Yalla Download

In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature Carla Doria, a customer support specialist from South America on how WordPress opened up a new world for her, and gave her the ability to help the local community.

For Carla, working with WordPress is a vital part of her life. It gave her a career and a community, in which she she would organize the first WordCamp in her city, Cochabamba, and the first in Bolivia.

Carla studied industrial engineering and has a master’s degree in environmental studies.
Her first experience with WordPress was when she decided to start a small business designing and selling cushions and bedclothes. While Carla sat in the small store she had rented, hoping that people stopping at the shop windows would step in to buy something, she decided she needed to create a website.

First steps with WordPress

Carla had no budget to hire somebody, but she felt confident  she could learn things on her own. 

“Learning to use WordPress requires no code skills or a technical background. It needs an adventurous and playful spirit.”

Carla Doria

She had always been studious, and decided she would figure out how to build a website herself. Carla ended up building a simple blog with WordPress. At the time, she didn’t even have a budget to buy a custom domain, so she used a free subdomain.

“Learning to use WordPress is easy. It requires no code skills or a technical background at all. It only needs an adventurous and playful spirit,” said Carla

There were no profits, and any income mainly went to pay the store’s rent. At the time, her previous company contacted her for a job opening that matched her profile. Carla needed that income and decided to closed the store and forget about being an entrepreneur.

Back in employee mode, Carla started her new job as a technical writer for a software development company. Since Carla had completed her master’s degree in the UK, she was proficient in English. Her close affinity for computers and technology made it easy for her to translate complex software jargon into simple tutorial steps.

As Carla got more interested in technical writing and started to improve her writing skills. This reconnected her with her previous enthusiasm for writing, and she decided to channel that interest into a blog.

Diving deep

Creating her blog helped her become more familiar with WordPress and building websites. In 2015, Carla blogged about writing, her thoughts, book reviews, and everything that came to mind. 

Through looking for answers to specific issues using her WordPress blog, Carla found the support forums a useful place to go. Soon she realized that she could also help answer other people’s questions.

Carla began checking the forums as a hobby. She liked that she was able to help people and learn more while doing so.

Instead of surfing social media during her work breaks, Carla focused on checking the WordPress forums. Through this she learnt about a support job in one of the global firms.

She felt the job was made for her and was excited to support people in building their websites with WordPress. The role offered the possibility to work remotely and travel while still working.

After three years as a technical writer, her career felt stuck. She was certain she did not want to return to any job related to industrial engineering.

Carla did not get through the selection process the first time. But after nearly 18 months between three applications and learning HTML and CSS, Carla finally secured a support job in 2016. With this job, WordPress became her main source of income.

Leading a local WordPress community

On the job, Carla learned about the WordPress communities around the world and WordCamps. But when somebody asked about the WordPress community where Carla lived, she didn’t know what to say. Was there a community?

She discovered no local group existed, so she researched what was needed to setup a meetup. Carla discussed the idea with others, but hesitated as she thought it would require an expert WordPress developer to organize.  

But after trying to gauge interest, Carla realized that the only way to find community members was to start a community. In 2017, the WordPress community in Cochabamba was born.

The group has had ups and downs, probably similar to any other community. Although Cochabamba is not a big city, they had issues finding a location that was free and available to anyone who wanted to join. People came with different levels of knowledge, from people with vast experience with WordPress to people with no experience but who wanted to learn. 

The community grew during the pandemic, as meetups went online and people from other cities in Bolivia were able to attend. After restrictions were lifted, there was a lot of excitement amongst members to meet each other in person.

Giving back through speaking

The community also helped Carla to develop a new skill in public speaking. She applied to be a speaker at WordCamp Mexico 2019 and 2020, WordCamp Guayaquil 2019, and WordCamp Colombia in 2020. Her confidence grew while she enjoyed connecting with other communities and meeting people who were on similar pathways. Not all of them were developers, as she had presumed. Many, like her, started out as bloggers.

Finally, after three years, Carla applied to organize her first WordCamp in 2021 in Cochabamba. She had never imagined organizing any WordCamp, and through this having the experience to talk to sponsors and contact companies, and lead a group of people with different talents and backgrounds. Carla felt she had learnt so much from the experience.

Thanks to WordPress, Carla found a job she enjoyed, was able to work remotely, and help build something in her community to help people learn skills and find career opportunities.

Carla feels grateful for all she has been able to do thanks to WordPress. She said: “WordPress has led me to find good jobs. It also has allowed me to contribute to a community of friends that love learning about WordPress.”

Share the stories

Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

Contributors

Thanks to Alison Rothwell (@wpfiddlybits), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), and Surendra Thakor (@sthakor) for work on this feature, and to all the contributors who helped with the series recently. Thank you too to Carla Doria (@carlisdm) for sharing her experiences.

Thank you to Josepha Haden (@chantaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support of the People of WordPress series.

In the thirty-sixth episode of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy revisits the Beginner’s Guide to Contributions to the WordPress open source project.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Beatriz Fialho
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

1. Performance Team Information
2. WordCamp US Contributor Day Table Lead Info
3. Call for Testing #15: Category Customization
4. Contributor Quizlet

Transcript

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:10]  

Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy.

Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]  

WordPress is an open source software project and, like many other open source software projects, has an entire community of people who show up to help improve it however they can. Most of you probably use WordPress every day in some way. And I’m going to assume that since you listen to this podcast, you’re also interested in how this all works.

One of the things I mention practically every episode is that WordPress works and continues to work because of generous contributions from people all around the world. I consider my work with WordPress to be my way of giving back for everything that this software enabled me and my family to do. But I once was a first-time contributor, and I remember what it felt like before I knew everything. 

I felt like it moved at the speed of light and that I could never tell what to do now, let alone what to do next. And that everyone around me basically already knew everything. And if you are feeling that way right now, I encourage you to take a big deep breath [breathe] and let me help you get started. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:43]  

I’m a roadmap sort of person. So I’m going to start by sharing the stages I’ve observed for folks who are contributing to open source. That way, you can tell where you are right now, which spoiler alert is probably a bit further along than you realize. Then I’ll give you some questions you can ask yourself for each stage to figure out what is a good fit for you. Think of it as a guided exploration. 

All right, the five stages. So these are they: 

1. Connecting. That’s when you’re first learning about the community. You know WordPress exists, but now you’ve just discovered that the community exists. That’s where you are. 
2. The second phase is Understanding. It’s when you are researching the community, like, you know it exists, you think you want to give back, and so you’re trying to figure out where everything is. 
3. The third phase is what I call Engaging. It’s when you’re first interacting, you’ve downloaded the CMS, you have figured out which team you think you’re interested in, and you’re headed to events or meetings or whatever. 
4. The fourth stage is one that I refer to as Performing. And that’s when you’ve decided that you’re gonna volunteer and you’re gonna take some action. You’re going to like a contributor day or running a release or whatever. I think that’s probably not the first place you land, running a release is probably a lot, but, you know, coordinating work on the release or something like that. 
5. And then phase five, which is the Leading phase. That’s when you’re taking responsibility for things getting done. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:08]  

Before we get any further, there are four important things to remember about those stages.

The first thing to remember is that there is no set time between any of those stages. You can start in one and then three years later go to the next one, or you can start in one and go into the next stage tomorrow. The next thing to know is that each stage builds on the one before it. In my observation, anytime I have seen a contributor who feels like they’re really struggling, it’s because they skipped a stage in there, which really causes some trouble for them.

The next thing to remember is that not everyone will make it through these stages, which is okay. The majority of the community stops at three. Most contributors stop at four. And that is perfectly fine. That is expected. That is normal and completely in line with what we expect from contribution.

Uh, and the final thing to remember about that list of the phases is that very few people make it into that leadership stage. If we assume, like I do, that 1% of the people who are using WordPress also show up and contribute back to WordPress, then it’s kind of safe to assume also that about 1% of those people who have shown up to contribute to WordPress are moving into a space where they feel like they’re willing to take responsibility for making sure things get done in WordPress.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:31]  

Like we all collectively feel responsible for WordPress’s success, but in that leadership area, you’re kind of taking responsibility for 40% of the web or whatever’s going on there. And not a lot of people make it there, and that is completely fine, too. So that’s our basic terminology today. Those are the caveats that go with our basic terminology.

Most difficulties that arise for new contributors happen because a stage got skipped somewhere along the way. It’s almost never intentional, but from what I’ve observed, that’s what makes it really difficult to get started and what makes it difficult to keep going once you’ve kind of already gotten in there.

So, all right. Big breath, folks with me again [breathe]. Alright, it’s guided exploration time. 

First phase, the connecting phase. Remember, this is where you’ve just learned the community exists, people are talking about it, you don’t know much more. The first step for you is asking yourself what it is you could do. Or if there’s a project out there that looks particularly interesting.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:36]  

So you can ask yourself questions, like, am I a writer? And if I am a writer, do I write technical or prose. The other thing you can ask is, am I a PHP developer, a JavaScript developer, Python, Go; which language am I writing in because I find it most beautiful. Another thing you can ask yourself is, am I a teacher or a mentor, or do I just generally like to be a mighty helper? And I like to make sure that things keep running. 

So once you’ve asked yourself those things, it’s on to phase two, the understanding phase. This is when you’re looking around at this new-to-you community to see what is happening where. So you take a look at the teams that are around, you think about whatever it was you said you were good at in the last question and you look at which teams might be a good fit. 

So if you said that you’re a good technical writer, then Docs probably is for you. Have you been training others to use WordPress for years? Then you might wanna look into Training. There are a lot of other things, obviously, like if you think you’re good at working with code PHP or JavaScript, you’re probably gonna end up in Core.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:46]  

If you are particularly good at any of the other tech stacks that we have around in our Trac area or an Openverse, then that’s where you’ll land over there. You have design options. Like if design is really your thing, we have a Design team, but we also have a Themes team. There are plenty of places that you can land depending on what it is that you feel like you are the best at and could really help the WordPress project. And so that’s your phase two. 

Now that you have gotten a good guess at a team, we’re gonna swing through to phase three, which is the engaging phase. This is the phase that is the scariest for most people, but it’s okay. I am here for you. I am here for you in this podcast. So you have figured out what you want to do in order to contribute, and you’ve got a sense for the team that looks right. There are two things that you do next. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:34]  

One is that you can go to a meeting. There are many kinds of meetings. There are team meetings, bug scrubs, and testing sessions, but they’re all in Slack, which means that you can attend one from anywhere. When they kick off, you wave, you introduce yourself, you let everybody know that you’re there and you’re observing. Folks will welcome you and just kind of give you some concept of what they’re working on. Easy as that. You’ve done your first time meeting attendance. 

Another good option is to keep an eye out for specific events. Some of those events happen online, like Global Translation Day. But also some of them happen in person like, Meetups or WordCamps. And there again, you show up, you wave, you introduce yourself, see if you can make a connection or two, let people know that you’re new and you’re just trying to figure out where you are and what you wanna do. 

If you’ve made it now, all the way to phase four, the performing phase, then give yourself a little pat on the back! Figuring out where you want to go and who your friendly faces are is the biggest challenge when you get started. So congratulations! 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:37]  

Phase four is the phase where you’ve decided you’re brave enough to volunteer – to do some contribution. You’re volunteering your time. That’s where you are now. So oddly enough, you start this phase by assigning yourself something, assigning yourself, a task. This seems counterintuitive.

There’s this feeling that you can’t say that you’re gonna do something. That you can’t just assign something to yourself and say that you’re gonna do it. But in open source projects, you always can. You find a task where you’re comfortable, and you just mention that you would like to give it a try while the team is having their weekly meeting. And it’s simple as that. And not big things either. Like organizing an event or maintaining a component, those are probably too big for your first time around.

I’m talking things like, ‘I will test that patch that you mentioned in the meeting.’ Or ‘I will review the docs and make sure that they’re up to date with the most recent release.’ Or ‘I can help run meetings for the next release.’

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:40]  

And then you have phase five, where you just repeat phase four until you are leading something! And I don’t mean leading in the 1950s sort of way, where you have like a corner office and you’re ordering people around. I mean, in the warm, inviting millennial way where you’re leading by inspiring people to do something or you’re leading because you make sure that the meeting happens every single week.

Or you’re leading because you added screenshots to tickets that needed testing and so you moved something forward in a way that was helpful. Easy peasy. You can go to your first contributor today or a WordPress Slack meeting and just be a contributor by the time you leave, right? You might feel like ‘easy as that isn’t quite the right set of words right there. And as a matter of fact, you might be thinking to yourself, this woman is just plain wrong. It could not possibly be that easy. And I agree. It really isn’t literally quote-unquote just that easy. Just like handing someone a notebook and a pen will not instantly make them an award-winning novelist, handing someone a wordpress.org profile and credentials to Slack won’t instantly make them a contributor. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:46]  

For both of those examples, what makes someone good is the ability to try and fail and still be encouraged to try again. So if it’s been a while since you contributed and you’re thinking about returning, or if you’ve been listening to me for a while and you’re ready to give this contribution thing a try, I hope this helps you to feel brave enough to try and brave enough to fail.

And I encourage you to be brave enough to try again.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:20]  

Let’s take a look at our small list of big things. My friends, we have a Performance team. This team has been a working group for a long time and is focused on some deep, inner workings of WordPress and its surrounding ecosystem to make sure that we are as fast and slick as possible. You can check them out on make.wordpress.org/performance, their brand new site, and see when they’re meeting, what they’re aiming to get into the WordPress 6.1 release, and if that’s something that you would like to contribute to. 

The second thing is that there’s a brand new call out for testing. This time it’s focused on templates and retroactively applying them to an entire category of posts. So it’s a little bit workflow testing, a little bit technology testing, and we could really use your help in bug hunting for both of those things.

And the final thing is that you know since contribution is obviously the focus of today’s podcast, we are looking for table leads for WordCamp US’ contributor day that’s coming up in September. There’s a whole blog post about it, I’ll link to it in the show notes so that you’ll have all the info and can raise your hand if you want. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:12:25]  

And speaking of things that I’ll have in the show notes, I also am going to put like a contributor quizlet guide thing. If the guided, figuring out of the teams in the phase two section, if that didn’t make any sense to you and you just need something to direct you specifically to potential teams, I’m gonna link to the contributor kind of sorting hat quiz that came out with WordCamp Europe. And that should help you work your way through phase two and get ready for phase three if that is where the spirit takes you. 

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. And I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

Our philosophy has always been one of experimenting, learning, and adjusting. As we began to roll out our new pricing plans a couple of months back, we took note of the feedback you shared. What we heard is that some of you missed the more granular flexibility of our previous plans. Additionally, the features you needed and pricing of the new plans didn’t always align for you. This led us to a decision that we believe is the right call.

Returning to Our Familiar Plans

Starting today, we’re bringing back our Personal, Premium, Business, and eCommerce plans – in addition to the free plan. Here’s what that looks like: 

What This Means for You

For many of you, this doesn’t change anything. If you’re on a WordPress Pro or Starter plan, rest assured that you’ll remain on that plan. Your feedback matters more now than ever. We’ll continue listening. Our broader goals of simplifying website building and managed WordPress hosting will continue behind the scenes,  And we’ll be sure to communicate any future updates as they become finalized. In the meantime, and as always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

With the JetpackWP Bot for Telegram, you can now automatically share blog posts from any Jetpack-powered WordPress site (including any site hosted at WordPress.com) directly to a Telegram channel. This free tool saves time sharing content to Telegram, where readers can subscribe to read your posts just as easily as they would via email or social media.

How to Create a Telegram Channel and Set Up JetpackWP Bot 

Content publishers can create a Telegram channel, invite JetpackWP Bot, and set it to follow their blog. The bot will then update the channel with new posts as they’re published in real time. Start by opening the app and clicking the pen icon in the lower right corner of the left-hand panel:

Add members that you would like to participate in your channel. Then, give your channel an image, name, and description:

Now, add JetpackWP Bot as an admin to the channel. Click the channel name at the top, then click the pen icon in the upper right corner:

Next, scroll down to Administrators, click the person icon in the bottom right corner, and search “jetpackwp”:

Review what the bot can do as an admin, then click the checkmark icon in the bottom right corner:

Once the bot has admin access to the channel, it’s time to follow your blog (or any other Jetpack-powered blog that you’d like to follow in your channel). To do this, type /follow and the URL of your desired blog:

Now, the bot will automatically share new blog posts with the channel. If you’d like to curate content from other Jetpack-powered blogs, you can do that too by using the /follow command. If you’d like to see a list of all followed blogs, unfollow blogs, or reset the bot, there are additional commands you can use:

• /unfollow [URL]: Stops notifications for the blog specified in the URL.
• /reset: Unfollows all followed blogs.
• /following: Shows a list of all followed blogs.

For additional information about how to use JetpackWP Bot, visit our support page.

How to Add a Telegram Social Icon So Readers Can Subscribe

Once your Telegram channel is set up and JetpackWP Bot is active, add a social icon for Telegram so your readers can subscribe. Here are two different methods you can follow.

1. Add a Telegram Icon to Your Header or Footer With a Widget

From your WordPress website’s dashboard, click Appearance > Widgets, then select Social Icons:

Search for “telegram” to find the correct icon:

Visit your Telegram channel and click the channel name at the top. Find your channel URL and copy it:

Return to your WordPress website dashboard, open your Social Icon widget block, and paste the URL for your Telegram channel:

2. Add a Telegram Icon to a Page or Post Using the Social Icons Block

Alternatively, you can use the Social Icons block to place a subscription icon anywhere on your site. Follow the same steps from the previous section to snag the URL for your channel. Then from your dashboard, choose the page or post where you’d like to place your icon, and choose the Social Icons block: 

Use the search bar to find the Telegram icon and add your channel URL: 

That’s two methods that will make it easy for your readers to subscribe to your Telegram channel. Share the news with your audience and watch your channel grow.

How Can Telegram Help Publishers Reach Your Audience?

Telegram is a fast-growing instant-messaging service with more than 700 million users worldwide, and is one of the top-five most downloaded apps in the world. That’s a massive potential audience that uses the app to stay in touch with friends and follow their interests.

Messaging apps are also less noisy than social media platforms and other content distribution channels. This means it’s easier for readers to focus on your content with fewer distractions.

Start Sharing Content With JetpackWordPressBot Now 

With JetpackWP Bot, it’s easier than ever to take advantage of this popular service to engage your audience, build your community, and increase your traffic. Get started now.

WordPress 6.0.1 is now available

This maintenance release features 13 bug fixes in Core and 18 bug fixes for the Block Editor. WordPress 6.0.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. You can review a summary of the key updates in this release by reading the RC1 announcement.

The next major release will be version 6.1 planned for later in 2022.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.0.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information, check out the version 6.0.1 HelpHub documentation page.

Thank you to these WordPress contributors

The WordPress 6.0.1 release is led by @sergeybiryukov and @zieladam.

WordPress 6.0.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of more than 50 people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver several enhancements and fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Adam Zielinski, Addie, Adil Öztaşer, Andrew Serong, annezazu, Bernie Reiter, Carlos Bravo, Carolina Nymark, Channing Ritter, Colin Stewart, Clement Boirie, Daniel Iser, denishua, Dion Hulse, Erik Betshammar, Gabriel Rose, George Mamadashvili, George Stephanis, Glen Davies, Grant M. Kinney, Greg Ziółkowski, ironprogrammer, James Koster, Jb Audras, jnz31, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jonny Harris, Kelly Choyce-Dwan, Knut Sparhell, Luis Herranz, Maggie Cabrera, manfcarlo, Manzur Ahammed, Matias Ventura, Michal Czaplinski, Miguel Fonseca, Mukesh Panchal, navigatrum, Nick Diego, Nik Tsekouras, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, Presskopp, Ramon James Dodd, Ravikumar Patel, Riad Benguella, Sami Keijonen, Sergey Biryukov, Timothy Jacobs, tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn Fjellner), Trinadin, and Ulrich Pogson.

We hear every day from customers that people being able to find their website is a top priority.

That’s why we’re excited to announce that Yoast SEO Premium is now available for purchase on WordPress.com! 

Not only is it easier than ever to purchase this powerful plugin on WordPress.com, but you can choose a payment cadence that’s best for you — we offer both monthly and annual pricing (though you’ll save money over the long-term with the annual plan). 

Yoast SEO is already the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress, with over 13 million active installs. While Yoast SEO is awesome, Premium is the real deal, for these reasons:

1. Yoast SEO Premium is a time-saver — In the free version, you still need to do much of the work yourself. Yoast SEO Premium comes with tools like the redirect manager and internal linking suggestions that can save you a lot of time.
2. Makes doing site maintenance easier — Have you ever forgotten to redirect a page you deleted? No more! Yoast SEO Premium automatically does this for you. And if you’re unsure about which page to update next, the stale content finder and SEO workouts help you work on the most important things first.
3. Helpful tools to build a great site structure — Links within your website are important for SEO. The Yoast SEO Premium plugin comes with several tools to help you improve, like the internal linking blocks, orphaned content finder, and internal linking suggestions.
4. Advanced language analysis that makes writing more natural — Premium’s innovative language analysis supports over 20 languages! It not only looks at the exact match of the focus keyphrase you enter, but also at all the grammatical forms, synonyms, and related keyphrases of that word.
5. Optimize your posts before sharing them on social media — Premium lets you preview how your post will look when shared on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook.
6. 24/7 access to Yoast’s world-class support team — Available in English and Spanish.
7. Free access to all Yoast SEO academy courses — Learn all about Yoast SEO, SEO copywriting, keyword research, structured data, and many other topics related to SEO.

How to Purchase Yoast SEO Premium Without Leaving Your Site

Purchasing this plugin right from your WordPress.com dashboard is simple.

On the plugins page, search for “Yoast”; click on the product card for Yoast SEO Premium, and you’ll be directed to this detailed product listing page. When you’re ready, click the “Purchase” button in the top right of the product listing page. Your purchase won’t be final until you confirm your payment method and details on the following page. The plugin will be installed automatically.

Currently, plugins are only available on certain WordPress.com plans. In the near future, we plan to expand the option to more plans. Read more about what the future holds.

In the thirty-fifth episode of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy tackles questions about the true intentions of the Five for the Future initiative.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Beatriz Fialho
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

1. New Create Block Theme plugin
2. Open Sourcing Theme Designs
3. Exploration in Meta to improve DevHub
4. Tragedy of the Commons definition

Transcript

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:10]  

Hello everyone. And welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]  

Today I’m talking about Five for the Future– again. Before we get stuck right into the heart of it, 10 episodes ago, in episode 25, I focused on the Five for the Future initiative and I recommend that you listen to that before you join me in today’s episode. It’s only eight minutes and it gives you a history of the Five for the Future initiative, as well as some information on the Five for the Future program.

It then goes on to talk about some of the original intentions behind that original initiative. The reason I bring this back up today is partially because one, I will talk about both the program and the initiative it’s based on literally anytime. I believe strongly that they are both a vital part of what will result in a triumph of the commons of WordPress, and keep this empowering project around for years to come. 

But I also bring it up today because there’s conversation about a post I published a couple of months back that has generated some dialogue around the intentions of this catchy call to contribution. So to make sure that as we move through this discussion together, we are working with as much factual information as possible, I present to you some facts.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:46]  

First and foremost, the pillars of this initiative. The 5% in Five for the Future is aspirational. Contribution to open source is a question and indication of privilege. So the 5% is not a requirement, but rather it’s an aim. It could refer to 5% of your time or 5% of your resources, or just any amount of your time or resources around. Regardless of how you’re defining it, it is an aspiration, not a requirement. 

The second pillar, pledges show your intention and whatever contributions you are able to offer after you’ve made your pledge are always welcome. No one is out there checking for 100% completion of the hours that you intended to give back to WordPress versus the hours that you actually succeeded at giving back to WordPress.

There are so many volunteers that make sure that this project is running and functional and has plenty of people knowing how to get things done and how to teach others how to get things done. It’s all coming from generosity of heart. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:52]  

And speaking of generosity, the third thing that is important about this initiative is that it insists on and wants to celebrate a culture of generosity. Beyond the concept of a pledge, is the idea of generous collaboration toward the long term health and stability of our project for the future.

As contributors, we understand that we are greater than the sum of our parts and what we build within WordPress empowers those who build with WordPress. So those are the pillars that went into that initial thought, that opening Five for the Future call to action that Matt gave to everybody in 2014.

And so now I want to share with you some of the pillars of the program that has grown up around it. So the Five for the Future initiative, if you’re not familiar, was started in 2014 and is a grand call to all of us to remember to give back to the shared commons of WordPress. Its aim was to help guard against what is called the “tragedy of the commons,” where resources are continually taken out and not necessarily reinvested in. No one’s necessarily putting anything back into those.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:06]  

So that’s the starting point for all of this. So the program, the Five for the Future program, in 2018 was built as a collaborative effort with full participation and buy-in from the contributors who were active in the project at the time. It allowed anyone to raise their hands, to show support of WordPress via a pledge and also started a multi-year discussion of how to define contributions in a way that let us automatically provide props and therefore more effectively put badges on people’s wordpress.org profiles. 

And then in 2019, there was an additional pilot of the program, which kind of offered some team structure, which was intended to not only take on work that I don’t like to ask volunteers to do, but also to provide some checks and balances to an absolute raft of sponsored contributor hours that we had started to see show up. 

Which brings us then to the post that I mentioned at the start. Knowledgeable supporters of the WordPress open source project have debated next iterations to Five for the Future activity and programming. So, to bring the conversation to a central set of questions, or rather to bring the conversation to a central spot, I raised these two questions. One, what activities can we see inside our contributor networks? So wordpress.org, make.wordpress.org, the Rosetta sites that we have, Slack, et cetera. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:30]  

So what activities can we see inside the contributor networks that we can flag to enable easier distribution of props and therefore badges? The second question is, what activities can we see also in those contributor networks that appear to be contributions, but in the end are only benefiting the person or company that provides the contributions?

For what it’s worth that discussion then also raised a third question that I don’t think we’ve even started to tackle, which is what about the activities that are not in the contributor network, but still do move WordPress forward? Cause there are so, so many of those things and it’s a great question. I don’t have an answer and just so that I don’t leave you all with a series of questions for which there are no answers provided in this particular podcast, I do have a few answers for questions that I have seen floating around this discussion. 

So the first question is actually a bunch of questions. There are like three parts to it. What are props, who gives props, and who tracks them? So ‘props’ is a term used in WordPress to describe shared recognition of a contribution. Think of it as like a hat tip or kudos or an assist. However you think about it, it’s recognition of the other people who helped to solve a problem along the way. That is what props are. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:47]  

The second part of that question is who gives props and historically developers have given props, which tends to mean that it’s mostly developers who get props. But now, also, any team rep during a release cycle can provide props to folks on their team, volunteers on their team who were really helpful during the course of the release.

And recently we also added the functionality for ad hoc props to be given in the Slack props channel, and those get added to your profile activity. So that someone can give you basically a public thanks for having helped on something that they were working on. And then that gets logged in your activity tracker on your WordPress.org profile.

And then the final question in that first big question is who tracks these props? And the answer is human beings! Which is why folks feel like they have to do a ton of things before they even get props. And that’s also why I’d like to automate more and more of them so that you don’t have to do a ton of things in order for someone to show up and acknowledge that you are part of a solution.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:51]  

So the second question that I’ve seen kind of running around is, where do props start? And that is a great question that has been asked year after year. And one that I think we should continue to ask. The reality is that we won’t be able to see every contribution to WordPress, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t valuable. And it doesn’t mean that they don’t matter. 

Building our culture of generosity helps us to better recognize and celebrate each other for all of our contributions, whether they are for a major release or a major event, or one of these new ad hoc props that you can offer to people. And if we see more and more of the same type of contributions being celebrated, then we can also work toward automating those as well, so that you don’t have to do a super ton of them before someone has noticed that you’ve done even one of them. 

And the third big question that has been running around is, what about the people who don’t want the props? If people want to be literally anonymous, then deletion requests are probably your way to go. But I actually don’t think that’s the question here. I think the question is what if a prop holds no intrinsic value to you and then, you know, I wanna thank you for that spirit of generosity. And I also wanna say that I’m so glad you’re here. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:02]   

Hopefully, all of these answers clarify what lies at the heart of what is intended with the Five for the Future initiative and the program that’s built on top of it. And why I care so much about fixing the ways we offer props to folks. For me, it’s not about assessing the worthiness of people or companies or any of their contributions. For me, it’s about reinvesting in the shared commons of the WordPress ecosystem, by finding a way that our economy can entice folks to put back into WordPress, something close to the benefit that they receive from it.

And that brings us now to our small list of big things. Thank you all for making it into the final stretches with me. These three things that I’m sharing also have companion blog posts to go with them because they are very big questions or very big features, very big plugin kind of things that we’re looking at. And so you’ll be able to find those in the show notes, or you can go to wordpress.org/news if you’re listening to this in a podcast player of your choice that is not wordpress.org. 

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:10]   

So the first one on my list is a new plugin. It is called Create Block Theme. And it’s gonna make it easier for theme builders to use the existing site editor tools to create new block themes. I’m very excited about this. Uh, you can find it on make.wordpress.org/themes. And I will also include a link to it in the show notes below. 

If themes are not your area of expertise, but you are interested in documentation or the DevHub or to an extent design things, then the improvements that are being worked on for the DevHub are definitely in your area. That’s kind of a Meta task, but has a few other pieces involved as well. That can be found on make.wordpress.org/meta. But again, I will have a link to the very, very detailed blog post in the show notes. 

It’s got a bunch of hypothetical changes that are being suggested for the WordPress developer docs, uh, especially when it comes to the function reference. And so there are gonna be some slight design questions, but not like, graphic design/visual design, more in the like, can humans read this design area of things? And so that will be a good one to look at. If you are sort of in the Meta or Documentation vein of things in the way that you like to contribute to WordPress.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:011:30]   

And then the final thing is about open sourcing theme designs. So open sourcing everything obviously is important to us. And the design tool that we use, this tool called Figma, is open to the public. And so it’s possible for folks to be able to kind of get in there and use and reuse any design elements.

And so there’s a discussion happening over on make.wordpress.org/design about how that can and should look in the future. And so if design is definitely your area, and again, this kind of lines up with themes a little bit, then wander over into that one, for which there will also be a link in the show notes. 

And that my friends is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. And I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

With WordPress 6.1 already in the works, a lot of updates happened during June. Here’s a summary to catch up on the ones you may have missed. 

---

WordPress 6.1 is Slated for Release on October 25, 2022

Planning for WordPress 6.1 kicked off a few weeks ago with a proposed schedule and a call for contributors to the release team. This will be the third major release in 2022 and will include up to Gutenberg 14.1 for a total of 11 Gutenberg releases.

Matías Ventura published the preliminary roadmap for version 6.1, which is expected to refine the full site editing experience introduced in the last two major releases. Stay tuned for a companion post with more details on what’s to come.

Tune in to the latest episode of WP Briefing to hear WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden discuss planning for major releases and how you can get involved.

New in Gutenberg: Versions 13.4 and 13.5

There are two new versions of Gutenberg since last month’s edition of the Month in WordPress:

• Gutenberg 13.4 includes 25 enhancements and nearly 30 bug fixes. This version adds support for button elements in theme.json and introduces axial spacing in Gallery Block, among other new features.
• Gutenberg 13.5 was released on June 22, 2022. It comes with an improved featured image UX, expanded design tools for the Post Navigation Link block, and solid accessibility fixes.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay up to date with the latest updates.

Team Updates: Gutenberg Page Redesign, Meetup Venue Support Funds, and More

• The Gutenberg page got a new redesign! You can rearrange the page content the way you want and experience the flexibility that blocks allow. Learn more about the inspiration behind the new look in this post.
• WordPress Community Support (WPCS) restarted its meetup venue support funds for community organizers.
• The Themes Team ​​released a new plugin called Create Block Theme that makes it easier for theme builders to create block themes.
• Matías Ventura, the lead architect of the Gutenberg project, shared some early thoughts on the future of the WordPress admin interface.
• Each month, the Training Team publishes a list of new resources available on the Learn WordPress platform. Check out what’s new.
• The Polyglots Team kicked off conversations for planning the next WordPress Translation Day.
• The Documentation Team posted a series of onboarding sessions to get started with documentation.
• After reviewing feedback raised by the community, the Performance Team proposed a new approach to add WebP and MIME support for images.
• The Themes Team updated its recommendations for hosting webfonts to follow Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• In a step towards open sourcing theme designs, the Design Team made some themes authored by WordPress core and other theme developers available in a Figma file.
• The Marketing Team started a discussion to gather feedback on promoting WordCamps with the official WordPress.org social accounts.
• The Openverse Team released version 2.5.5 of the Openverse API, which brings an important change regarding anonymous API requests.
• The Plugin Review Team shared a comprehensive post on invalid plugin reviews.
• The June edition of the Meetup Organizer Newsletter is now live with a list of ideas on reactivating meetups.
• Check out the Polyglots Monthly Newsletter: June 2022 to stay up to date with the latest updates from the Polyglots community.
• The latest edition of People of WordPress features the story of web developer Leo Gopal.
• The Museum of Block Art (MOBA), a virtual initiative that showcases creative uses of the WordPress block editor, is now open for submissions.
• Last month the WordPress community was saddened to hear of the passing of Wolly (Paolo Valenti). Wolly was a long-time WordPress contributor and one of the founding members of the vibrant Italian community. He will be missed.

The BlackPress community is a great place to connect with black African descent people in the WordPress space, access tech resources, and advance your career skills. Join the BlackPress Community.

Feedback/Testing Requests

• The Core Team is looking for help in testing a rollback functionality for failed plugin and theme updates.
• There’s an open call for feedback on a proposal to make building features and plugins on top of the WordPress REST API easier. Share your thoughts by July 18, 2022.
• The Training Team suggested a public content roadmap for Learn WordPress development. Comments are welcome until July 15, 2022.
• Version 20.2 of WordPress for Android and iOS is now available for testing.
• Some members of the Meta Team did some experiments with hypothetical changes to the WordPress Developer Docs. They welcome feedback on the next steps.

Want to get involved in testing WordPress? Follow the “Week in Test” posts to find a handy list of links and opportunities.

WordCamp Asia 2023 is Calling for Sponsors

• WordCamp Asia 2023, the first flagship WordCamp event in Asia, recently opened its Call for Sponsors.
• WordCamp US 2022 is sold out. General Admission tickets went on sale on June 30, 2022, and were quickly claimed the same day. If you couldn’t get yours, the organizing team recommends checking this page periodically to see if any become available.
• Curious about why WordCamp US is hosting fewer people this year? The WordCamp US team explained why in this post.
• WordCamp Europe 2022 was successfully held in Porto, Portugal, from June 2 to 4, 2022. The event saw 2,300 in-person attendees and a record 800 participants at Contributor Day. All the sessions will be available on WordPress.tv soon.
• In 2023, WordCamp Europe will be hosted in the city of Athens, Greece. The Call for Organizers is now open.
• Josepha Haden covered some important questions from WordCamp Europe on a special episode of WP Briefing. Be sure to give it a listen!

The #WPDiversity group has organized a free, online speaker workshop for Indian women in the WordPress community. The event will take place on September 24-25, 2022. Registration is now open.

---

Have a story that we could include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Let us know by filling out this form.

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @mysweetcate, @dansoschin, @lmurillom, @webcommsat, @chaion07, @rmartinezduque.

Ever wished you could share new blog posts to a Telegram channel automatically?

If so, then great news! Starting today, you can follow any WordPress.com blog within Telegram by using WordPressDotCom Bot. Now, you can easily get real-time updates from your favorite bloggers in specific channels, group chats, or DMs, right in the app. All with just a few clicks.

Sharing WordPress.com Blog Posts Made Easy

Whether you want to follow your favorite blogs or share your own posts, the WordPress.com Bot has you covered.

Start a new channel and invite readers to follow you there. Or automate sharing with an existing channel and add value for your friends and followers. Here are some ideas for inspiration:

• Keep up-to-date with writers you don’t want to miss.
• Share the latest shots from your family photo blog with friends and loved ones.
• Spark conversation about your hobbies and interests in a private channel.

How to Use the WordPress.com Bot for Telegram

There are two ways to set up WordPressDotCom Bot: 

1. Visit https://t.me/WordPressDotComBot and click on Send Message. 
2. Or invite the bot to a channel or group by adding a new member and searching for WordPress.com

From there, here are a handful of commands you can use:

• /follow [url] -This will follow the blog specified in the url
• /unfollow  [url] -This will unfollow the blog specified in the url. No more notifications of new posts will be sent.
• /following – This will show a list of all blogs followed.
• /reset – This stops following all blogs via the Telegram bot.

Best of all, WordPress.com Bot shows off your post thumbnails. Take a look at this preview example:

Try WordPress.com Bot for Telegram Today

WordPress.com Bot is free to use. Try it now.