Excited to be at the first WordCamp Norway! Yay! \n
I’m Hanni, as you may have noticed. I’m the Happiness Lead at Automattic. I live mostly in the south of france, love to run, am very hyeperactive and exceeedingly sleep deprived. \n
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Here are some ways to contact me :)\n
I wanted to start the day with a quick talk about the wonderfully diverse WordPress community\n
In which there truly is a place for a contribution from each and every one of us, regardless of our strengths and weaknesses. \n
I know that all sounds a bit cheesy, and we’ve not even had anything to drink yet, in fact, it’s not even lunchtime. \n\nWhat’s this got to do with you? With us? Well, with all of us starting the day together, no matter the track we may be here to see, I though it’d be good to show how each of us can contribute to WordPress, whether we code, translate, write, or just blog.\n\nWe’re going to go through this rather quickly, to give something of a broad overview. \n
Here are the things we’re going to cover. If any of these sound like something they interest you, but you’re confused at the end, come and find me at the Happiness bar. \n
So, let’s start with words. \n
So, let’s start with learning.\n
These first few things you can get into at home, \n
What do I mean by this? I mean blog posts, the inline help within wordpress, the many books and guides out there... and of coursee\n
The Codex is something of a WordPress encyclopedia. It’s our centralised documentation, something of an online manual if you will The beautiful thing is that it’s an open wiki, so anyone can contribute.\n
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If learning by reading isn’t your thing, no worries\n
If you’re a visual kind of person, you might want to head over to WordPress.tv. \nThere are two main sections, How-Tos, and WordCamp TV. They are pretty self explanatory, the first being a collection of tutorials and how-to videos, some produced by the indomiable Michael Pick, others contributed by members of the WordPress community just like you and me. \nWordCamp TV is part of an endeavor to create an archive the presentaitons at WordCamps all over the world so that everyone can benefit from them, not just those able to attend on the day itself. There are some gems in there, and if anything, it’s worth putting aside a few hours and watching. \n\n\n
So, we’ve started learning about WP, we’ve seen the documentation and wordpress.tv. \n
So, let’s start with words. \n
The most basic of which is blogging your discovery, tutorial, or perhaps something you figure out and can’t find any information about. This is great, because the next person who gets stuck on the same problem, or is trying to do what you just did will be able to google and fidn yoru blog post. Win win! OK, so, what next? \n
Perhaps you have a flair for clear, ordered explanations, you have excellent writing skills, or maybe you’re just a good copy-editor and can tidy up the writing of others. Fabulous! Then we need you. \n
WordPress is always moving, so the codex and other documentaion needs to keep up too, and this is quite the task. \n\nThere are actually codex pages which have been translted into upwards of 30 languages and there’s always a need for more hands on deck, so if writing’s your thing, but perhaps you don’t feel quite so confident in English - don’t panic! We need you! \n
Back to WordPress.Tv again, and whilst this may not strictly be words, you can always yoload your own how to.\n\n
This is how I got started, the WordPress.org support forums. They are a busy place, in the 13+ forums, there have been over 2.5 million posts, I beleive.\n
Here they are. it’s a busy place, you’ll aways find someone looking for help, or a question to answer. There are a bunch of really dedicated helpful volunteers you’ll see around regularly. You could be the next one of those :)\n
Well, it’s all very well popping in and answering a question, but it’s super exciting if you can do it again\n
and again! \n
Admittedly, sometimes, people are a little frustrating so the next thing is to keep to being smiley all of the time. EVEN IF YOUR TYPING IT A LITTLE BIT LIKE THIS. \n
You guys don’t have a forum yet.... \n\n
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If you enjoying helping people, answering questions in the forum, and it’s whetted your appettie, then perhaps you’d consider joining \n
We have the main WordPress IRC channel, which whilst not a support forum directly is a good place to go for discussion in a more immediate fashion, you’ll also find discission of theme and plkugin development here, and some more code Qs\n
Here are the details, it’s on Freenode. So! If you can handle real-time interactions, and you’re still not satiated, you could go one step further. \nIf you’re pretty good at going outside, at remembering to leave the house (which I’ll admit I sometimes forget), then you’re in luck\n
There are many ways in which you can help spread the word \n
One such way is through WordPress meetups! The WordPress community is so large, but we’re everywhere, and the chances are there is a wordpress user, developer, or fan right next to you!\n
Many WordPress meetup groups, like you guys, use meetup.com.\n\nThe great thing about these is that it doesn’t matter if you’re 2 or 20, what counts is getting together to help each other out, to meet likeminded people, to share your epxeriences, frustrations, winnings. \n\n
The next step, is to share something with your meetup group. Perhaps you’ve just launched a particularly interesting WordPress site, maybe you just released your first theme, or, maybe you’ve just set up your first blog and in the process you learned some prety neat things. Talk about it! Share it with your group. We’re all still learning, and you never know - you’ll probably have something to teach others! \n
Co-incidentally, Jane Wells, of the core team, is on a bit of a meetup kick at the moment. She’s written an excellent post about her decision to found a couple of meetup groups local to her, and thourgh that she’s hoping to write a guide to the process to help folks who’d liek to start their own. \n
Once you’ve conquered the meetup, next thing you know, you’ll find yourself at a... \n
You’ll find yourself at, or even organising a WordCamp! Hello! \n\nI was talking to Scott about this - it’s pretty huge that you guys have gone from first Meetup, to WordCamp in ten months. WordCamps have come a long way since the first in 2006, there are even two others this weekend - in Victoria, BC. Birmingham Alabama, USA. \n\n\n
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\n\nNAp! WordCamps and meetups are all very well, but, what do you do when it’s over? \n
If that doesn’t float your boat, and you happen to be multilingual...\n
You can try your hand at translating WordPress core, a theme, or plugin. WordPress is currently available in 40 plus active languages through WordPress.org subsites, much like the two Norwegian sites: \n
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So, how is this done? \n
\n\nGlotPress is an OpenSource online collaboration tool, started by Nikolay, a WordPress contributor and Automattician. \n\nThe translations which feature in all these localised versions of WordPress are powered by GlotPress, via translate.wordpress.org. \n\n\n\n
Here it is! \n\nThere’s a guide linked there. \n
We use GlotPress over at WordPress.com too, to provide community driven translations into over 100 languages.\n
You can even roll your own GlotPress, and host it yourself to translate solicit translations for your plugin or theme. You can follow GlotPress over at blog.glotpress.org :) \n
Which is what Yoast does :)\n\nThis is because the tools we use to help build WordPress are opensource too - the IRCBOT, mark’s github..\n
The main thing is that you can head over to translate.wordpress.org, or translate.wordpress.com and dive straight in; \nWhilst WordPress core is fully translated into both NN and BN, I had a look at WordPress.com the other day and it turns out\n
Co-ocindeatlly DOTCOM\n\n14625 total 9285 not translated\n
14625 total 8490 not translated\n\nSo, looks like WordPress.com could do with your help - I’d try, but, um, as you’ve seen, my Norwegian, is, uh, a little off. \n
SO! We’ve helped people in the forums, we’ve met people, we’ve been to a WordCamp, we’ve written some documentation, we’ve translated WordPress, or a plugin... Golly. What next? \n
So, we’ve started learning about WP, now we want to go a bit deeper.\n
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Gosh, let’s take a breath again.\n
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You can start to take more of an active rôle in following WP development\n
This is the p2 for the core development team, they put up notes for for their weekly meetings, dsicuss bigger chantges and more recently have talked about a big change in the way they are going to drive development.\n
Weekly meetings at 21:00UTC, in #wordpress.dev\n
Weekly meetings at 21:00UTC, in #wordpress.dev. This is something of a product team meeting, focused around the technical issues or scheduling problems affecting those working on the current release cycle at that time, so it’s not a free for all, but it’s definitely something to watch if you want to see what’s going on with the development cycle.\n\n
You have an idea! (this really needs um, something to say?)\n
You can take it to the ideas forum\n
The wp-hackers list is meant for people interested in extending WordPress either through plugins or improvements to the core code.\nSaid another way, "the wp-hackers list is a place for advanced development discussion (hacking) and WordPress core discussion. This means it's not well suited for general development discussion and support questions primarily because a certain level of working knowledge of WordPress and PHP is assumed."\n
If you’ve still not found the niche, there’s more. \n
There are a bunch of groups who solicit feedback, and work on more niche areas of development. It's part of the upcoming WordPress.org redesign, organized around verbs. So everything about making WordPress will be here. Code (wpdevel.wordpress.com, currently), UI, Accessibility, Architecture, Themes.\n
There are a bunch of groups who solicit feedback,http://make.wordpress.org/ui/ Weekly UI Chat (Tuesdays @ 18:00 UTC). They work on UI issues, and are working on writing a styleguide. http://dotorgstyleguide.wordpress.com/\n
The theme review team help to make sure that the themes available in the theme directory meet the guideline and so are safe for you to use on your blog \n\nCode Quality:\nThemes must not generate any WordPress deprecated-function notices, PHP errors, warnings, or notices, HTML/CSS validation errors, or JavaScript errors.\nFunctionality:\nWhether implementing required, recommended, or optional functionality, Themes are required to support proper WordPress core implementation of all included functionality.\nTemplate Tags and Hooks:\nThemes are required to implement WordPress template tags and hooks properly.\nWordPress-Generated CSS Classes:\nThemes are required to support WordPress-generated CSS classes.\nTheme Template Files:\nThemes are required to utilize Theme template files properly.\nTheme Settings and Data Security:\nThemes are required to implement Theme settings properly, and to ensure proper data security\nLicensing:\nThemes are required to be licensed fully under a GPL-compatible license.\nTheme Name:\nThemes are required to use appropriate Theme Names.\nCredit Links:\nThemes are recommended to use credit links. If used, credit links are required to be appropriate.\nTheme Documentation:\nThemes are required to provide sufficient documentation to explain the use of any custom features or options.\nTheme Unit Tests:\nThemes are required to meet all requirements in the Theme Unit Tests\nTheme Obsolescence:\nThemes are required to be kept current once accepted into the Theme Repository\n\n
This is the home of the accessibility working group working group dedicated to improving accessibility in core WordPress and related projects (plugins/themes/etc).\n
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If you like living on the edge a little, or if you find it very rewarding to try to break things (alas I do this without really trying..)\n
You can try out the betas\n
There’s a really neat way to do this, a plugin which will notify you when there is a beta available to test. \n\n\n
You can download it from the repository. It’s a good idea to keep betas away from your production WordPress installs, just in case. It’s fun to keep a separate WordPress install just to play around, or, indeed, for testing purposes. So, you’re playing with a WordPress beta, ambling along, and\n
Uhohes! \n\nYou find a bug.\n
So, the first thing to do is make sure it is indeed a bug, that is to say that the behavior you’re seeing is indeed being caused by a core file, and not a plugin, for example.\n\nYou may need some help verifying this, but\n
Where do you go? Who can you ask?\n\nThere are, thankfully, a number of places you can go with your information.\n
Firstly there’s the alpha/beta support forum \n
which is over at WordPress.org \n
There’s the WP-testers list for discussion around the beta releases \n
here it is. So you can search the archives to see if there’s been discussion of the bug\n
\nTrac is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool, that is used by WordPress and related projects, so it’s ultimately the place you want to go once you’ve confirm\n
Here it is\n
Search for the bug, and if it’s not there, you’re going to want to report it. \n
To report a bug you’ll want to file a trac ticket. This may sound a little daunting, but it’s actually just all about being as clear as possible, and given the person who may be coming along to read it, try to reproduce, or even fix it all the information or tools they need to do so.. There is a great guide up on the codex reporting bug page I linked to. If\n
Descriptive title. Easily reproducible steps to encounter the issue. WP version. Env.\nThinking, expected outcome.\n\nI did, I saw, I expected \n\nscreenshot\n
anyone is wanting to explore trac, or file their first ticket and is stuck don’t hesitate to come and find me in the Happiness Bar and we’ll go through one together. In the meantime, you can find some great info on the codex. \n
dun dun duuuh\n
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If you’ve come this far, chances are you’ve got some code to share, as you’ll have been doing some cool stuff. \n
Maybe you modify your blog’s appearance, maybe you create an entirely new theme and hey, it’s quite pretty actually\n
Maybe you modify your blog’s appearance, maybe you create an entirely new theme and hey, it’s quite pretty actually At this stage, you’ve made a WordPress theme! And there are some other WordPress users out there who would like to use it too!Whadoyoudo? \n
Well, firstly you need to head to the codex and make sure your theme meets the guidenes around quality, safety.. \n
Share it. \n
How? The WordPress theme directory, which is up on WordPress.org. The aforementioned theme review teams\n
Perhaps themes, aren’t quite your thing, but the backend is, and you’ve got this fantastic little code snippet you use to do something neat\n
like this one to do something when a user uploads a video\n
Blog about it! Others might like it too! Whadoyoudo? Blog it! There are a bunch of neat plugins around to help display and share snippets. And, you never know.. \n
Or, you can share it on Github, as you can see from this peice of code from Evan solomon which acutally makes the WodrdPress site almost “unlisted” if you will, an such users need to know the exact post or page URLs in order to see them. So, it’s a simpler way to \n
And, maybe in as in the case of Evan’s snippet above, which is effectively a plugin, you deice others might find this useful so..\n
Fabulous! You can share that too. \n
Just like the theme directory, there’s the plugin repository up on WordPress.org. You can have your plugin in there too. \n
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But, what if you’re more into fixing things, you can submit a patch :) \n
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You can patch an existing bug, or perhaps a bug you’ve found yourself. \n
But, what if you’re more into fixing things, you can submit a patch :) For this, you can find an open ticket by heading over to trac and looking at the needs patch report, which is number 16\n\nI'd just to tell them to go with what interests them or what they think will have the most impact. Everyone has limited time, so they're more likely to follow through if they do that.\n
install WordPress trunk (From terminal you can do this from the directory you want to use: svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk)\nif you already have a working copy of trunk, make sure you update it (from terminal in your wp directoy: svn up)\nmake your changes to fix the bug\ncreate a diff file from the document root and make sure only to include the relevant changes (from terminal in your wp directory you can do this: svn diff > some-bug.diff, if you want to just include specific files because you have other changes you can do svn diff wp-load.php wp-includes/class-wp.php > some-bug.diff)\n
Good practice is to name your diff file by the ticket number, or if it’s not the first patch,say 14325.2.diff\n
add your comment to explain how you fixed it\n
So, what about when you fix a bug you’re reporting at the same time\n
create new ticket field.. \n
write a descriptive title/description/way to reproduce\nfor your ticket, pick an appropriate component (e.g. database) and type (e.g. bug)\ninstall WordPress trunk (From terminal you can do this from the directory you want to use: svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk)\nif you already have a working copy of trunk, make sure you update it (from terminal in your wp directoy: svn up)\nmake your changes to fix the bug\ncreate a diff file from the document root and make sure only to include the relevant changes (from terminal in your wp directory you can do this: svn diff > some-bug.diff, if you want to just include specific files because you have other changes you can do svn diff wp-load.php wp-includes/class-wp.php > some-bug.diff)\nwhen you create your ticket you can check the box that says you have files to upload, then upload your diff file (saved in your wp directory) to the ticket\ncheck for typos, details, etc, then post!\n
mryiad of ways that I have not mentioned or missed. that’s the beauty of wordpress, of open source, and of community.\n\n
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And remember, that without you guys, without the thousands of different contributions, WordPress wouldn’t be here, and wouldn’t be getting better every single day. \n
