Quarterly Updates | Q2 2018

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To keep everyone aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress contributor teams, I’ve reached out to each team’s listed representatives. I asked each of them to share their Top Priority (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest Wins and Worries. Have questions? I’ve included a link to each team’s site in the headings.

Accessibility

  • Contacted: @rianrietveld, @joedolson, @afercia
  • Priority: Working to make sure that Gutenberg is reasonably accessible prior to merge. ETA is before 5.0
  • Struggle: Lack of developers and accessibility experts to help test and code the milestone issues. The team is doing outreach to help solve this problem.
  • Big Win: Interest from companies like The Paciello Group and Tenon.io to help out with Gutenberg code review and testing tools.

CLI

  • Contacted: @danielbachhuber, @schlessera
  • Priority: Very first global Hack Day is coming up July 20. Version 2.0.0 is still in progress (new ETA is end of July).
  • Struggle: The team continues to need new contributors. The current team is tiny but tough.
  • Big Win: WP-CLI is currently one of the project’s four main focuses, as mentioned in the Summer Update at WordCamp Europe.

Community

  • Contacted: @francina, @hlashbrooke
  • Priority: Focusing on smoothing out the processes in our community management by building up our team of volunteers and establishing what tools we need to keep things running well. ETA is ongoing.
  • Struggle: Our two biggest struggles at the moment are tracking what we need to get done, and making final decisions on things. There is current work on the tools available to assist with tracking progress.
  • Big Win: After making a concerted effort to get more contributors on the Community Team, we now have a much larger group of volunteers working as deputies and WordCamp mentors

Core

  • Contacted: @jeffpaul
  • Priority: Following the WordCamp Europe summer update (and the companion post here), the team is getting Gutenberg (the new WordPress editing experience) into a strong state for the 5.0 release. Potential ETA as soon as August.
  • Struggle: Coordinating momentum and direction as we start seeing more contributors offering their time. Still working our way through open issues. The team is starting multiple bug scrubs each week to work through these more quickly and transparently.
  • Big Win: Had a sizable release in 4.9.6 which featured major updates around privacy tools and functionality in Core.

Design

  • Contacted: @melchoyce, @karmatosed, @boemedia, @joshuawold, @mizejewski
  • Priority: Better on-boarding of new contributors, especially creating better documentation. ETA is end of July.
  • Struggle: It’s hard to identify reasonably small tasks for first-time contributors.
  • Big Win: The team is much more organized now which has helped clear out the design backlog, bring in new contributors, and also keep current contributors coming back. Bonus: Joshua Wold will co-lead the upcoming release.

Documentation

  • Contacted: @kenshino
  • Priority: Opening up the work on HelpHub to new contributors and easing the onboarding process. No ETA.
  • Struggle: Some blockers with making sure the code and database can be ready to launch on https://wordpress.org/support/
  • Big Win: The first phase of HelpHub creation is complete, which means content updates (current info, more readable, easier discovery), internal search, design improvements, and REST API endpoints.

Hosting

  • Contacted: @mikeschroder, @jadonn
  • Priority: Preparing hosts for supporting Gutenberg, especially support questions they’re likely to see when the “Try Gutenberg” callout is released. ETA July 31st, then before WordPress 5.0
  • Struggle: Most contributions are still made a by a small team of volunteers. Seeing a few more people join, but progress is slow.
  • Big Win: New team members and hosting companies have joined the #hosting-community team and have started contributing.

Marketing

  • Contacted: @bridgetwillard
  • Priority: Continuing to write and publish case studies from the community. ETA is ongoing.
  • Struggle: No current team struggles.
  • Big Win: Wrote and designed a short Contributor Day onboarding card. It was used at Contributor Day at WCEU and onboarding time went down to 1 hour instead of 3 hours.

Meta (WordPress.org Site)

  • Contacted: @tellyworth, @coffee2code
  • Priority: Reducing manual work around the contributor space (theme review, GDPR/privacy, plugin review). ETA for small wins is end of quarter, larger efforts after that.
  • Struggle: Maintaining momentum on tickets. There are also some discussions about updating the ticket management process across teams that use the Meta trac system.
  • Big Win: The new About page launched and has been translated across most locale sites.

Mobile

  • Contacted: @elibud
  • Priority: Getting Gutenberg in the mobile applications. ETA is late December.
  • Struggle: Consuming the Gutenberg source in the ReactNative app directly. More info can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2018/07/09/next-steps-for-gutenberg-mobile/
  • Big Win: The WordPress mobile applications now fully support right-to-left languages and are compliant with the latest standards for accessibility.

Plugins

  • Contacted: @ipstenu
  • Priority: Clearing ~8,000 unused plugins from the queues. Likely ETA is September.
  • Struggles: Had to triage a lot of false claims around plugins offering GDPR compliance.
  • Big Win: Released 4.9.6 and updated expectations with plugin authors. Huge thanks to the Core Privacy team for their hard work on this.

Polyglots

  • Contacted: @petya, @ocean90, @nao, @chantalc, @deconf, @casiepa
  • Priority: Keep WordPress releases translated to 100% and then concentrate on the top 100 plugins and themes. ETA is ongoing.
  • Struggle: Getting new PTEs fast enough, and complex tools/systems. Overall, the volume of strings awaiting approval.

Support

  • Contacted: @clorith
  • Priority: Getting ready for the Gutenberg callout (it got pushed last quarter). Needing a better presence on the official support forums, and outreach for that is underway, ETA end of July. 
  • Struggle: Keeping contributors participating post-contributor days/drives. Considering the creation of a dedicated post-contributor day survey to get some insight here.
  • Big Win: The increase in international liaisons joining for weekly meetings, helping bring the wider support community together.

Theme Review

Tide

  • Contacted: @valendesigns (but usually @jeffpaul)
  • Priority: Storing PHPCompatibilty results inside the WordPress.org API and building a UI to display those results, an endpoint to request an audit is required for this work to continue.
  • Struggle: Development has dramatically slowed down while team members are on leave or pulled into internal client work.
  • Big Win: Migration to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) from Amazon Web Services (AWS) is complete and the audit servers have all been rewritten in Go. (This allows us to be faster with greater capacity and less cost.)

Training

  • Contacted: @bethsoderberg, @juliek
  • Priority: Lesson plan production. ETA is ongoing.
  • Struggle: The workflow is a little complex, so recruiting and training enough contributors to keep the process moving is a struggle.
  • Big Win: WordCamp Europe’s Contributor Day was very productive. New tools/workflow are in place and two team representatives were there to lead and help.

Interested in updates from the first quarter of this year? You can find those here: https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2018/04/24/quarterly-updates-q1-2018/

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