Tag Archives: Team

WordPress Community Team to Retire CrowdSignal for Jotform – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The WordPress Community Team has announced plans to retire CrowdSignal in September 2024 in favor of Jotform for post-event attendee surveys. Automattic-sponsored Community Engagement Specialist Isotta Peira has shared more details about the decision and the future plans.  Why the Change? CrowdSignal (previously Polldaddy), owned by Automattic, has been used by the community to collect responses, including at large events like WordCamp Europe. However, it has some limitations.  Isotta Peira explained, “We decided to move away from CrowdSignal primarily to address the need for a multilingual solution, ensuring that all attendees worldwide can choose the language in which they complete the survey. This shift allows us to overcome an inclusion barrier that has been a challenge until now.” Accessibility experts like Alex Stine have previously raised concerns about CrowdSignal’s accessibility, while the WordPress Training Team has reported problems like data capture failures during surveys.  In a Slack conversation, Thijs Buijs, Team Representative of the WordPress Sustainability Team, shared his experience: “The experience we had with the team reps vote for #sustainability is that a lot of votes were not recorded in the backend as well as at front-end. We did not apply any restrictions like ip-limitations etc. I feel sorry to say but the tool appeared to be unreliable even after having tested it multiple times prior to launching the official voting.” After evaluating various alternatives, the WordPress Community Team identified Jotform as the best tool to meet their needs. “It’s user-friendly, allows easy addition of collaborators, facilitates sharing results while maintaining confidentiality, and includes built-in accessibility checks. This move is a significant step towards more inclusive and effective feedback collection.”, said Isotta Pereira. Jotform will enable the Community Team to grant organizing team members access as collaborators, allowing them to customize surveys as needed and receive submissions directly. Implementation Plan Isotta Pereira outlined the implementation plans: “We will begin with the English Attendee survey for local WordCamps and Events and coordinate the implementation of translations between Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. This transition will also include the Organizer post-event Debrief survey and Sponsor surveys if needed. We encourage Flagship WordCamps to adopt this tool so that both organizers and the community team can collect and access responses efficiently.” For local event organizers, the new WordPress Event Attendee Feedback Survey link will be included in the updated organizer reminder post-event. They can also volunteer to translate the survey into various languages before the official translation initiative begins. The Community team also appreciates feedback from Flagship organizers about using Jotform and the challenges they anticipate. The team is keen to understand whether standardizing surveys across different Flagships would be beneficial for gathering consistent feedback. Feedback from the Community Julia Golomb, Lead Organizer of WordCamp US 2024, commented on the transition: “We’ll try this new tool to survey our attendees… will share this tool with the WCUS co-organizers and together we will adapt it to use for WCUS 2024. I’ll report back on our experience!”  Steve Mosby, WordCamp Europe organizer, also expressed a positive outlook. He said, “If the system can provide a multilingual survey this could support increasing the number of responses – whilst also still providing generic values in the back-end (e.g. Yes/No questions, Enumerated type questions) – this would help with analysis!” Community members can provide feedback about the transition till September 30, 2024. [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress Training Team Seeks Ideas to Attract New Learners – WP Tavern

[ad_1] The WordPress Training Team is currently seeking ideas and feedback from the community to prioritize activities that will increase engagement with the newly revamped Learn WordPress platform and attract new learners.   Automattic-sponsored Kathryn Presner stated, “We want to have a steady flow of new learners discovering the site and taking advantage of the valuable resources it offers.” She has outlined three types of potential activities that the Training Team is considering –  expanding marketing initiatives, increasing the Training Team’s visibility at WordCamps, and equipping learners and contributors with resources to promote Learn WordPress.  Community members can go through the list of planned promotional activities, workshops, and events in Kathryn’s post. They can also share feedback and suggest new activities by September 10, 2024.  Home to high-quality educational resources, Learn WordPress, was launched in 2020 and received a revamp very recently.  Lately, various WordPress teams have been exploring ways to attract new members to the WP ecosystem. Just last month, the Community Team proposed updating WordCamp budget guidelines to draw in new attendees.  These initiatives are encouraging especially when there have been talks of the WordPress market stagnating. Category: News, WordPress [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress Community Team to Close Inactive Meetup Groups by September 16, 2024 – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Automattic’s Community Engagement Specialist, Devin Maeztri, has announced that the WordPress Community Team will close all inactive meetup groups by September 16, 2024. Over the past month, the team has been working hard to reactivate recently inactive WordPress Meetups. “This project comes in response to recent data revealing that nearly half of our groups are currently inactive—a statistic that underscores the need for proactive measures.”, Devin explained. As of June 2024, there are more than 762 WordPress Meetup groups across 108 countries and nearly 537,000 members.  The Community Team released a list of inactive Meetups at risk of removal from the WordPress Chapter Meetup Program. Organizers have until September 16 to confirm if they wish to remain active. As per the list, 22 meetups have already requested closure. Spain leads with six closure requests, followed by the USA (4), France (3), and Indonesia (3). Meetup groups that fail to respond will be removed from the WordPress Chapter Meetup Program. Currently, 140 groups are yet to respond, with the largest numbers coming from the USA (33), Italy (8), Brazil (7), Spain (6), India (6), and Venezuela (4). “Once a group is removed from the WordPress network, Meetup.com will guide Co-organizers, Assistant Organizers, Event Organizers, and Members on how to keep the group active independently (including managing the subscription fee).”, Devin assured. Since June 2024, WordPress.com has offered free websites for local WordPress meetups. Organizers who believe their group was mistakenly flagged as inactive and groups that wish to rejoin the WordPress network after removal can contact the Community Team at support@wordcamp.org. [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress Documentation Team to Host Its First Online Contributor Day, October 25, 2022 – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WordPress’ Documentation Team will be hosting an online Contributor Day on October 25, 2022, ahead of WordPress’ anticipated 6.1 release the following week. Milana Cap, who has been volunteering with the Documentation team for years and is currently sponsored by XWP, announced the event this week. “The primary goal is to catch up with a lot of tasks in the team’s backlog but also it’s an opportunity for all contributors to meet, collaborate in real time, and help onboard all new contributors who need any kind of help,” Cap said. The virtual event will be the first of its kind for the Documentation team but follows in the footsteps of other contributors teams, including the Polyglots and Accessibility teams, which have hosted wildly successful global events that include contribution and onboarding. These types of virtual gatherings help contributors get connected and put names to faces New contributors are encouraged to attend, even if it’s just for a short time to see what documentation contribution is all about. Cap requested everyone who plans to attend to leave their names on the GitHub issue dedicated to the Contributor Day. It outlines the steps to begin contributing and highlights a list of tickets awaiting content review for older documentation as well as more recent block editor and end user documentation tickets. For example, there is a project board specifically for high priority tickets remaining for 6.1. The Documentation team will be kicking off the event on Tuesday, October 25, 2022 at 06:00 AM EDT and it will run for 10 hours. Attendees can join via Zoom and are not required to stay for any length of time. Category: News, WordPress [ad_2] Source link

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Yoast Joins Newfold Digital, Team To Stay in Place – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Earlier today, Yoast CEO Marieke van de Rakt announced the company had been acquired by NewFold Digital. Yoast and its SEO-related business are expected to continue operating as usual with its current team and maintaining its product line. Newfold Digital is a global web solutions provider that serves small-to-medium businesses. The company has many brands under its umbrella, such as Network Solutions, Bluehost, and more. “Yoast never had any funding before, it grew organically into a company with 140 employees maintaining a plugin with over 12 million active installs,” wrote van de Rakt in the announcement. “We don’t want to stop there! We’re planning to grow and improve even further! Joining Newfold Digital provides us with the freedom to build and iterate on ideas to further our mission.” There are no plans to change the team or the culture around Yoast. One of the goals during the acquisition was to keep everyone in place, continuing work on their product line. “Of course, some things change,” said Yoast founder and CPO Joost de Valk. “We’ll integrate into their systems (HR and finance). We’ll work on special offers for customers from Newfold. Our company changed so much over the five years, so it will change no matter what. I do feel that this opens up more security for growth and for developing new ideas.” While Yoast does not plan to change its 140-person team, it is still bringing in fresh talent. The company has been hiring a lot lately and expects that trend to continue with 19 current job openings. As host Nathan Wrigley and guest Cory Miller discussed on the latest episode of the Jukebox, acquisitions can be a welcome change for all parties. It can provide more financial stability and backing for the acquired company. It may allow the team to explore new features or new products that were not possible before. This can also work in the user’s favor in the long term. “Marieke and I felt ever since this Covid pandemic hit that we needed a partner or some more financial backing,” said Joost de Valk. “Being totally bootstrapped was getting to us. We worried about the exchange rate of the dollar, for instance. We got risk-averse, and all around us other companies got financial injections.” The husband-and-wife duo thought about selling part of their stock for additional funding but was worried about potential consequences. One such downside may have been the need to grow fast to keep investors happy. “We wanted to find a place to keep Yoast SEO growing and to keep working on WordPress,” said de Valk. “We had help from RBC, a company that helps with these types of acquisitions. They introduced us to Newfold, and we had a really good connection right from the start.” He remained tight-lipped about any new products or features in the pipeline, only saying that a lot is coming and things will speed up. Newfold is the owner of several high-profile hosting brands, including Bluehost and HostGator — both offer a managed WordPress service. It would not be unheard of to see a company mix and match its various products to draw in more customers. Nor would it be surprising to eventually see Yoast SEO or even some of the commercial Yoast offerings as part of packaged hosting deals. WP Engine fully integrates StudioPress products, for example, into its packages. However, de Valk said they have yet to discuss anything on that front. “You’re absolutely right that the things you’re proposing here make perfect sense,” he said. “So, I think we’ll work on those deals and, at the same time, team Yoast will work independently on their products.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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WordCamp US Online Set for October 1, 2021, as Community Team Weighs Proposal for Returning to In-Person WordCamps – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WordCamp US will be held online this year on October 1, 2021. Organizers are planning a free, one-day event that will feature networking opportunities, speaker sessions, and workshops. Michelle Frechette, one of the organizers, said the team is planning on hosting a contributor day and will add more information to the event’s website over the next few weeks. In August, WCUS will send out the calls for speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. Planning for the 2020 virtual WCUS ended up as somewhat of a debacle after organizers decided to cancel due to pandemic stress and online event fatigue. The cancellation came after volunteers had already invested hundreds of hours of free time in planning the unfortunately timed event. Outbreaks in the US were worsening and political tensions were at an all-time high ahead of what went down as one of the most contentious presidential elections in US history. Bringing back WordPress’ flagship WordCamp as an online event was a necessity in 2021, as COVID-19 cases rise and ICU’s are filling up in US hot spot regions where vaccination rates are lower. The delta variant has thrown the world another curve ball in what has become one of the most stressful and traumatic 18 months in recent memory. Despite the continued public health crisis, the WordPress community is eager to restart in-person events. Rocio Valdivia published a proposal today, summarizing the Community Team’s discussions on how to establish a path for returning to in-person WordCamps. The proposal is based on using the current guidelines for meetups with a few additional guidelines pertinent to WordCamps. It uses the same decision-making flow chart that applies to green lighting in-person meetups: After these guidelines for meetups were announced in early July, in-person meetups have been held in six countries, including Russia, US, New Zealand, Uganda, Australia and the Netherlands. “Resetting expectations for WordCamps may be necessary, as the world has changed significantly,” Valdivia said in the proposal. “This is a great opportunity to rebuild the program by restarting locally, and then building back up to the levels we had in 2019.” WordCamps had mostly fallen into a fairly predictable format before the pandemic, but the Community Team is now keen on organizers experimenting with new formats and content. One example suggested in the proposal is delivering WordCamp content entirely online, followed by an in-person social gathering, for a more inclusive experience that makes it possible for those who cannot attend to participate in the educational aspects of the event. The Community Team is embracing the current hardships as an opportunity to improve WordCamps and rekindle the community spirit after such a lengthy absence from in-person events: Additionally, the normal WordCamp application process requires that there be an active local community in place. As the community has faced many changes this year, Deputies are thinking about how to handle this requirement. One possibility could  be more flexibility with WordCamp applications, allowing communities that had a meetup pre-COVID to host a WordCamp, even if they weren’t as active in the last year, to help build excitement and restart community activity again. The proposal includes a list of more practical considerations, such as securing fully-refundable venues, providing individually-packaged food instead of buffets, and limiting capacity to provide for social distancing. It also notes that WordCamps taking place during this transitional period would need to be prepared to cover 100% of their expenses, as WordCamps are currently exempt from the 2021 Global Sponsorship Program. Inclusion in the Global Sponsorship Program will be reconsidered once WordPress returns to in-person camps in all regions. The Community Team is inviting feedback on the proposal, which is still under active discussion. If you have ideas that you think should be included in the guidelines or suggestions for this transition period for in-person WordCamps, leave a comment on the proposal. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress.org Meta Team Fixes Search Snippet Issue with Download Page Promoting WordPress.com – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Yesterday evening Chris Klosowski, Sandhills Development Partner and Director of Technology, tweeted out a problem with the way WordPress.org’s Download page was appearing in Google’s Search results snippets when searching for “WordPress.” Underneath the link, the preview text referenced WordPress.com’s hosting: WordPress.com is the easiest way to create a free website or blog. It’s a powerful hosting platform that grows with you. We offer expert support for your WordPress site. Others reported seeing the intended description when Googling, which is designated in the Schema.org tag in the head tag but not printed on the page: “Download WordPress today, and get started on creating your website with one of the most powerful, popular, and customizable platforms in the world.” The reference to WordPress.com came from the hosting providers listed at the top of the page, where it randomly displays two upon each page refresh. The Download button used to be at the top of the Download page but ever since mid-January 2021, it has been pushed further down below recommended hosts. This is presumably to help people who want to set up a self-hosted site but don’t know where to get started. “Google was skipping our defined page descriptions in favor of some in-page content,” WordPress lead developer Dion Hulse said, regarding the issue with the search results snippet. The WordPress Meta team was alerted to the problem and quickly put a solution in place to encourage Google to look somewhere else on the page for the main content. “The Download page has info about the mobile apps and hosting for WordPress,” core contributor Corey McKrill wrote in the commit message. “These are in section container elements, which might be the reason that Google is using the content of the hosting container for its search result snippet, instead of the meta description tag. By changing these containers to aside elements, hopefully Google will get the message that they don’t contain the most pertinent information for that page.” The meta team also marked the hosting recommendations on the download page as exempt from being included in the Google search result snippet, so that it doesn’t pull text from these aside elements. Here is what the updated search result snippet looks like after the changes were put in place: Klosowski’s tweet highlighted the perennial tension that arises from the confusion between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The recommended hosting page has always been a contentious bit of real estate on WordPress.org but especially now that hosting companies are also prominently promoted on the Download page. https://twitter.com/cklosowski/status/1413264854643736577 In this situation, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, WordPress’ Executive Director, quickly acknowledged that the search snippet promoting WordPress.com was in fact a problem, heading off those who might promote the notion that it was intentional. The Meta team acted swiftly to resolve the issue and return the snippet to its former meta description. It is not known how long Google has been pulling from the text in the recommended hosts sections to populate the snippet, but the code is now more explicit about the fact that those companies are not the most important content on the Download page. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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A Progress Bar Block Plugin Done Right by the Tiles Team – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] I have been on the hunt for a decent progress bar solution for a while now. Most of them are bundled in large block libraries, requiring me to install another 20 or 30 blocks in which I have no need. Others seem to miss the mark entirely with odd configurations and block options. Some of the remaining plugins still use shortcodes and widgets, but it is 2021. I am looking for a block. A couple of days ago, the Tiles Progress Block landed in the directory. It seems to be a smaller piece of a larger project named Tiles. I have been keeping an eye on the team’s work since its initial design and patterns framework plugin launched last week. That project is still in beta, and only time will tell if it becomes a competitive project in the block space. However, the team’s new progress bar block was just what I was looking for. Other than one bug, which I reported to the developer, I found no serious issues. The plugin does what it says on the tin. It registers a Progress Bar block: Small and Large progress bars with default colors. Out of the box, it includes Small and Large styles, allowing the user to adjust the size of the bar. Its strength is that — I cannot stress this enough — the block’s content is editable within the editor canvas area. This includes the label and percentage. This is a refreshing change from the many others that require users to jump back into the block options sidebar to change simple text. Because the block uses Rich Text fields for its label and percentage, end-users can use inline formatting tools like bold, italic, and more. The block also uses the standard typography and color palette controls from core WordPress. This provides access to the theme’s font sizes and colors. Adding custom labels, percentages, and colors. Plus, users can choose wide and full-width layouts, an often overlooked feature in block plugins. Overall, I am digging this block plugin. If I had one feature request, it would be to add a border-radius option. By default, the progress bar is rounded, but some users might prefer squared corners. Extending the Block In theme previews, I almost always see progress bars showcased alongside how much PHP, HTML, and JavaScript the demo’s faux developer has learned. It is rarely a real-world representation of progress bars. How do you quantify how much of a coding language you have mastered? I have been doing this for nearly two decades and cannot answer that. Progress bars should be of measurable things. For example, steps someone has taken in an online learning course, percentage of total donations received, and any number of things that can be counted are far more realistic. My favorite use of progress bars also happens to be on my favorite novelist’s website. I like to keep an eye on Brandon Sanderson’s work, looking forward to getting my next literary fix (yes, I am a fanboy). Brandon Sanderson’s writing progress. Currently, Tiles Progress Block does not handle that exact layout. However, because it is built on the block system and does not do anything out of the ordinary, theme authors can change that with custom styles. And that is just what I did. My Sanderson-esque book progress bars (rough, unpolished code available as a Gist): Progress bars with custom block style. The thing I love about the block system is that themers can extend blocks in this way. There is no needless checking for active plugins, loading additional per-plugin stylesheets, or figuring out each plugin’s unique system. If a block is coded to the current standards, theme authors merely need to hook in with their own styles. Users can then select those styles via the editor and even make them the default. I want to see more of this from the block plugin ecosystem. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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