Marius L. J. 7:34 pm on April 21, 2021  

Agenda for April 22nd Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, April 22nd, 2021, 17:00 UTC in #forums on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. (a Slack account is required)

A note-taker for the meeting is requested, taking notes is a great way to get more involved with contributing to a team, and getting to know how they operate, so don’t be shy, no prior experiences needed, and volunteering happens at the start of the meeting!

Headlines / Community updates

  • None, but do you have a community headline to share?

WordPress 5.8 preparations – Continued from last week

With the possibility of WordPress 5.8 including Full Site Editing (FSE), and if it doesn’t then 5.9 should, we as a team should start looking at how to prepare for this.

It’s not unlikely to expect that questions will be heavily skewed towards FSE in the coming releases, how would the team like to prepare for this, what resources are needed, and how can this be facilitated.

Please also post your thoughts to the agenda, or summary post, if you are unable to attend 🙂

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, ort just to let us know you’re doing ok!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

Open floor

This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.

When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.

It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@clorith) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Marius L. J. 7:34 pm on April 21, 2021
Tags:   

Summary for April 15th Support Team Meeting

Headlines / Community Updates

WordPress 5.8 preparations

With Full Site Editing making it’s initial appearance in WordPress 5.8, the support team have started to prepare actionable items to get ready for it’s arrival.

Under are some thoughts and concerns that came up in that discussion, and which we’ll try to address moving forward up to the release date.

If there are other concerns or talking points, please feel free to provide them in a comment here, or raise them in an upcoming support meeting!

  • Coordinate with docs to make sure relevant documentation is ready before release so that support can familiarize them selves with it.
  • Coordinate with the GutenbergGutenberg 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/ team, how do they want to get feedback, and issues, reported in a sensible way. Support shouldn’t have to create tickets, but pushing users away and telling them to go to GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can 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/ is also a terrible experience.
  • Make sure Gutenberg team has people on hand and we know who is available to help on complex issues the team may not know the answers to.
  • This may be another scenario like the blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. editor release where we see The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. How do we support those who land in the thick of it with negatively inclined users. All while also trying to show understanding and compassion where it should be, not everyone is inherently bad, and may be concerned or scared users as well.
  • Likely a focus on existing users and how this affects them, more so than new users without existing themes and content.

To close off this weekly summary, we’ll this time enjoy the wonderful tunes of Peter Gabriel

#weekly-chat

Marius L. J. 8:15 pm on April 14, 2021  

Agenda for April 15th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, April 15th, 2021, 17:00 UTC in #forums on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. (a Slack account is required)

A note-taker for the meeting is requested, taking notes is a great way to get more involved with contributing to a team, and getting to know how they operate, so don’t be shy, no prior experiences needed, and volunteering happens at the start of the meeting!

Headlines / Community updates

  • None, but do you have a community headline to share?

WordPress 5.8 preparations

With the possibility of WordPress 5.8 including Full Site Editing (FSE), and if it doesn’t then 5.9 should, we as a team should start looking at how to prepare for this.

It’s not unlikely to expect that questions will be heavily skewed towards FSE in the coming releases, how would the team like to prepare for this, what resources are needed, and how can this be facilitated.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, ort just to let us know you’re doing ok!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

Open floor

This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.

When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.

It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@clorith) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Marius L. J. 7:06 pm on March 24, 2021  

Agenda for March 25th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, March 25th, 2021, 17:00 UTC in #forums on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. (a Slack account is required)

A note-taker for the meeting is requested, taking notes is a great way to get more involved with contributing to a team, and getting to know how they operate, so don’t be shy, no prior experiences needed, and volunteering happens at the start of the meeting!

Headlines / Community updates

  • None from me, but do you have a community headline to share?

WordPress 5.7 status

  • How is the release going, and are there any major recurring issues that are not as of yet being tracked in a ticket?
  • WordPress 5.7.1, a maintenance release, is scheduled for April 14th at this time.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, ort just to let us know you’re doing ok!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

Open floor

This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.

When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.

It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@clorith) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Marius L. J. 7:55 am on March 19, 2021
Tags:   

Summary for March 18th Support Team Meeting

Announcements

Check out the project contributor handbook announcement, which also includes a Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics, both of which will supplement the support areas greatly.

The support team will be doing another ticket triage on Saturday March 20th, 2021,21:00 UTC. This one will be slightly different as we will be discussing and prioritizing tickets that you the user bring forth and feel is important. This is in no way a guarantee that your ticket will get done first, but rather a way to try and judge which items others think are important. Understandably not everyone can participate, so it is also OK to drop a ticket in a reply to this post, but you should then also include a reason why you think the ticket(s) are important and why they should be prioritized.

WordPress 5.7

As with most releases, there’s been a few issues for users, most of which have been self contained and resolvable in each individual scenario. Some recurring issues have been discovered, but these have all been addressed with tickets on core trac.

All in all, this has been a very smooth release so far (*knock on wood*).

Checking in with international liaisons

It’s been a while since we did an update like this here on the make blog, so it felt appropriate we do one again!

We had contributors from many parts of the world join us for our weekly little chat, none had any major issues to report, both in general and relating to the recently released WordPress 5.7, but it was great to hear from so many and be able to check in and see how everyone is doing.

Open floor

GiveWP hosted a panel on fighting online harassment in WordPress right after our weekly meeting, in which many members of our team were listening in, once the panel is published, we’ll drop a link for you all to watch it as well.
With that in mind though, please do not hesitate to reach out either in the #forums Slack channel, or directly through a private message, if you at any point feel unsafe or mistreated in any way, and we’ll do what we can to help.

And in closing, we provided you all with a little musical adventure, a composition by Philter called Miyazaki Mountain

Miyazaki Mountain by Philter

#weekly-chat

Josepha 6:50 pm on March 16, 2021
Tags: ,   

X-post: Proposal: A WordPress Project Contributor Handbook

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/updates: Comment on Proposal: A WordPress Project Contributor Handbook

Marius L. J. 8:06 pm on March 10, 2021  

Agenda for March 11th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, March 11th, 2021, 17:00 UTC in #forums on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. (a Slack account is required)

A note-taker for the meeting is requested, taking notes is a great way to get more involved with contributing to a team, and getting to know how they operate, so don’t be shy, no prior experiences needed, and volunteering happens at the start of the meeting!

Headlines / Community updates

WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza”

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, ort just to let us know you’re doing ok!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

Open floor

This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.

When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.

It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@clorith) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Marius L. J. 8:05 am on February 25, 2021  

Agenda for February 25th Support Meeting

The weekly support meeting will be held on Thursday, February 25th, 2021, 17:00 UTC in #forums on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. (a Slack account is required)

A note-taker for the meeting is requested, taking notes is a great way to get more involved with contributing to a team, and getting to know how they operate, so don’t be shy, no prior experiences needed, and volunteering happens at the start of the meeting!

Headlines / Community updates

WordPress 5.7 Release Candidate 1 is now available – Please help test if you can.

As is normal with releases, we should look to our Master List. (See also the post on rethinking the Master List)

Information on the upcoming removal of plugin and theme slugs or names as topic tags is now published.

Checking in with international liaisons

This is the section where we reach out to the non-English speaking parts of our community, to see how they are doing, if there’s anything we can help each other with, or just interesting things going on that it would be nice to share with others.

There’s no requirements for previous participation or “fame” to share here, anyone is welcome, and we encourage newcomers to participate!

Unable to make the meeting, or maybe meetings just aren’t your thing? We would still love to hear how things are going in other non-English speaking parts of our community. Please feel free to let us know via the comment section below, in your own time, if there is anything you’d like to share, any questions or concerns you have, ort just to let us know you’re doing ok!

We will make a habit of putting this callout with every agenda post going forward, so that everyone has a chance to join in.

Open floor

This part of the meeting only happens if there is time, the team aims to cover the pre-planned topics first in any given meeting.

When open floor starts, any topic posted either as a comment to this agenda post will be looked at, or as many as there is time for. If there is still time left after this, then meeting attendees may step forward with questions, comments, remarks, anything relating to the support team that they’d like to handle.

It is also important to note that not everyone is comfortable posting things publicly, there is complete understanding of this, and users are welcome to contact the team representative (@clorith) via direct messages on Slack with whatever they wish the team to look at together.

For any other items to discuss, please add them to the comments below, or bring them up in the meeting.

Marius L. J. 8:05 am on February 25, 2021  

Removing plugin and theme names used as topic tags on the forums

Over a period of time, work has been undergoing to tighten the forums ship a little, one major pain point has been topic tags. These are keywords or phrases, intended to quickly summarize what fields a topic related to, much like you would use tags when writing a blogpost.

Unfortunately, with this field being a freetext input field, and forums being open to all, not everyone knows how to effectively use tags, what tags are, or even what tags exist to use them make sure they reuse existing ones.
There’s also tags not being used as they were just added alongside generic spam, and the associated spam topics have long since been removed.

The current progression

We’ve been cleaning up the tags over phases:

  • Lock the tag field so regular users can not create new tags, only re-use existing ones [done]
  • Remove empty tags, or tags that otherwise fit a predefined set of criteria [done]
  • Remove tags that are pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or theme names or slugs
  • Curate remaining tags into a predefined and maintainable list of tags
  • Implement a better tag-selection process for users

As can be seen, we’ve already removed a lot of tags (more than 600,000 tags were removed), and locked down the creation of new tags, we were seeing an increasing numbers of tags being created (more than 1000 new tags per week when we locked it down).

We are still sitting at more than 40,000 tags left at this point in time.

Next step: Slugs used as tags

The next step is to remove all tags that are using names or slugs of themes and plugins in the WordPress directory as a topic tag. This does not mean that the slug using in the address field to look at plugins or themes will be going away.

Plugin and themes have their own support forumSupport Forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. https://en.forums.wordpress.com/. areas, so adding the name or slug of them to the topic is redundant. Most of the topics that do this are also created inside those support areas in the first place, further reducing the value of them.

The support team are aware that some authors follow these tags to pick up topics by users across all of the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ international forums, this is why this step hasn’t been completed yet, as we wish to make sure you are all well informed before this step is enacted.

Does this impact your workflow?

We would love to hear if this in some way impacts your workflow, so we can look into what approaches might help with the transition.

Please do note that there is no changing this cleanup process, as doing so means all plugins and themes need to be allowed, again making the idea of a valuable tag system and curated list pointless.

Marius L. J. 8:05 am on February 25, 2021  

Rethinking the Master List

Over the years, the Master List has served the support team well. It has been the goto forum topic to link users to for recurring issues, and general troubleshooting steps.

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. has implemented a lot of checks and tests in that period to avoid breaking changes, and as core has gotten more and more stable with each release, the information in this list has been streamlined, to the point where it sees fewer and fewer entries for each release. As is evident by the historical Master List entries.

The list also includes a fair bit of work ahead of a release, which is now more or less literally copying a template, replacing the name of a release jazzer and listing items we think are noteworthy from the release or that may post breaking changes for users. This is all information that can be seen from the release posts and the releases about page though.

So with that in mind, I ask you;

Would we be just as well served with a fixed topic that outlines all the normal troubleshooting steps but doesn’t change between releases?

Is a Master List still relevant?