Tag: contribute

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Work With WordPress Not On WordPress

“Working with WordPress” and “Working on WordPress” may seem synonymous but the philosophy of each phrase will definitely affect the code you share and support going forward.

When you work with something, it becomes a partnership, a collaboration, a team effort and more often than not an ongoing relationship; while working on something is more like getting it done and moving on … like fixing a car.

All of the major functionalities of most any application, plugin, theme idea can be found in WordPress core code already, the key is in the creative implementation of that code.

Obviously you may need to add some custom code to accomplish building your idea or adjust some specific functionality to be applied differently but that is also the basis behind using the various API and hooks readily available in WordPress. You just need to extend where needed and fine tune the rest. It’s WordPress … anything is possible!

It’s all there for the … taking. Yes, you can take the code and use it as you see fit, just remember to give credit where credit is due and provide the proper attributions.

Not sure where to find something, or even if it exists? Try these developer references:

Maybe you just need a nudge in the right direction? Have you tried any of the numerous Slack channels where many WordPress community members share their time and thoughts (not to mention ongoing development conversations)?

Stay in touch with what is happening with WordPress development, too. Keeping up with new functionality and corrections to core will only benefit you in the long-run. It might even spark an idea using some new functionality being added to core.

As you continue to improve your own WordPress projects, especially with a community of thousands contributing back to it, you will most likely need to build less and less on WordPress while moving to building more and more with WordPress. You may even be one of those contributors that makes life easier for another WordPress developer.

Why work on something, some might even say re-inventing the wheel, when you can simply get behind the wheel and start driving with WordPress from the start … or work with WordPress and help others get the start they may need to bring their awesome ideas to life.

I will always advocate working with WordPress, what are your thoughts?

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You Could Be WPTRT

How do I get involved with the WordPress Theme Review Team (WPTRT)?
It’s really rather simple. Just follow these steps below.

  1. Subscribe to the Theme Review mailing list.
  2. Make sure you have a WordPress.org username.
  3. Send a message to the mailing list expressing your interest in helping out with Theme Reviews.
  4. A current WPTRT member will contact you (generally via a reply to your message). If you are ready they will assign you a ticket in the Theme trac and you will be on your way to becoming a Theme reviewer.

Of course, there is more to reviewing Themes as part of the WPTRT, the above is just how you get started.

Let’s have a quick look through these steps.

  1. Subscribing to the mailing list gets you involved in one of the main discussion areas of the WPTRT. It is one of the places we discuss ideas about various items that may, or may not, affect how the Theme Review guidelines are interpreted or used when reviewing a submitted Theme.
  2. Your WordPress username is a common focal point for all of your WordPress activities. If you are a Theme author, or a plugin developer, you already have one and this is the one that will be used on the Theme trac system. It could also be the username you log into the WordPress Support forums with although current members generally use their “developer” username.
  3. We need to know you are interested, although you can also log into the #wordpress-themes channel on freenode.net and chat via IRC with one of the theme reviewers as well. The mailing list is generally the more common approach.
  4. We assign the first few tickets to new reviewers just to help with the learning process. Once you have shown you understand the process we’ll make a few changes behind the scenes and you will be able to assign yourself your own tickets in trac and carry on reviewing Themes.

We expect that sometime during this process you have thoroughly familiarized yourself with the Theme Review guidelines as well as a few other relevant pages in the codex. Here are the links to the pages I always recommend reading:

NB: Just in case, I would suggest reading these pages at least once a week, although generally our intent is to not have them change very often.

Also, you should create yourself a test-bed installation; import the Theme Unit Test data (from the link above); and, install the following few very useful plugins:

I also suggest installing a plugin that writes viewable text to ‘wp_footer()‘ for testing as well, if you do not have your own preference you are welcome to download and install my BNS Login plugin.

Now, you might be asking why would I want to join the WPTRT?
There are many reasons and many ways to get involved with the WordPress community. This one will offer you: insight into how the Theme submission process works; the opportunity to influence positive change in the Theme Review guidelines; a wealth of new ideas and code possibilities; and, interactions with some of the best and the brightest current Theme authors involved with the WordPress Themes repository.

N.B.: The above “guest” post was written after a suggestion from Jeff Chandler during the 106th episode of the WordPress Weekly podcast; and was posted by Jeff at the Weblog Tools Collection site.
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WordPress Ideas Help

Jane Wells posted on the WordPress Development Updates blog this post recognizing the initial efforts of Jeff Chandler and suggesting the community in general can add to this effort. The idea: clean up the old outdated threads in the WordPress Ideas section to improve its functionality. From Jane’s post:

If you want to help (this is an easy way to contribute for those who aren’t coders), go to http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/view/considering and start looking at threads. Start from the pages at the back of the list, and on each one you can help resolve:

  • Read the thread.
  • If you don’t know if something exists as a plugin or has been implemented, use Google.
  • Add a comment to the thread indicating the status/outcome. If you found an appropriate plugin, link to it.
  • Add the “modlook” tag.
  • Bask in the glow of knowing that this small task is part of a big job, and is much appreciated by the community.

The sooner we get the old ideas cleared out of there, the sooner it can become more useful as a discussion tool (and clear up Trac to focus on accepted features and enhancements). So thanks, Jeffr0, and anyone else who steps up to join us in this task!
Jane Wells

I will be adding this to my daily to-do list of WordPress related items, will you?