Tag: make wordpress

18 years of WordPress

On this very day 18 years ago (May 27th), the first version of the WordPress open source software came out. WordPress has come a long way in the past 18 years. At the time of writing this blog post, WordPress has surpassed 40 releases and powers more than 40% of the web!

Check out these 40 key milestones in the WordPress journey towards 40% of the web!

WordPress and the Journey to 40% of the Web

One of the critical milestones in this journey is the establishment of the WordPress Foundation in January 2010. The foundation aims to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to WordPress and the software projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is essential that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base. This will ensure that we have a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come. As part of this mission, the Foundation will protect WordPress, WordCamp, and related trademarks. 

A 501(c)3 non-profit organization, the WordPress Foundation pursues a charter to educate the public about WordPress and related open source software. We regularly host educational programs like charity hackathons and open source educational events. These programs are made possible through the help of generous donations from our donors. 

If WordPress has helped you in any way during the past 18 years, kindly consider donating to the WordPress Foundation. Money raised by the WordPress Foundation will be used to ensure free access to supported software projects, protect the WordPress trademark, and fund various programs. In short – your donations will go a long way in helping the WordPress project. You can either make a one-time donation or choose to donate annually. If you sign up for any one of the four annual subscription plans, you will be featured on our Donors page – as a token of our gratitude for supporting education programs about WordPress and open source. 

Donate

WordPress would not exist without its team of global contributors that help build the software. The best way to give back to WordPress is to help us build it! You need not be a developer to give back to WordPress – some other ways to contribute to the project include translations, support, community, documentation, and marketing, to name a few. In other words – anyone and everyone can contribute to WordPress, and we strongly encourage you to do so!

Thank you for your support of WordPress over the past 18 years. Your continued patronage will ensure that WordPress will keep going for the next 18 years and beyond! 

Making WordPress: How to Get Involved

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world contributing to it — they work on code, provide support, do translations, organize events, write documentation, review plugins and themes, and are involved in many other projects.

Contributors are grouped into teams, and each team has a site on make.wordpress.org to communicate with others and share updates about what they’re working on. Want to get involved in the WordPress community but not sure how or where to start? Start your search at make.wordpress.org, where you can follow these official team blogs and WordPress developer resources.

WordPress contributor teams at a glance

Accessibility: This is the site for the WordPress accessibility group, dedicated to improving accessibility in core WordPress and related projects. To get in touch with the team, use the contact form. They’re also seeking WordPress users to join their Working Group — from assistive technology users and users with disabilities to developers who have experience in the field of web accessibility. You can tweet the team @WPAccessibility or join the weekly chat on Wednesday at 19:00 UTC in #wordpress-ui on Freenode.

Community: This blog of the WordPress community outreach team is dedicated to growing and strengthening the WordPress contributor community. The group strives to improve the contributor experience with projects like the welcome wagon, mentorship programs, and diversity initiatives. If you have a question about one of the team’s projects, use the Ask a Question form.

Core: Interested in what the core development team is working on? Here, follow the team’s progress with weekly meeting agendas, project schedules, and updates. To learn how to get involved with core, the core contributor handbook offers resources on contributing with testing and with code, best practices and coding standards, and tutorials and guides. You’re welcome to attend weekly developer chats to keep up with what’s happening (Wednesdays at 20:00 UTC in #wordpress-dev on Freenode), though the agenda is generally limited to discussion by active contributors.

Documentation: This site is the hub for all things documentation — the WordPress Codex (the online manual for WordPress), developer handbooks and other projects, and best practices. The team’s weekly chat is on Thursdays at 20:00 UTC in #wordpress-sfd.

Events: The events blog is the nerve center for events-related news and updates, including WordCamp and WordPress meetup announcements, WordPress.tv moderation discussions, and general event planning and guidelines. Join in on weekly chats in #wordpress-events (check the site’s sidebar for times). (You can also learn about organizing a WordCamp or getting involved with WordPress.tv, too.)

Meta: The meta blog is for announcements and resources by (and directed to) the developers of the WordPress.org website.

Mobile: This development blog for all the official WordPress apps (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry) compiles dev chat summaries and project updates. For developers itching to get involved, the best place to start is the mobile handbook, which gives instructions on how to get set up with any app environment. You can also join the team in #wordpress-mobile on Wednesdays at 8:00 am PST to learn about the status of mobile projects and how to contribute.

Polyglots: The polyglots site is for translators working on the latest releases of WordPress, and the blog to follow if you’re interested in contributing language support.

Plugins: If you’d like to keep up with announcements and read resources for WordPress plugin developers and the Plugin Directory, this P2 is for you!

Support: The Supporting Everything WordPress site is for people who wish to make WordPress Support the best it can be and to help improve support in the forums, codex, and IRC. (To clarify, this site is *not* the place to go if you seek support for your own site — the WordPress.org Forums are the best place for this!) The weekly chat is on Thursdays, 20:00 UTC, in #wordpress-sfd.

Themes: This is the space for the theme review team, who reviews and approves themes submitted to be included in the Themes Directory. The team also maintains theme review and testing guidelines and educates the theme developer community on best practices. If you’d like to dive in, check out the How to Join WPTRT page. If you have questions about theme review guidelines or best practices, ask on the mail-list.

UI: Here, you can follow along and chime in on project updates and big-picture discussions of the WordPress UI design and development team. Weekly UI chats are Tuesdays at 19:00 UTC in #wordpress-ui.

Updates: This blog is a space for the reps of the WordPress teams above to post weekly updates on project activity for the week, as well as to discuss notable changes to the WordPress project to keep all contributors in the loop. Refer to the site’s sidebar for the schedule.

With nearly a dozen teams contributing to WordPress in different ways, there are many ways to get involved, depending on your background and interests. So, follow along and subscribe to the sites that interest you, and check out this list of team reps to see who’s currently representing a particular team.