Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project!
This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.
If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!
Getting Involved
We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.
You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. These projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.
You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.
Communication
We have Office HoursOffice HoursDefined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. four times a week in the #community-events channel on Slack: Mondays & Wednesdays 22:00 UTC, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00 UTC.
Events WidgetWidgetA 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.
As the WordPress Community begins to transition to in-person events, organizers are wondering what legal protections are available to them related to COVID-19. Here are a couple of solutions!
Disclaimer on WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Ticket Purchases
We will be adding a disclaimer to the WordCamp ticket purchase page, which will protect organizers against claims related to COVID-19. The disclaimer text will read:
An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. COVID-19 is an extremely contagious disease that can lead to severe illness and death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, senior citizens and guests with underlying medical conditions are especially vulnerable.
By attending WordCamp {city} {year}, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and waive any claims against the event organizers; volunteers; sponsors; the WordPress FoundationWordPress FoundationThe WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org.; WordPress Community SupportWordPress Community SupportWordPress Community Support PBC is a subsidiary of WordPress Foundation. It is created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program., PBC; and their respective affiliates.
This disclaimer will appear on the ticket purchase page for the ticket purchaser to agree to. Agreement is given by checking a box next to the disclaimer (similar to agreeing to the Code of ConductCode of Conduct“A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party.” - Wikipedia), before completing their ticket purchase.
We are aiming to roll this update out to WordCamp sites on Wednesday, 13 October 2021.
Insurance Policy
This year, WPCSWordPress Coding StandardsA collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) to validate code developed for WordPress. It ensures code quality and adherence to coding conventions, especially the official standards for WordPress Core. added a “communicable disease liability coverage” policy to our event insurance. This policy provides coverage to help defer any legal fees and costs related to lawsuits claiming damages due to:
Actual or alleged transmission of a communicable disease
An act, error, or omission by or on behalf of WPFWordPress FoundationThe WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org./WPCS in:
The supervision of any person who transmits, is infected with, and/or alleged to be infected with a communicable disease
Testing for a communicable disease
Actual or alleged failure to prevent the spread of a communicable disease
Actual or alleged failure to report a communicable disease to the authorities
This policy is currently in effect and covers all official WordCamps and WordPress Chapter MeetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook..
Summary
These legal protections should hopefully ease the minds of organizers concerned about planning in-person WordCamps and WordPress Meetups. Please leave a comment below if you have any concerns or questions!
WordCamp Europe Online 2021 is coming soon! The event takes place 7-9 June and all Make teams have the opportunity to host some content during the event if we’d like to.
Workshops We can apply to host a workshop or two in one of the main tracks during the event. There’s no automatically guaranteed spot in the schedule for us, all workshop applications are vetted by the content team but given a slightly higher priority.
The workshop(s) can be almost anything our team would like to host, the only restraint is that the topic needs to be related somehow to the things our team does. This can be for example traditional onboarding for new meetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizers, thought it would be nice to come up with something that targets a larger audience.
Please share your ideas, thoughts and short preliminary workshop descriptions in the comments! Also mention if you would be willing to be one of the co-hosts in the workshop(s)
Unformal networking sessions Another way how we can be part of the WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. program is by hosting one or two unformal video chat sessions (in Zoom or a similar platform provided by WCEU). These will be during the main event days and can be almost anything we would like to do. For example, hosting a live Community office hoursOffice HoursDefined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. to answer all questions related to WordPress events or discussion about do_action events.
Please share your ideas and thoughts in the comments!
The deadline for workshop submissions is Friday 14 May, so please share your ideas on Thursday latest! Sorry for the short notice and time to reactReactReact is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/..
After the discussion on my proposal about a dedicated communication place for deputies, we agreed to experiment with a private #community-deputies channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. In the discussion, we also agreed to do a public review after three and six months to see how the channel has worked and decide its continuation. The channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review.
The purpose of the channel is to be a safe place for all deputiesDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. to discuss sensitive and private aspects of our work, get peer-support when needed and ask second opinions for event applications. It’s not meant for discussions that could take place in public forums like this blog, #community-team or #community-events channel.
Guidelines for the channel are:
As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware of when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.
As this year has continued being really strange, I think we really can’t use many numeric metrics while reviewing the channel. That’s why I’d like us to have an open, free form, discussion. Here are some questions to help start that discussion:
Has there been discussion about topics that should have been taken place in public forums instead?
Have you got help with some issue in the channel, which you’d normally handled by yourself or asked help from another deputyDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. in a private message?
Has the channel helped you feel more connected to the team?
In general, what is your feeling about the discussion that has taken place on the channel?
Should we continue to keep using a private deputy channel?
Active deputies, please share your thoughts and raise new important questions to the discussion. This is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review.
Discussion is open until 2021-03-29. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space for deputies, the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.
Community Team Meeting times are changing based on the result of a poll we had some time ago. Both versions of the meetings are going to be held one hour later starting from our next meetings on 2021-02-18 (next week!). The day is not changing, it’s still the first and third Thursdays of every month.
New times for the meetings are:
Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly meeting: 12:00 UTC Americas friendly meeting: 21:00 UTC
Changes will be reflected in our blog, deputyDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. calendar and make.wordpress.org/meetings calendar tomorrow latest. If you spot a place where old meeting times are told, please let me know in the comments.
Daylight Savings Time planning
DST is here again and some parts of the world are moving their clocks. In previous years, we have moved the meeting times accordingly one hour forward after EU/UK has started the DST on 2021-03-29.
What we should do this year, move the meeting times like we have done in the past or stick with the same UTC times regardless of DST? Please share your opinion in the comments!
In 2020, WordPress events adapted to online formats, including do_actiondo_actiondo_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org. events and Open-source workshops. It took some time to figure out how to do so, but the community held 5 do_action hackathons and a handful of open-source workshops in 2020! In moving charity hackathons and introduction to open-source workshops online, community organizers not only brought their WordPress community closer together, but they were also able to make a positive impact on their local or regional community in an exceptionally-difficult year.
Seeing this impact, the Community team would like to help more organizers host even more of these online charity hackathons (do_action events) and Introduction to Open SourceOpen SourceOpen 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. workshops in 2021. This post shares some ideas around how the Community team could support do_action and Introduction to Open Source organizers…
do_action events
Based on feedback from the community, do_action events so far have been quite impactful in how they bring participants together to help non-profits establish an online presence – something all the more significant in 2021. Here are some ideas on howthe community can support do_action events:
Improve the online do_action event documentation: The documentation on online do_action events can be expanded to include tips on remote collaboration, using collaboration tools, remote project management etc.
Outreach for do_action events: This is something the Community team is equipped to do, with mentions in the Make blogs, MeetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. newsletters, and news posts. The Marketing team could also be very helpful with this effort.
Mentorship: DeputiesDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. and WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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.mentorsMentorSomeone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. could mentorMentorSomeone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. do_action organizers.
Technology changes to the doaction.org website such as:
Adding doaction.org to Google Workspace / G Suite (so that organizers can use custom emails)
Modifying the do action event date section to accommodate multiple days.
Introduction to Open Source workshops help spread knowledge and understanding of the open web and open source. They have also been instrumental in onboarding new contributors to WordPress. With the Learn WordPress workshops on Introduction to Open-source, meetup groups could host a watch party of the recorded workshop, or organize a discussion group. Here are some ideas for organizing Introduction to Open-source workshops in 2021:
Lessonplans for the Introduction to Open-source workshops are available! Any meetup group can plan their own open-source workshop based on the lesson plans.
Organizers can feature these workshops and discussion groups in the WordPress foundationWordPress FoundationThe WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org. blogs by reaching out to the community team. Since Open-source workshops are online, there is no cost involved in organizing them, but organizers can always request paid zoom accounts for their event.
Proposed Goals
Because charity hackathons and Introduction to Open Source Workshops benefit WordPress communities and beyond, I’d like to propose some goals around hosting these events:
There were 4 do_action events in 2020. Let’s aim for at least 8 events in 2021!
Organize at least 12 discussion groups based on the Introduction to Open-source workshop in 2021, held in the Learn WordPress meetup group.
Request for Feedback
I would love to hear suggestions and feedback community deputiesDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. and members!
Do you have any suggestions, changes, or additions to the proposed goals?
Can you share any ideas that you may have on improving do_action events and Introduction to WordPress workshops?
Do you have ideas for any new events that can be organized by the WordPress Foundation in 2021?
Would you be interested in helping to implement suggestions for supporting organizers of these events??
Please share your thoughts in the comments by January 25, 2021 (Monday).
Thank you once again for all you do to support the WordPress community in these tough times!
+make.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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//marketing
However, there has been promising news around some successful trials for vaccines recently! As such, it seems worthwhile to discuss how the WordPress community can return to hosting safe, in-person events.
Any in-person event would certainly be subject to local laws and any restrictions on gatherings, as they’ve always been. Beyond what local health authorities require, the Global Community TeamGlobal Community TeamA group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. may need to to help organizers identify what additional precautions are necessary to ensure in-person events are safe for participants. Some examples might include:
Mandatory masks
Proper social distancing practices
Preference for outdoor events
Limits on number of attendees
Recommending a lower percentage for venue capacity (for example, suggesting a cap of 50% of a venue’s total capacity)
Providing hand sanitizer at events
Restrictions on the length of events
Not providing food or drinks at events
Mandatory registration, so attendees can be contacted in case of exposure
If there is a rise in the number of COVID cases in your area, reverting back to online events
Please share your thoughts
Please respond in the comments with your thoughts by December 16, 2020. What would the safest, in-person WordPress event look like? What do you think the WordPress Community Team can do to best support local organizers in creating safe in-person WordPress events?
Regardless of this discussion or any subsequent decision regarding the return of in-person events, the Community Team will continue to support online events in 2021 and beyond. Thanks to our amazing community organizers for all you’ve done to help WordPress enthusiasts connect in this difficult time!
At the end of last year, @camikaos and myself (@mariaojob) were voted in as reps for 2020. It has been an insightful & fulfilling experience, and we are happy to pass the baton on to the next team reps for 2021 💯.
This post kicks off the election process with nominations to replace @camikaos and myself (@mariaojob) as Community Team Reps.
The Role
In the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project, each team has one or two (or more!) representatives, abbreviated as “reps”. On the Community team, we ask reps to commit to the role for a full calendar year.
Team reps are responsible for communicating on behalf of the group to the other contributor groups via weekly updates, as well as occasional chats.
As a reminder, it is not called “team lead” for a reason. While the people elected as team reps will generally come from the pool of folks that people think of as experienced leaders, the team repTeam RepA Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. role is designed to change hands regularly.
This role does have a time commitment attached to it, at least one hour a week. The main tasks include:
Writing the agenda for the biweekly chat (example)
Keep an eye on the moving parts of the team and provide reports for quarterly updates (example).
Over the year, the team can decide to add one or two people to help, depending on how much work there is. For now, let’s get us two new reps!
How Community Team Rep elections work
Following our election process last year, the Community team is planning on these key steps:
Call for Nominations: Anyone can nominate a Community team rep! The deadline is Wednesday, November 25.
Voting for Team Reps: We will open a poll for voting on Tuesday, December 1. The poll will stay open for three weeks, and close on Tuesday, December 22. We will then be able to announce our new team reps before the end of 2020!
Call for Community Team Rep nominations!
Please nominate people for Community team rep in the comments of this post by Wednesday, November 25. Self-nominations are welcome.
If you get nominated, you do not have to say yes! We will only add people who respond positively to a nomination to the poll, so feel free to decline a nomination if you don’t feel like this is the right fit for any reason.
Finally, if you have any questions, please also feel free to ask in the comments.
Months ago, I posted a proposal on creating a new dedicated SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel for deputiesDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook.. After a long and really good discussion, the deputies reached a consensus and would like to give the channel a try, after a set of guidelines have been formed. If you don’t have an idea what I’m talking about, and the idea of a private channel sounds bad to you, I suggest reading the original proposal and discussion that followed that.
It’s now (finally) time to form those guidelines and embark on this experiment together!
These guidelines aspire to be encouraging and not discouraging. These are more to give an idea on the purpose of the channel, rather than creating an uncertain feeling around whether something can be raised to the discussion in the channel. My hope is to keep these as short and clear as possible.
To provide extra clarity on who will be in the channel, and how it will be used:
All deputies with “Active” status in this sheet will be invited to the channel.
The main purpose of the channel is to provide a safe space, and to improve peer support for all deputies, especially those new to the role. In this channel, deputies who are uncertain or hesitant can raise issues or ask questions with a smaller group first before doing so publicly. The channel can also be a place to discuss applications that need a second opinion, or for discussions about financial issues that require confidentiality. If some discussion that takes place could be public, it will be moved to a public forum (#community-team channel or this team blog).
No decisions that affect Community Team, event organisers or the greater WordPress project will be made in the private channel.
We’ll do a public review on the Community Team’s blog on how the channel has worked after three and six months
My proposal for the deputyDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. channel guidelines are:
As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.
Feel free to share your ideas, thoughts, additions and changes to these proposed guidelines before 2020-11-19. After that, I’ll move forward and ask Slack admins to create the new channel for us.
Learn WordPress is getting closer to its full launch and more workshops are being published, worked on and planned. One essential idea with workshops are discussion groups, that are a great way to share thoughts and ideas between others that have watched the recorded workshop.
Discussion groups can be held via Zoom or in #community-eventsSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel by original workshop presenter(s) or anyone who wants to be a discussion group leader. Virtually anyone interested in leading a discussion group on any of the workshops on the site is welcome to do so.
To make the most out of workshops and discussion groups, it would be great to have at least two discussion groups per each workshop. These discussion groups can happen anytime and even after the workshop has been published already months ago – it’s up to the discussion group leaders interest.
Currently, discussion groups are a bit hidden in the Learn WordPress platform. I’m proposing the following additions in order to raise awareness about discussion groups happening and more attendees and discussion group leaders:
1. Add “Upcoming discussion groups” section between “Recent workshops” and workshop idea submission CTA on the front page.
This new section would list three next upcoming discussion groups and link to the meetup.com page where all upcoming discussion groups are listed. This way also older workshops get some attention on the front page if new discussions groups for those are scheduled.
We already have code to get meetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. from meetup.com, so it shouldn’t be a big job to get scheduled discussion groups from there as well. Of course, it needs some dev time, but I’m sure it will be worth it.
2. Add “Interested in running a discussion group?” CTA next to current “Have an Idea for a Workshop?“ CTA on the front page.
I’d like to have many discussion group leaders, so running those won’t fall into the responsibility of a workshop presenter(s) and a small group of an active group of Learn WP deputiesDeputyCommunity Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook.. With this new CTA in place, we make it more visible that virtually anyone can run a discussion group if they find a workshop they’re really interested in and there’s no scheduled discussion group for that workshop.
3. Add details about discussion groups in workshop pages.
Currently, the page of a single workshop only has a button “Join a Discussion Group” which is a bit vague. We should add a small blurb on top of the button explaining what is a discussion group. Below the button could be a small text, much like the CoCCode of Conduct“A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party.” - Wikipedia notice, saying that if there’s no scheduled discussion group for this workshop, apply to be a discussion group leader to run one.
4. Create a new “Be a Discussion Group leader” page
As you might notice, two previous proposals contain a link to a page that doesn’t exist at this time on Learn WP platform. We should create a new page where it is explained what discussion group is, what it means to be a discussion group leader and how to apply. Currently, this information exists only in this make/community posts.
Tracking all the upcoming discussion groups and keeping an eye that each workshop has at least two groups
It would be nice to have at least two discussion groups for each workshop. These can happen anytime after the workshop has been published, even months later.
To keep track of upcoming discussion groups, we’ll use meetup.com where all scheduled discussion groups are being added.
In parallel to public listing on scheduled groups, I suggest that we create a new Google sheet with each workshop listed on it. In the sheet we can track if;
Zoom discussion group has been scheduled/held
Slack discussion group has been scheduled/held
Additional discussion groups have been scheduled/held
It would fall mostly under my lap, as I promised to manage discussion groups, but everyone who schedules a new discussion group in meetup.com should update this sheet.
With this sheet, we can track if a workshop hasn’t had any discussion groups and we can reach out to our discussion group leaders and workshop presenter(s) (not too) regularly asking whether they would like to schedule one. In future, the list of workshops needing a discussion group leader, could be added to the new “Be a Discussion Group leader” in Learn WP platform.
What do you think? Thoughts, ideas, comments, questions? How we could attract more discussion group leaders and attendees in your opinion? Please share your feedback before 2020-11-09.
Now that Learn WordPress is live and the Community Team is working towards a full launch to announce the platform, we want to help everyone understand how they can participate and help improve and build Learn WordPress! To that end, we will have orientations to introduce the different ways volunteers can contribute to Learn WordPress, and steps to get involved. The orientation will cover:
What even is Learn WordPress?
How to present a workshop and workshop ideas
How to assist with reviewing submitted workshops
How to update and contribute new lesson plans
How to become a discussion group leader
How to organize a discussion group
If you would like to learn more about Learn WordPress or have any interest in participating, please join us for these orientations! We will host them four times a week in the #community-events channel on Slack, on Mondays and Wednesdays at 21:30 UTC, and Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:30 UTC. This is 30 minutes before our regular Office HoursOffice HoursDefined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time., so there will be lots of opportunity to ask questions.
These orientations will start tomorrow on Wednesday, September 2, 2020. We hope to see you there!