During 2021’s State of the Word, Matt revisited 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/’s timeline, what has been accomplished, and what is ahead of us. The project is at something of a halfway point, and I want to offer my unending thanks to everyone who has contributed and welcome anyone who wants to join our efforts. This post contains some goals for the year (and will be updated with links to individual team posts when I start to see them), but there are some things you should know first.

These are intentionally broad

There is more to WordPress’ success than the code we write or the open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. freedoms we support. While the goals below focus on shippable projects, I understand that supporting contributions (translations, testing, triage, accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), support, performance, etc.) are part of these goals.

These are intentionally incomplete

There are always small projects that arise over the course of the year. And there are big projects to move forward in pieces over the course of multiple years. This project is too big for me to see everything all the time, and I rely on the information from team reps and the vision from project leadership to help navigate any surprises.

If you don’t see a project here, keep in mind that there are many that are still valuable to the overall success of our work. 

The Big Picture

2022 is all about committing to the co-creator relationship with WordPress users.

1. Drive adoption of the new WordPress editor – Following WordPress 5.9, our focus will be driving user adoption by making full site editing (and its tools) easy to find and use.
   1. For the CMS – Get high quality feedback, ensure actionable tickets come from the feedback with collaboration from design as needed, and ship code that solves our users’ most pressing needs.
      1. Invite more users and extenders to participate in the FSE Outreach program (10-12 calls for testing).
      2. Host regular design-driven user testing (one test a week).
   2. For the Community – Share our knowledge and resources in a way that inspires and motivates our users to action.
      1. Invite more users and extenders to augment their skills through LearnWP.
      2. Turn routine support issues into new evergreen content (10-15 pieces of canonical content using Learn, Docs, 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/, etc).
      3. Translate high impact user-facing content across Rosetta sites (15-20 locales).
      4. Host audience-specific WordPress events (10-12 by common language, interest, or profession).
   3. For the Ecosystem – Prioritize full site editing tools and content across the ecosystem for all users.
      1. Highlight 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. themes and plugins in the directories.
      2. Provide tools/training to learn how to build block themes.
      3. Improve the block developer experience.
2. Support open source alternatives for all site-building necessities – Provide access to open source elements needed to get a site up and running.
   1. For the CMS
      1. Update new user onboarding flow to match modern standards.
      2. Integrate Openverse into wp-admin.
      3. Integrate Photo Directory submissions into wp-admin.
      4. Pattern creator
   2. For the Community
      1. Ship LearnWP learning opportunities (1 workshop/week, 6 courses/year)
      2. Increase the number of social learning spaces (4 SLSs/week)
      3. Block theme contribution drive (500 block themes in the repo).
   3. For the Ecosystem
      1. Update the theme previewer to support block themes.
      2. Update the content & design across WP.org.
      3. Update Polyglots tools to Improve the translation experience.
      4. Create a developer-focused communications site.
3. Open Source stewards: Iterate on WordPress’ open source methodologies to guide and sustain long term success for WordPress as well as the overall open source community that we are part of.
   1. For All
      1. 5ftF program expansion
      2. Recruitment of future leaders in the community
      3. Onboarding of current leaders in the community
      4. Upstream contributions to other OS projects (PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php., JS, Matrix, or the like)
      5. WordPress Project maintenance
      6. Ancillary programs
4. Bonus: Preparations for WordPress’ 20th birthday

How can you help?

As I mentioned above, I know that our code isn’t the only measure of our success. If you already know what sort of contribution you’d like to make, you can check out this list of teams (with links to their community sites) and team reps. If you’re not yet sure, here are the areas that each team falls into:

• Development, Technology, Code: CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress./Editor, Mobile, CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress./Tide, Security, Performance
• Design, Product, UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it./UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing.: Design, Accessibility, Test, Triage
• Community, Extending WP, Education: Community, Themes, Plugins, Polyglots, Training
• Contributor Experience: MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress., Docs, Hosting, Privacy
• Communications: Marketing, Support, WPTV

A Note on Specialized Groups

A couple of coordinated efforts provide essential support to the progress of multiple teams.

• Triage: The triage effort happens across multiple teams and has two purposes. One purpose is to make sure tickets are sorted and have all the elements needed for someone to work on them. The second purpose is to determine priority. Not everyone has the information to set priority, but anyone can help sort and replicate reported bugs!
• Test: The testing effort also happens across multiple teams and has multiple purposes. One purpose is to validate bugs, bug fixes, and new features before they go to users. The second purpose is to bring continuous high quality feedback throughout the entire release cycle. A lot of that coordination happens on make.wordpress.org/test, but there are also calls to test during various points of the release process in the Core channel.

#planning #goals