against the page for performance, accessibility, progressive web app capabilities, and more. It will generate a report on its findings and how to improve the pages. 

We are considering the development of a project called WordPress-localized Advice Packs for Lighthouse, with the goal of providing WordPress-specific guidance using Lighthouse. With it, WordPress developers and site owners will get the results from Lighthouse audits tailored to the realities of the WordPress platform. 

This project is to be maintained by the WordPress community, working together with the Chrome and Lighthouse teams at Google. The WordPress community is best positioned to make sure that the Lighthouse WordPress Localized Advice Pack is accurate, up to date, and satisfies the needs of the community as a whole due to the communities standards already set into place.

They will be at Contributor Day at the support table. If you are interested in learning more about this Lighthouse Audits and wanting to contribute to the project, we would love you to join the conversation. 

For more information check out their post on WordPress – localized Lighthouse Audits

WP Rig at WordCamp US

WP Rig is a modern starter theme that focuses on accessibility, best practices, and performance. It puts progressive web technologies at the hands of theme developers, taking care of the heavy lifting so theme developers can focus on what’s most important – designing beautiful and user-friendly WordPress themes. At the same time, WP Rig is all about customizability: It works well out of the box, but you can dive in deeper and tweak its behavior if you prefer.

There will be a dedicated table within the Themes Team at Contributor Day. They plan to provide introductions to the starter theme’s features and workflow, and then discuss about its current status.  If you are interested in learning more about WP Rig and shaping it for the future of WordPress theme development, please join the WP Rig table Sunday. 

If you would like to take a look at the code before Sunday please see their Git repo. 

For more information check out their post WP Rig at WCUS Contributor Day

Are you planning to join us on Contributor Day? Let us know what team you’re planning to join.

Still need a ticket? There are several still available. Purchase a ticket today!!

 

The Westin Nashville is the WCUS 2018 Official Hotel

Posted on by Michele Butcher-Jones

Update: At this time, our block at The Westin Nashville is 100% full. If you still need accommodations in Nashville, check out our post on Additional Hotels and Accommodations in Nashville.

The Westin Nashville: 807 Clark Place, Nashville, Tennessee 37203 USA

The Westin Nashville, one of the Nashville’s premier hotels, is the official hotel for WordCamp US 2018. It is just a short walk away from Music City Center, our official venue.
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