I ‘ve got some rather exciting news to share today which some of you will already know about from a few tweets last Thursday. I’ve just officially joined the core WordPress UI Team – so I’ll be helping to design and develop the WordPress platform on an ongoing basis.
How it All Started
Since the end of 2009 myself and @Japh have been working away coming up with ideas for building a business on WordPress. Themes, plugins, you know, that sort of stuff. Our main ambition with this endeavour was (and still is) to be different. I mean good-different, not Kanye-West-different.
I thought it would be foolish to even consider building said business without being actively aware of what was going on with the platform, so I subscribed to some WordPress mailing lists (yes, they still have those) to stay up to date. One of these lists is for beta testers, people who run installations of the next version of WordPress prior to release and report back with any bugs. It is on this mailing list, where the story really begins.
At the beginning of 2010, whilst checking out one of the very earliest copies of WordPress 3.0, I came across a small bug. It was a small warning message that shouldn’t have been there. Pouncing on the opportunity to finally contribute something back to the platform I eagerly sent off this bug to the testers mailing list and, as it turned out, to the attention of the seemingly omnipresent entity that is Andrew Nacin (one of the WordPress core developers).
Now, I don’t want to write an autobiography here, so we’re going to have to skip a few chapters to keep things coherent. To cut a long story short: Nacin guided me through the process to properly report a bug, have someone reproduce it, fix it, re-test, and so on until it was completely eradicated. He was extremely friendly and welcoming throughout this process (despite some truly n00by questions from yours truly) and he got me introduced to the WordPress bug tracking system, which is basically a forum where each thread is a conversation and code snippets between developers who are working on WordPress.
Any developers reading that last paragraph may have shed a few tears at the painfully oversimplified metaphor used there, but the less techy among you I’m sure will appreciate it.
Getting Involved
Once I’d been introduced to this new world I started meeting people (notably @kimparsell and @andrea_r) who were happy to chat to me about WordPress bugs and other issues well outside of the one which I originally reported. It was at this point that I came across a ticket (or thread, to continue with the forum metaphor) proposing the use of tabs on the themes screen of the WordPress admin interface. I thought the idea was good but I didn’t like the way it had been designed – so I chimed in with my, in retrospect, rather convoluted opinion. Unfortunately however, I was told that the decision had been made and the tabs would not be changed.
I understood this response, but I wanted to figure out how I could contribute on issues such as this one from the start – and so I discovered and joined the WordPress UI Group.
Now if you want to know what I’ve done with the UI Group in detail and how designing for WordPress works, then you should definitely check out the post which I authored for Web Designer Depot a couple of weeks ago:
Designing for Over Twenty Million Users: WordPress 3.0
If, however, you can’t be bothered – then here’s a very short summary. The WordPress UI Group is composed of people who volunteer their design, front end development, and user experience skills to improve and develop the WordPress platform on an ongoing basis. What that consists of is a weekly meeting (over IRC text chat), and as many tasks that are decided on in these meetings as you feel like trying out.
I did a lot of these tasks.
Fast Forward
Now, just over 3 months down the line, I’ve gotten fairly heavily involved and I’ve worked on a whole host of different areas for the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0. I’ve met an amazing group of people who work tirelessly to keep on building and improving the platform which runs 8.5% of the entire internet, and I really do mean tirelessly. You genuinely can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into a release by people who are doing it entirely for love, not money.
In the mean time I’ve written some big posts about my involvement in WordPress, such as the one for Web Designer Depot – and we’ve also interviewed Mr Andrew Nacin (the catalyst for all of this) on the ExplicitWeb Podcast to talk in detail about WordPress and the core community.
I was driving on the motorway one week when my phone beeped with the reminder to tell me WordPress UI time was in 5 minutes. Did I blow it off? Nope, I pulled over, found an IRC client for iPhone, bought it, installed it, and got into the meeting right on time. I haven’t missed a single one yet. It’s addictive.
Good-addictive, not heroine-addictive.
Joining The WordPress UI Team Officially
Side-note: Did you just skim-read down to this heading? If so, shame on you. Go back up to the top and start again. This isn’t some cheap design blog with pretty pictures, wishy-washy content, and overpriced ads. If you didn’t, I do beg your pardon and please carry on.
So here’s what this entire post has been leading up to: Last week Jane Wells (the head of UX for WordPress) asked me if I would like a more extensive and official role in the WordPress UI Team.
I gleefully accepted!
You can read Jane’s announcement on the subject, but in summary this means I will be taking a more active and direct role in the UI Team. It’ll be a huge honour to lead the weekly UI meetings, project managing the UI aspects of the WordPress projects for Google’s Summer of Code, as well as of course continuing to do a lot of hands-on work for WordPress in general.
It’s been a roller coaster ride so far and it’s only just begun.
Closing Notes
At the start of this article I mentioned that I originally got involved in the core WordPress community because I was taking steps to start a business based on WordPress. Doing this has totally changed my perspective on what, why, when and how to do this.
Interestingly, not a single other person from any premium WordPress themes company is actively involved in the core WordPress development community – which really blows me away.
Finally, if you’re interested in getting involved in any way, get in touch. The UI Group was only formed at the start of this year, it’s a very small group of people at the moment and we always welcome newcomers!
Hi John.
Thats really shocking about none of the premium theme companies getting involved in the development of WordPress. You would have thought seeing as they run a company to benefit the users of WordPress that this is the kind of thing they would want to be involved in as it would be a pretty good USP but i guess some people only care about the pound signs and not improving the internet for everyone. Ah well such is the world we live in….
Congratulations and I hope it all goes well for you!
Kris
You certainly got me inspired, reading some of your comments on other blogs too got me thinking too. Big respect and congrats to you though. Until I saw you talking/tweeting/dribbbling about it I wasn’t even fully aware that WordPress was so open for contribution, and after doing some reading I must say it’s all quite impressive. You’ve honestly got me thinking and inspired, so I’ll check it our further.
Love the use of “Not Kanye-West-different” – I feel like this should be a more common term. Once again nice one John!
Thanks for the kind words guys, really appreciate you both taking the time to comment! :)
It really blows my mind too that those with a vested interest in seeing WP succeed and flourish aren’t involved with the improvement of the software. Congrats on your appointment and I expect great things out of you! :)
“Interestingly, not a single other person from any premium themes company is actively involved in the core WordPress development community – which really blows me away.”
I’m from the premium themes community and am one of the developers added to the commit team this year. In 3.0, my main focus was on merging the WordPress & WordPress MU codebases.
That is true. You’re involved with StudioPress/Genesis right?
Maybe John meant more specifically the UI team, but its still a very small number, don’t you think?
I had a feeling there might be an exception to the rule when I wrote that, however I was referring specifically to WordPress rather than BuddyPress – of course I’m well aware of the contributions that yourself and Andrea make to the core :)
Every BuddyPress theme is a fully functional WordPress theme with additional functionality to support BuddyPress.
I’m sure you understand the principle of what I was saying. Clearly I wasn’t in any way attempting to discredit yourself or your company as you are not only a core contributor, but a core comitter as well.
I consider you to be a core contributer first and foremost, which is why I didn’t have you in mind when I made that statement!
No contributions to core? What, then, was WooThemes’ Menu contribution all about?
Or do you mean commercial devs that have core commit access? Because, yes, then it’s true.
Hi Doug, I meant exactly what I said, which is that none of them are actively involved. WooThemes did not develop menus for the core, Jane approached them and asked if they could be used – this is a very different scenario alltogether. By “actively involved” I mean people who attend the weekly meetings and regularly submit patches, tickets, and requests.
My thoughts exactly. WooThemes code was donated and then reworked to bring it up to snuff with the rest of the project. And while there was some initial work by WooThemes when the transition happened it was my understanding that the rest of the core team took over at some point and WooThemes hasn’t been active on it very much sense. I could be wrong.
Understood. Here’s a question, though: what is the value proposition for, say, StudioPress to devote an employee or three to contributing to core? Most of their work goes towards getting paid to make themes that run on top of Core. This results in occasional bug reports, etc., but there’s little guarantee of actual returns on investment (at least from a business standpoint) simply because, even by dedicating an employee to the effort, your contributions could very well be passed over by the rest of the project.
There are folks, such as yourself and Ron, that have a passion for the platform and just happen to see the value in contributing, but it doesn’t really surprise me that others haven’t taken the leap.
When you’re devoted to solving a problem, you are also devoted to the problem’s continuing existence so that your product can continue to solve it. Health Care is a big example, but can be extended to this example quite easily. Indeed, this is why most enterprise software is so complex. Its complexity ensures that on top of the licensing fees, high consulting rates can also be charged for installation and integration.
There is a discussion of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation in here somewhere, as well.
Eric summed it up pretty nicely, but put it this way: If everyone took the attitude which you described in your comment, then WordPress wouldn’t exist. WordPress relies on OpenSource contributors, and yes, surprise! – there’s no immediate financial gain from that. Keep in mind though, that if WordPress didn’t exist, then premium themes companies by their very nature wouldn’t be able to exist either. Their entire business model relies on the fact that the WordPress platform continues to be developed and used by millions of people.
John,
Quite humbled by your post — thank you for the kind words. Glad you’ve gotten hooked just as I have, and keep up the great work!
Nacin
John,
Congratulations to you. I am proud and excited for what you will be doing. I look forward to your contributions. Best of luck!
Ed
I’m already seeing contributions in the SVN commits from John :)
LMAO, I totally skipped down to the heading. And then felt so bad I had to tell you :(
Congratulations on your hard work paying off. It makes life worth living don’t it?
What I love is that I know that you’re gonna make WordPress even more awesome that it already is, and that’s really exciting!
*Removes lips from John’s arse*
Welcome, and nice work on 3.0!
Thanks Mark :)
Congratulations !
we look forward your nice work.