fidzu : wordpress

WordPress contributors are working on getting support for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) into core. A new PWA feature plugin is now available on WordPress.org, spearheaded by the teams at XWP, Google, and Automattic.

Progressive Web Apps are applications that run on the web but provide a speedy app-like experience inside a mobile browser. Google describes them as having the following three qualities:

• Reliable - Load instantly and never show the downasaur, even in uncertain network conditions
• Fast - Respond quickly to user interactions with silky smooth animations and no janky scrolling
• Engaging - Feel like a natural app on the device, with an immersive user experience

The plugin adds support for technologies that PWAs require, including Service Workers, a Web App Manifest, and HTTPS. These technologies support functions like background syncing, offline content, push notifications, mobile home screen icon, and other PWA features.

XWP CTO Weston Ruter said the purpose of the feature plugin is to curate PWA capabilities for proposed merging into core. The idea is to merge them piece by piece. Core tickets are already in process for adding support for web app manifests and support for service workers, as well as bringing improvements to HTTPS.

"This PWA feature plugin is intended to equip and facilitate other plugins which implement PWA features," Ruter said. "It's not intended to negate any existing plugins with these features, but rather to allow such plugins (and themes) to work together seamlessly and expand upon them."

The first release of the plugin on WordPress.org (v0.1.0) adds support for web app manifests and initial support for allowing theme and plugin developers to register scripts for service workers via wp_register_service_worker(). It also includes an API for detecting whether HTTPS is available.

"A next step for service workers in the PWA feature plugin is to integrate Workbox to provide a declarative WordPress PHP abstraction for managing the caching strategies for routes, with support for detecting conflicts," Ruter said. Anyone who is interested to contribute to PWA support for WordPress can check out the discussions and plugin on GitHub.

In the past, app-like experiences were only available for sites and services that had their own native mobile apps, but native apps can be costly to develop and maintain. Progressive web apps use the greater web as their platform and are quick to spin up. They make content easier to access on mobile even without an internet connection. It's also far easier to tap a home screen icon than to enter a URL on mobile, and this makes users more likely to engage with their favorite sites.

PWA Stats is a site that features case studies of progressive web apps that have significantly increased performance, engagement, and conversion. A few compelling examples include:

• Tinder cut load times from 11.91 seconds to 4.69 seconds with their new PWA. The PWA is 90% smaller than Tinder's native Android app. User engagement is up across the board on the PWA.
• Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort increased its Black Friday conversion rate by 53% due to its progressive web app's speed and notifications.
• Trivago saw an increase of 150% for people who add its PWA to the home screen. Increased engagement led to a 97% increase in clickouts to hotel offers. Users who go offline while browsing can continue to access the site and 67% continue to browse the site when they come back online.
• Pinterest rebuilt their mobile site as a PWA and core engagements increased by 60%. They also saw a 44% increase in user-generated ad revenue and time spent on the site has increased by 40%.

PWA support in WordPress will enable the plugin and theme ecosystems to work together in providing site owners with more engaging ways to connect with their visitors. Once the market starts building on core support, site owners should soon be able to offer better experiences for mobile users without having to become experts in the technologies that power progressive web apps.

17 Jul 2018 12:16am GMT

To keep everyone aware of big projects and efforts across WordPress contributor teams, I've reached out to each team's listed representatives. I asked each of them to share their Top Priority (and when they hope for it to be completed), as well as their biggest Wins and Worries. Have questions? I've included a link to each team's site in the headings.

Accessibility

• Contacted: @rianrietveld, @joedolson, @afercia
• Priority: Working to make sure that Gutenberg is reasonably accessible prior to merge. ETA is before 5.0
• Struggle: Lack of developers and accessibility experts to help test and code the milestone issues. The team is doing outreach to help solve this problem.
• Big Win: Interest from companies like The Paciello Group and Tenon.io to help out with Gutenberg code review and testing tools.

CLI

• Contacted: @danielbachhuber, @schlessera
• Priority: Very first global Hack Day is coming up July 20. Version 2.0.0 is still in progress (new ETA is end of July).
• Struggle: The team continues to need new contributors. The current team is tiny but tough.
• Big Win: WP-CLI is currently one of the project's four main focuses, as mentioned in the Summer Update at WordCamp Europe.

Community

• Contacted: @francina, @hlashbrooke
• Priority: Focusing on smoothing out the processes in our community management by building up our team of volunteers and establishing what tools we need to keep things running well. ETA is ongoing.
• Struggle: Our two biggest struggles at the moment are tracking what we need to get done, and making final decisions on things. There is current work on the tools available to assist with tracking progress.
• Big Win: After making a concerted effort to get more contributors on the Community Team, we now have a much larger group of volunteers working as deputies and WordCamp mentors

Core

• Contacted: @jeffpaul
• Priority: Following the WordCamp Europe summer update (and the companion post here), the team is getting Gutenberg (the new WordPress editing experience) into a strong state for the 5.0 release. Potential ETA as soon as August.
• Struggle: Coordinating momentum and direction as we start seeing more contributors offering their time. Still working our way through open issues. The team is starting multiple bug scrubs each week to work through these more quickly and transparently.
• Big Win: Had a sizable release in 4.9.6 which featured major updates around privacy tools and functionality in Core.

Design

• Contacted: @melchoyce, @karmatosed, @boemedia, @joshuawold, @mizejewski
• Priority: Better on-boarding of new contributors, especially creating better documentation. ETA is end of July.
• Struggle: It's hard to identify reasonably small tasks for first-time contributors.
• Big Win: The team is much more organized now which has helped clear out the design backlog, bring in new contributors, and also keep current contributors coming back. Bonus: Joshua Wold will co-lead the upcoming release.

Documentation

• Contacted: @kenshino
  
• Priority: Opening up the work on HelpHub to new contributors and easing the onboarding process. No ETA.
  
• Struggle: Some blockers with making sure the code and database can be ready to launch on https://wordpress.org/support/
  
• Big Win: The first phase of HelpHub creation is complete, which means content updates (current info, more readable, easier discovery), internal search, design improvements, and REST API endpoints.

Hosting

• Contacted: @mikeschroder, @jadonn
• Priority: Preparing hosts for supporting Gutenberg, especially support questions they're likely to see when the "Try Gutenberg" callout is released. ETA July 31st, then before WordPress 5.0
  
• Struggle: Most contributions are still made a by a small team of volunteers. Seeing a few more people join, but progress is slow.
  
• Big Win: New team members and hosting companies have joined the #hosting-community team and have started contributing.

Marketing

• Contacted: @bridgetwillard
• Priority: Continuing to write and publish case studies from the community. ETA is ongoing.
• Struggle: No current team struggles.
• Big Win: Wrote and designed a short Contributor Day onboarding card. It was used at Contributor Day at WCEU and onboarding time went down to 1 hour instead of 3 hours.

Meta (WordPress.org Site)

• Contacted: @tellyworth, @coffee2code
• Priority: Reducing manual work around the contributor space (theme review, GDPR/privacy, plugin review). ETA for small wins is end of quarter, larger efforts after that.
• Struggle: Maintaining momentum on tickets. There are also some discussions about updating the ticket management process across teams that use the Meta trac system.
• Big Win: The new About page launched and has been translated across most locale sites.

Mobile

• Contacted: @elibud
• Priority: Getting Gutenberg in the mobile applications. ETA is late December.
• Struggle: Consuming the Gutenberg source in the ReactNative app directly. More info can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2018/07/09/next-steps-for-gutenberg-mobile/
• Big Win: The WordPress mobile applications now fully support right-to-left languages and are compliant with the latest standards for accessibility.

Plugins

• Contacted: @ipstenu
• Priority: Clearing ~8,000 unused plugins from the queues. Likely ETA is September.
  
• Struggles: Had to triage a lot of false claims around plugins offering GDPR compliance.
• Big Win: Released 4.9.6 and updated expectations with plugin authors. Huge thanks to the Core Privacy team for their hard work on this.

Polyglots

• Contacted: @petya, @ocean90, @nao, @chantalc, @deconf, @casiepa
• Priority: Keep WordPress releases translated to 100% and then concentrate on the top 100 plugins and themes. ETA is ongoing.
  
• Struggle: Getting new PTEs fast enough, and complex tools/systems. Overall, the volume of strings awaiting approval.

Support

• Contacted: @clorith
• Priority: Getting ready for the Gutenberg callout (it got pushed last quarter). Needing a better presence on the official support forums, and outreach for that is underway, ETA end of July.
  
• Struggle: Keeping contributors participating post-contributor days/drives. Considering the creation of a dedicated post-contributor day survey to get some insight here.
• Big Win: The increase in international liaisons joining for weekly meetings, helping bring the wider support community together.

Theme Review

• Contacted: @acosmin, @rabmalin, @thinkupthemes, @williampatton
• Priority: Building a better Theme Check/Sniffer in order to automate most of the checks done right now by reviewers. ETA late 2018, early 2019.
• Struggle: Bringing in new contributors to the team.
• Big Win: Trusted Authors program

Tide

• Contacted: @valendesigns (but usually @jeffpaul)
• Priority: Storing PHPCompatibilty results inside the WordPress.org API and building a UI to display those results, an endpoint to request an audit is required for this work to continue.
• Struggle: Development has dramatically slowed down while team members are on leave or pulled into internal client work.
• Big Win: Migration to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) from Amazon Web Services (AWS) is complete and the audit servers have all been rewritten in Go. (This allows us to be faster with greater capacity and less cost.)

Training

• Contacted: @bethsoderberg, @juliek
• Priority: Lesson plan production. ETA is ongoing.
• Struggle: The workflow is a little complex, so recruiting and training enough contributors to keep the process moving is a struggle.
• Big Win: WordCamp Europe's Contributor Day was very productive. New tools/workflow are in place and two team representatives were there to lead and help.

Interested in updates from the first quarter of this year? You can find those here: https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2018/04/24/quarterly-updates-q1-2018/

16 Jul 2018 2:50pm GMT

photo credit: WCEU Photography Team

WordCamp Europe closed out a successful event in Belgrade with 2,085 attendees from 76 countries. More than 800 others joined via livestream for a total audience of nearly 3,000 participants. A record-setting Contributor Day kicked off the event, followed by two days of conference sessions and workshops from 65 speakers.

A team of 54 organizers and 170 volunteers made WCEU possible, with 10 different organizing teams. Last year WordCamp Europe added a PR team and this year the event introduced an Attendee Services team to fill gaps in the organization. The operation ran smoothly, despite the conference being spread out across many rooms in the sprawling Sava Centar venue.

WordCamp Europe's PWA (progressive web app) was the highlight of the new features and services introduced this year. It was a central hub for keeping attendees informed on what was happening at any given moment. Organizers also added new amenities, including a site health check station, Community Room, and info booth to handle attendee questions.

Gutenberg and Progressive web apps were the hot topics of this year's WordCamp Europe. In addition to Matt Mullenweg unveiling a roadmap for Gutenberg's inclusion in core, a strong contingent of designers and engineers from the team were present to educate attendees on Gutenberg's architecture and the vision behind the project.

Many attendees were visiting Serbia for the first time and Belgrade delivered with its renowned hospitality and captivating nightlife. Attendees found no shortage of delicious options for food and drink.

Berlin to Host WordCamp Europe 2019

At the conclusion of the event, organizers announced Berlin as the next host city for WordCamp Europe, June 20-22, 2019. The conference, Contributor Day, and the after party will all be held at the Estrel Hotel and Congress Center, a venue with a capacity for 12,000 attendees.

Organizers said that Berlin's accessibility, reasonable prices, and strong community were the final deciding factors for its selection as the next host city.

Behind the Scenes at WordCamp Europe 2018 with Lead Organizers Jenny Beaumont and Milan Ivanović

Hosting a volunteer-led event at this scale requires an enormous amount of effort from the organizers, especially those taking the lead for multiple years in a row. There is nearly no down time as the team is already planning for the next edition of the camp.

I sat down with lead organizers Jenny Beaumont, the global lead, and Milan Ivanović, the local lead, to get a look behind the scenes at what is involved in bringing WordCamp Europe to thousands of WordPress enthusiasts in one weekend. We interviewed them at the conclusion of WCEU 2017 in Paris. Over the past two years these leaders have developed a strong working relationship built on encouraging each other and keeping a positive outlook for their teams.

Beaumont said she was hesitant going into a third year for this role, as Paris was the project that captured her heart and motivation. After going through this event as the global lead, she said she discovered what she could bring to the role and how she could serve the team.

"The event has been their project," Beaumont said. "My project this year has been the team, how I can really concentrate on this team, on its growth, on its health, on its sustainability. That's what I learned in Paris - the importance of making sure that was part of the project."

Beaumont and Ivanović explained the difference between the global and local lead roles, a structure that works well for flagship WordCamps.

"The local team is really about making it a good experience in this new place that everybody is going to be discovering for the first time," Beaumont said. "It's the hard work, it's the logistics, it's all of the small details, everything that's behind the scenes that make it so you walk in as an attendee and it just feels like you're at home. They do all of that hard work. The global role, as it has evolved, is really about being that sort of team care-giver, making sure that there is good communication happening, making sure the team is healthy and happy and motivated. Because you've got to get up and do this every day while you're also doing your day job, and that takes a lot."

WordCamp Europe had a strong impact on the local community with more than 400 Serbian attendees and 20 Serbian organizers. They worked to build awareness of WordPress in the local community ahead of the event.

"We used this event to grow our community and used our community to promote the event," Ivanović said. "When we announced last year in Paris that Belgrade is going to be next, at that time we had five or six cities for WordPress meetups. Currently, we are in 14 cities and starting the 15th in July. WordCamp Europe and the conference itself was such a win for the whole community."

Ivanović will return next year as the global lead for WCEU in Berlin. Beaumont is taking some time off after three years organizing WordCamp Paris and WordCamp Europe, but she hopes to return in some capacity in the future. They are working together with their team to publish a WordCamp Europe handbook that covers some of the important specifics of the event for upcoming teams. Check out the full interview in the video below.

14 Jul 2018 12:24am GMT