As cherry blossoms appear and lambs Spring in the field next to my studio, it feels firmly like Spring is here. This month saw another opportunity to contribute and a WordPress release. I was occupied with the release for the first few weeks. However, once that was done, I started on the following areas of contribution I had identified for the month.
Aside from the small thing for the 6.8 release, this month’s key part was having two backlog management sessions. My goal is to do this once a week for the next month, but the start of this came this month, including working out some formats of replies and approaches to closing.
Areas of contribution
Last month, I set out my contribution plans, and here are the ones I achieved in review:
- 6.8 release design lead: It was a pleasure to be involved in a release again.
- Extensibility for the editor: I helped unblock the contribution there and had several discussions and triage sessions to uncover the current state. I spent some time deep diving into what was and wasn’t possible to extend in the current interface within Template browsing and Stylebook.
- Backlog management: I made some plans and had solid triage and closing sessions this month. I focused on the core editor ‘stale’ and core trac ‘close’ queues:
- Closed: 42 issues and tickets across GitHub and Trac.
- Managed: > 14 in addition to those above (relabelled or moved on in some form).
- Moved numerous editor tickets into the close that were already reported or needed to be upstream.
Upcoming plans for contribution
I have some pretty clear goals set now that 6.8 is out. They are as follows:
- Extensibility for the editor: This work is ongoing, but my current focus is driving specific tickets and continuing the triage to clear the project board.
- Backlog management: I will have weekly sessions to increase the rate, focusing on ‘stale’ and ‘close’ to start, then moving out from there. My goal is to double, if not more, this month’s stats.
- Papercuts: I didn’t get much time this month for that with the release. I plan on at least a few issues to balance out the triage, picking up easing and bug fixes already identified as priorities.
In addition, if time I want to also pick up from last month the following:
- Look at if the design experiments plugin could come back again as something to use for testing.
- Any canonical plugins that need product, frontend or design. As these start to be worked on, I will begin to see who needs what and where I can be helpful.
- Review the state of community themes and that repo.
- Work on easier ways of reporting how many issues and tickets are managed through backlog management. It would be nice to have collaborative reports even.
WCEU is also rapidly approaching, and my goals for that are as follows:
- Attend contribution day focusing on the core editor table.
- Look at getting a plan for backlog management for the core editor in person and project boards.
- See where roadmaps can be made more transparent by surfacing projects and features. The goal is that people can work on the essentials to ship in-point releases or line up for canonical plugins.
Sponsors this month
I now have three company sponsors: BigScoots, Greyd and Kinsta. I also have four sponsors through GitHub – Aaron Jorbin, Tim Nash, Jeffrey Paul and Felipe Santos. To everyone who sponsored me and helped get me sponsorship, thank you.
Want to sponsor me? You can go through GitHub or also get in touch.
There is always sponsorship, of course, that is volunteered, and I’ll do as much as possible whilst still keeping things flowing – let’s get contributing!