Image Isotta Peira 8:59 am on July 29, 2026  

WordPress Credits Student Feedback: the program works, now for quality and retention

WPCredits invites students to contribute to WordPress, through translation, design, code, photography, documentation and more, and to earn academic credit for it. This is the first comprehensive analysis of student feedback since the program launched. It covers 242 students who responded between December 2025, when our first cohort graduated, and the end of June 2026. We will repeat it twice a year.

TL;DR
What we found
– The program works.
– Resources and multiple handbooks are overwhelming.
– Choosing a contribution is the least clear moment.
– The 50-hour track builds skills, but not community ties.
– We don’t ask students why they leave.
What we do next
– A school kit so students find all relevant resources in one place.
– Tailored tracks by field of study.
– Better preparation and support for teachers acting as mentors.
– Reposition the 50-hour course as certification training.
– Better forms, including a first exit survey.

How we gather this feedback, and who answered

Students on the 150-hour course answer three short surveys: just after they choose their contribution team and project, mid-way through, and as they complete the program. Students on the shorter 50-hour course answer only the final survey. Across these we ask about their overall experience, the support they receive from their mentor, what they are contributing, and the skills they are gaining.

Who answered shapes how these results should be read. 83% of respondents study Technology & Engineering; the remaining 17% are spread across Design & Creative Media, Languages, Business, and Humanities. The base is also geographically concentrated: LATAM (51%) and EMEA (44%) account for 95% of all responses, with only small numbers from the US/Canada and APAC.

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Finding 1: the experience dips at the start, then recovers

Across the program we ask students how easy it was to get started, how clearly they could choose a project, and how satisfied, confident, and impactful they feel as they contribute. Getting started scores the lowest of all, and choosing a project is the least clear. Both climb once students are underway, project satisfaction and confidence are high, and perceived impact is strong. The shape of the journey is a hard first step followed by a steady rise, which tells us the problem is the entry point, not the program.

Worth keeping in perspective: our weakest moment still scores 4 out of 5. Getting started is where we have the most to gain, and we will improve it, but for a brand new program with no precedent to follow in open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., that is a solid base to build from.

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Finding 2: the challenges students flag all point to one need

When we group the challenges students flag, we find one consistent trend. Unclear instructions, too few examples and videos, no clear structure, scattered resources, and uncertainty about which team to join are all versions of one need: a clearer, more relevant place to begin. English only materials also came up, though only among a small minority: 8% of respondents overall, rising to 17% of students in Spain. Worth addressing, but not a leading concern. Note, too, that no question asks about language directly.

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Finding 3: what to protect

Students are just as clear about what works. Concrete skills, learning by doing, a responsive mentor, real contributions, and a welcoming community are named again and again. These are the assets the program should guard while it fixes the entry point.

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Finding 4: success depends on the conditions around the students

The friction students hit is similar everywhere, but how quickly they get past it varies widely, and that difference comes from the conditions around them, not the students themselves. Two variables matter most. The first is mentorship: whether a school’s own teachers act as mentors, and how connected they are to the local WordPress community. The second is maturity: our first pilots exposed clear problems with onboarding, materials, and mentor readiness, and we built the fixes into the cohorts that followed, which is why our newer cohorts are moving faster than the first ones.

Finding 5: the 50-hour course delivers practice hours, not community retention

What keeps students contributing after they graduate is a sense of belonging, and belonging takes time: time with a mentor, and time inside the community.

The 50-hour course is a condensed track built around a single guided contribution project. Its students report lower perceived impact (4.09 against 4.34) and are meaningfully less likely to keep contributing after the program (69% against 82%). Keep the first number in perspective: 4.09 out of 5 is still a good score, and these students clearly valued what they did. The gap that matters here is retention. My read is that the format is simply too short for belonging to form. We cannot prove that from the data, since we never ask students about belonging, but it fits what the rest of the feedback tells us about how community ties are built.

That is not a flaw in the track: the 50-hour course already meets institutions’ need for completed practice hours, and it lets students build skills relevant to their field. What it cannot do is create in 50 hours the community ties the full program builds over 150. We have an opportunity to pivot it into a dedicated training track for the WordPress certification and micro-credential exams, giving these students a more tangible outcome that plays to the format’s strengths, while community retention stays the job of the full program.

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What we do next

Create one centralized, relevant starting place. Instead of sending students into the full team handbooks to hunt for what applies to them, give them a curated home with the resources for their specific path.

Offer a portfolio of tailored tracks instead of one size fits all. Rather than the full tour of the entire WordPress ecosystem, give students the experience relevant to what they study, a track for developers, designers, translators, photographers, law students, and so on. We do not build from scratch. We keep what works on the WPCredits structure, trim what is not relevant, and turn one general program into a set of experiences shaped to each department.

Invest further in preparing and supporting the teachers who act as mentors. We strengthened this training once after the first pilots, and it needs to go further: we suspect mentorship contributes most to turning a graduate into a retained contributor.

Reposition the 50-hour course as training for the WordPress certification and micro-credential exams. Rather than asking a condensed track to build community ties, aim it at an outcome it can reach.

We are also improving the surveys themselves. We never ask students about belonging, or about language, and we learn nothing from the students who leave. A short exit survey is the first gap we will close.

Method

The analysis covers feedback collected from December 2025 to June 2026 from 242 students who genuinely took part. We excluded 15 who dropped out, did not move forward, or failed, which changes none of the numbers. One limit worth stating plainly: we found no evidence of a contribution team or mentor effect on impact or retention. We suspect mentorship does influence retention, but we have no data to prove it. We will start surveying students on this.

Want to help improve the student experience in the WordPress Ecosystem? Join the conversation in the #wpcredits channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/! If you want to bring the program to the institution you work for, please register here. If your company wants to support the program, please check out our sponsorship opportunities and fill out the interest form.

Props to the following people for reviewing this post: @celigaroe

Image karenalma 9:36 pm on July 9, 2026
Tags: gatherpress   

Meetup.com -> GatherPress

Wanted to give everyone a heads up on where we’re at with moving away from Meetup.com. It’s something the community has talked about for years, and it comes at a cost of about $250,000 a year to the WordPress Community SupportWordPress Community Support A public benefit corporation and a subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation, established in 2016. (WPCSWordPress Community Support A public benefit corporation and a subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation, established in 2016.), for a platform that doesn’t fully serve our needs.

Some of you may be aware, but for those that aren’t: we’re building around GatherPress, the open-source, community-built event plugin. It’s made by the WordPress community for the WordPress community. The plan is to use GatherPress as the foundation and build the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ pieces on top, contributing improvements back to the GatherPress pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. where possible and giving direct feedback otherwise.

@annezazu is wrangling people to carry this project forward, with early work from @dd32, alongside @patricia70, @mauteri, and the @GatherPress contributor community. This is the direction, not a finished plan yet, and we’ll share specifics as scope and timeline firm up.

If you organize events or want to help shape this, we’d love your thoughts in the comments.

The GatherPress team is always looking for new contributors to join the project. No contribution is too small, and your contribution doesn’t have to be code. Join #gatherpress in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.

GatherPress will have a table at WCUS, so that is a great time to meet the team and join the project if you’re interested.

Image Isotta Peira 11:22 am on June 29, 2026  

WordPress Credits Updates

The first six months have been full of learnings and accomplishments for WP Credits, the program that brings students to contribute to WordPress as part of their academic journey, and I’d love to invite you all to pause and reflect on where we have landed. We ran two pilots and both taught us something worth sharing. The first tested an alternative mentorship model, where students would complete onboarding on their own and only then be matched with a mentor. It did not prove effective, and instead it confirmed what we had suspected: mentorship is one of the key ingredients of the program’s success. That is why we are launching a new mentorship structure, with regional leads coordinating the work of the mentors across their own regions. I deeply care about this shift, because belonging to a regional community gives students and mentors a real sense of place and shared context, while staying part of the global network keeps everyone connected to something bigger than their own corner of the map. The second pilot, a condensed 50-hour module, was a clear success, and we will run it again in July and August.

A few milestones worth sharing:

  • 20+ partnerships, and we are only halfway through the year 🎉. We have already met our 2026 goal of signing 20+ partnerships with schools worldwide. Reaching it this early came down to hard work and the strength of the program in equal measure. WP Credits fills a meaningful gap between classroom learning and the professional world, giving students real contributions they can stand behind and schools a concrete way to connect their teaching to industry practice, which is why so many institutions have been quick to come on board.
  • WCEU. At WCEU we saw tangible outcomes in a way that is hard to capture in a report. Students from the program volunteered at the event, key partners spoke on stage about their commitment and how much they believe in what we are building, and we are seeing graduates stay active in their local communities. That last point matters most to me, because it is the clearest sign that when we add human value to the contribution skill-building piece, students carry the experience with them rather than treating it as something they do once and leave behind.

None of this would have been possible without our local communities. Across countries and continents, contributors have championed WordPress Credits with the schools and institutions closest to them, adapting it to their own languages and contexts, opening doors we could never have reached from the outside, and standing by students once they joined. The program scales organically precisely because so many people have made it their own on the ground, and that grassroots energy is what turns a framework into a living, worldwide effort.

What comes next

Now that we have proven the program works and that it scales organically, it’s time to intentionally shift the focus for the next six months. We have hit our partnership goal, the pilots have validated the model, and graduates are staying and contributing on their own. This is exactly the moment to ease off the push for sheer growth and turn our attention to quality, so that we are ready for the much larger scale we expect in 2027 rather than scrambling to keep up with it. Growth stays on the table, just in a measured way: we now aim to reach 35 partnerships by the end of the year, with the new ones opening doors in countries and cities where we do not yet have a presence.

In other words, the second half of 2026 is about building strong foundations before the big jump, not about adding more numbers for the sake of it.

Quality, Retention & Foundations for Scale

Primary focus: deepen the program’s quality and durability while growth is still manageable.

  • Build a public dashboard that shows the growth and impact of the program, so the story we have been telling in updates becomes something anyone can see and trust.
  • Explore alternative forms of contribution to engage students, broadening what participation can look like beyond the current pathways.
  • Analyze student feedback systematically and use it to raise the quality of the program, both in the tools students use and in the processes they move through.
  • Ship a retention program for graduates, turning the alumni-to-contributor pipelines our mentors started informally earlier this year into something formal and supported.
  • Increase the sponsorship base to secure sponsorship for mentors, so the mentorship model rests on stable funding as we head into a larger 2027.
  • Grow with intention toward 35 partnerships by the end of the year. Growth is not the headline this half, but the partnerships we do add should reach new countries and cities, widening where WP Credits has a footprint rather than deepening only the places we already know.

Key outcome 

By the end of 2026, WordPress Credits is not just bigger, it is better. We will have clear, public evidence of our impact, a richer set of ways for students to contribute, a program shaped by what students actually tell us, a retention path that keeps graduates in the community, a sponsorship base that supports our mentors, and a footprint that reaches new countries and cities. That is the foundation we want under us before 2027.

Get involved by joining us on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ in the #wpcredits channel, and help the program grow by introducing us to schools or companies you know via our program page.

Props to the following people for reviewing this post: @celigaroe, @gomp, @webtechpooja, @francescodicandia, @naseem10, @roblesloaiza

Image Kel Santiago-Pilarski 9:38 am on June 22, 2026  

WordPress Contributor Dashboard: New Views, Custom Ladder, and More

The WordPress Contributor Dashboard now has new views and a major new feature: a customizable contributor ladder. Here’s what’s new and how to use it.

Contribution activity is scattered across forums, translations, events, and more, which makes it hard to see how contributors grow and engage with the project over time. The Contributor Dashboard pulls that activity together to show those patterns.

The pilot launched in March 2026, and the project has grown since based on community feedback. New to the dashboard? Start with the project handbook.

What’s New

The dashboard now has four views: Wrapped, Ladder, Cohorts, and About.

Wrapped

A quick snapshot of how the community showed up during any period, from the last 12 months to any year back to 2019. It shows total contributions and contributors, daily and per contributor averages, month by month trends, and a breakdown by contribution type (forum replies, translations, WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. attendance, courses, and more).

Ladder

The Ladder view shows contributor progression as a funnel, from all users down through Connect, Contribute, Engage, and Perform stages, with active and at risk counts per stage.

The big update is customization. What counts as contribution differs by team. A translation approved matters to Polyglots, while Support measures engagement differently. The default ladder is a starting point, not a fixed standard.

Anyone can use the Customize ladder button without logging in. Rename stages, reorder them, or adjust activity requirements and thresholds to match your team. Click Apply, and the URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org updates to encode your configuration. Share that URL, and anyone with the link sees the same custom view.

A Polyglots teamPolyglots Team Polyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/ member could build a ladder around translations. A Support team member could build one around forum replies. Same dashboard, tailored to whoever’s looking.

Cohorts

The Cohorts view groups contributors by registration month and tracks average cumulative contributions over time, helping spot patterns like how quickly new contributors engage or whether certain groups stick around longer. FilterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. by registration date range and activity type.

About

The About view explains how the dashboard works and its current limits. Coverage isn’t complete, CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress., GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/, and SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ aren’t fully integrated yet, so treat the numbers as a general signal, not a complete record. It also lists every contribution type currently in scope.

Get Involved

The WordPress Contributor Dashboard is open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. and community built. Project collaborators include @dd32, @felipevelzani, @francescodicandia, @kel-dc and @unintended8.

Have a feature idea or found a bug? Head to the GitHub repository: github.com/WordPress/wporg-contributor-dashboard
Or join the conversation in #contributor-dashboard on Slack.

Thanks to those who contributed feedback, issues and comments on GitHub, including @chaion07, @mosescursor @sumitsingh

Image Mary Hubbard 4:53 pm on May 7, 2026
Tags: community-slack-migration   

Welcome All Languages and Communities to Make WordPress Slack

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of chatter regarding how contributors connect and collaborate across the WordPress project.

One thing is clear: our global contributor network is incredibly strong, but much of that work happens across separate SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ instances and community hubs around the world. As Matt recently pointed out in “Let’s Slack Better,” that separation can make it harder for contributors to discover one another, share knowledge across locales, and connect more directly with the broader WordPress project.

At the same time, these spaces reflect years of local leadership, collaboration, and community building that continue to strengthen WordPress globally.

That’s why Make WordPress Slack is becoming more multilingual.

A more connected contributor network

Make WordPress Slack now has space for local WordPress communities to connect in their own languages, while also being part of the broader contributor ecosystem. This has been a long-standing request from many contributors, and it’s the right time to move it forward.

This effort includes bringing MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. communities, local and regional WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Slack spaces, and flagship event communities like WordCamp Europe, WordCamp US, and WordCamp Asia into Make Slack so collaboration around events, contribution, and community support can happen closer to the rest of the project.

Why this matters

There are several benefits to welcoming local communities into the Make WordPress Slack:

  • Centralizing contributor collaboration: Contributors will be able to connect in one shared space while still maintaining room for local-language discussions.
  • Improving cross-locale collaboration: Communities will have more visibility into what others are building, organizing, translating, and solving around the world.
  • Strengthening ties with global teams: It will be easier for contributors to engage with Make teams, share updates, and participate in project-wide initiatives.
  • Providing access to Slack Pro tools: Many local Slack workspaces operate on free plans, which means limited message history and fewer collaboration tools. Expanding multilingual participation in the Make WordPress Slack helps more communities benefit from Pro-level functionality.
  • Preserving knowledge and history: Important conversations, decisions, and community knowledge are too valuable to lose. A more unified space helps us better retain and access that history over time.

Building on the strength of local communities

To be clear, this effort is not about replacing the important work that happens in local communities today. Local organizers and contributors have built vibrant spaces that reflect their own needs, languages, and cultures. That work matters deeply.

Instead, this is about creating stronger bridges — making it easier for contributors from every language and locale to take part in the wider WordPress project without having to choose between local connection and global visibility.

Multilingual collaboration requires care, thoughtfulness, and shared responsibility. As this rolls out, the Community team will continue working with local leaders and contributors to make sure these spaces are welcoming, useful, and aligned with WordPress community expectations.

What’s next

Some of this work is already underway. WordCamp Asia and WordCamp US are now active inside Make Slack, with WordCamp Europe planning to transition for the 2027 season. @nukaga is leading the Japanese WordPress community’s transition into Make Slack, with support from @dd32 and @karenalma. Karen will share a practical guide on the Community P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org with next steps and details.

Message archives from legacy workspaces will be preserved through Google Drive.

For now, I want to recognize the many contributors who have asked for this over time and the local community leaders who have continued building connections across the project, even when our systems made that harder than it should have been.

WordPress is a global project, and our contributor spaces should reflect that.

Let’s connect in one place, support one another across languages and regions, and make it easier for every community to participate in shaping WordPress together. If you want to help with this effort, please let us know in the comments or join the #community-slack-migration channel in the Make WordPress Slack.

Welcome, 欢迎, स्वागत है, Bienvenidos, Bienvenue, Bem-vindos, Benvenuti…!




Props to @_dorsvenabili @karenalma for this post

#community-slack-migration

Image Velda 5:47 pm on April 23, 2026
Tags: core-program,   

Help us help others contribute to WordPress

If you’ve ever been part of a make team or helped at a Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/, we need your eyes and expertise to help our newest contributors.

In support of WP Credits and this year’s goals, a few of us have started building an on-ramp for our contributor pipeline: Pathway Guides for evergreen contributions, and a Good First Issues board for one-off tasks across the project. We’d like to officially launch at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe in June, and we need help leveling up before that.

“We’re tackling this now because there is a huge gap in showing up and contributing. We’ve not made it easy. We need to simplify things for folks so people can get to impactful contributions, quickly. This will lead us to folks sticking around, and hopefully being the next big thing in the project.” —Mary Hubbard

Any new contributor hits the same walls: onboarding info is scattered, pathways aren’t clear, messages go unanswered in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/, and good work sometimes stalls in review. Teams want help, but we’re losing people at the door. Hundreds of student contributors from WP Credits made this impossible to ignore. So let’s make this better for everyone.

Pathway Guides

We’ve identified several evergreen contribution patterns in WordPress. For each one, we’ve written a scannable guide that covers the steps involved and links to the right resources. This collection maps contribution opportunities across the project in one place.

How to help:

This project growing in a community-owned repository so every team can help. Guides map to handbooks rather than duplicate them, and feedback from guides flows back to teams for handbook improvements.

Good First Issues

Good first issues are specific one-off items that folks can pick up, finish, and close. They’ve always existed in our repos, but until now, they were hard to find and track. A new Good First Issues board automatically collects new and updated Good First Issues from repositories across the project. Since we can’t automatically import old issues, we need your help populating this board.

How to help:

  • Connect your repo if it’s not already listed in the README
  • Close or update any stale Good First Issues
  • Follow up on any GFIs awaiting reviews
  • Invite new contributors by using the Good First Issues tag and including context

Spread the Word

Tell your teams and meetups about this work. More eyes and more experiences will make this better. And if you can work with students directly, consider applying to become a WP Credits mentor.

The sooner we can get guides tested and issues cleaned up, and the healthier our Good First Issues are, the stronger this is at WCEU. PingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me (Velda) in #core-program with questions or ideas for how to move this forward. Thank you for your eyes, thoughts, and any time you can share.

Props @peiraisotta, @karenalma, @annezazu, and @karmatosed, and @4thhubbard for reviews, to the many who have reviewed individual guides, to @mosescursor and @fellyph for contributing to guides, and to @clk87, @marutim, and @kel-dc for getting this started with me.

#wpcontributors

Image Kel Santiago-Pilarski 9:08 am on March 4, 2026  

The Contributor Dashboard Pilot is Live: What’s Next?

Building on the initial project thread, the Contributor Dashboard pilot is now live, marking an important step toward creating a clearer view of how contributors join, participate, and grow across the WordPress project.

This post outlines proposed features for the next phase of the Contributor Dashboard pilot. We’re sharing these ideas early to gather feedback from the community before implementation begins.

Current Status

The pilot dashboard is finally ready: https://wpcontributordashboard.org/

The coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. functionality is in place:

  • Three-tier data architecture (Events → Profiles → Dashboard)
  • Contributor Ladder framework
  • Activity status tracking (active/warning/inactive)
  • CSV import system for contributor activity data

Development is happening in the public GitHub repository.
View the dashboard demo video here.

Contributors from multiple Make teams are developing the Contributor Dashboard pilot. Project collaborators include @felipevelzani, @unintended8, @francescodicandia, @dd32 and @kel-dc

Proposed Features

We’re proposing two features for the next phase. Feedback is welcome on both.

1. Team-Managed Personas

Each Make team can create its own contributor personas, with custom ladders and requirements that reflect how that team actually works.

Different teams contribute in different ways, one ladder doesn’t fit all. Team reps can define and manage these personas, and contributors can appear on multiple ladders based on their activity across teams.

Example use cases:

  • Polyglots can create language-specific personas for translation contributors.
  • Community can create personas for WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. or MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers.
  • Support can separate forum contributors from those seeking help.

2. Automated Engagement

Automatically recognize contributors when they reach key milestones.

Timely recognition improves retention and reinforces meaningful participation. When someone makes their first contribution, reaches a new ladder step, or stays consistently active, the system can trigger messages, props, or even swag (stickers, etc) from The Mercantile.

Recognition becomes built-in, not manual.

Feedback Requested

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these proposals. If we had to start with one of these two, which would provide the most value? Are any other things not considered that you think should be implemented and/or could bring a lot of value?

The overall goal is to create an engine focused on improving the contributor experience overall.

Please share any feedback by March 17, 2026. We plan to start implementing the new phase by this date.

Get Involved

If you’re interested in contributing to these features:

Image Mary Hubbard 6:41 pm on January 23, 2026  

Big Picture Goals for 2026

I’ve been here a little over a year now. In that time, I’ve seen what works, where things get stuck, and how much care and effort contributors bring to this project every day. As I shared during State of the Word, 2026 is about momentum. 

Momentum means building on what’s already working, being clearer about direction, and making it easier for people to participate and move forward. It means taking the energy that already exists in this community and turning it into progress that compounds.

This is my first time sharing big picture goals with the Make community. My aim is to be clear about priorities and direction, while keeping the door wide open for collaboration. WordPress works because contributors show up. 2026 is about making it easier for more people to do exactly that.

CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Development and WordPress 7.0

2026 will return to 3 releases a year coinciding with our events. With WordPress 7.0 coinciding with WordCamp Asia. 7.0 aims to offer a significant step into Phase 3: Collaboration, with real-time co-editing bringing Google Docs-style collaboration directly into the Editor. 

Efforts are underway to unlock powerful new workflows through the Abilities APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.-powered Command Palette and a standardized WP AI Client API, enabling plugins and hosts to integrate AI assistants in a provider-agnostic way.

Media handling will take a major leap forward in 7.0 with the graduation of client-side media processing into Core. Image resizing, compression, and format handling will increasingly happen directly in the browser, dramatically reducing server load while delivering faster, more reliable uploads for creators.

On the styling front, customization of mobile menus and responsive editing controls will finally give creators the ability to tailor layouts for different screen sizes and hide blocks by viewport, addressing a long-requested community need. The introduction of simplified pattern editing alongside new blocks like Tabs and Icon expands the creative toolkit available out of the box, making design more intuitive for a wider range of creators.

Together, these features represent a cohesive push toward a more collaborative, intelligent, and responsive WordPress experience.

[Get Involved with WordPress Core]

AI Everywhere, With Clear Guardrails and Benchmarks

WordPress will continue to invest in AI in a focused, intentional way. The goal is to make WordPress easier to use, easier to build with, and easier to contribute to, across the entire experience.

Guided by the AI building blocks, AI in WordPress will prioritize a few practical outcomes:

  • Helping people create, edit, and refine content where they already work.
  • Reducing friction in site building, configuration, and common workflows.
  • Supporting contributors and users with clearer guidance, context, and next steps.
  • Lowering the barrier to contribution by helping people find and complete meaningful work.

At the same time, the Core AI team will publish project-wide guidelines for AI usage within WordPress. These guidelines will focus on transparency, user control, data responsibility, and alignment with WordPress values. As AI becomes more embedded across the project, shared expectations matter, both for contributors and for the broader ecosystem.

[Read More from the Core AI Team]

Revamping Meetups

Meetups are the primary front door to the community. Let’s be more intentional about getting new people involved quickly.

As more contributors come in through initiatives like education programs, like Campus Connect and WordPress Credits, mentors should help them find a local meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.. Meetups are often the first place WordPress feels real. They are local, human, and reputable. Many WordCamps started as meetups, and that pathway still matters.

This year, we want to double down on meetups as places of active participation, not passive attendance. As AI tools become more common across the web, the need for shared learning increases. Meetups are where people can sit side by side, learn how these tools actually fit into WordPress workflows, and build confidence together. AI moves fast and we can develop better understanding, judgment, and together as a community.

That means prioritizing issue-focused sessions where people work together on real problems, hands-on learning tied to actual WordPress needs, and clear next steps that move people from meetup participation into contribution.

Meetups are where people build confidence, relationships, and momentum. When they work well, they turn curiosity into commitment. That is why they remain the primary front door to WordPress in 2026.

[Find a Meetup] | [Start a Meetup]

Community, Education, and the Contributor Pipeline

WordPress education programs are scaling quickly. WordPress Credits and WordPress Campus Connect have students arriving ready to participate and eager to contribute.

The project needs to be much clearer about where new contributors should go next and how they get started. Program managers can help connect student groups to Make teams, but that only works if each team is prepared to receive them.

I’d like to ask the Make teams to help make this possible by:

  • Maintaining clear onboarding materials and contribution paths.
  • Identifying approachable first issues or starter tasks.
  • Encouraging mentors who can help new contributors get oriented and moving.

Education is becoming one of WordPress’s strongest growth engines. It brings in new voices, fresh perspectives, and people eager to learn. As contribution continues to grow, the long-requested Contributor Dashboard will help make that work more visible. 

Over time, we want to move toward WordPress Foundation credentials that help standardize how WordPress skills are understood and communicated. These credentials would reflect what someone knows, what they can do, and how they work, giving employers a clearer signal when hiring for WordPress-related roles.

[Learn More About WordPress Education Programs]

Image Kel Santiago-Pilarski 5:34 am on December 20, 2025
Tags: contributor-dashboard   

Project Thread: Contributor Dashboard Pilot Project

A Contributor Dashboard Pilot is underway within the WordPress project, building on previous community work, and responding to long-standing requests from the community for better visibility into contributor journeys – how people join, participate, and grow across Make teams.

Contribution activity, especially non-code work is spread across many tools and systems. This makes it difficult to recognize contributors, understand engagement over time, and identify where support is needed.

Project Status

This project is currently in the active pilot development phase, led by @felipevelzani, @unintended8 and @kel-dc.

A limited multi-team pilot launch is planned for the end of February 2026. This project thread will be updated as work progresses.

What We’re Building

We’re building a Contributor Dashboard that maps contributor activity across teams into a shared Contributor Ladder framework:

Connect → Contribute → Engage → Perform → Lead

The ladder is behavior-based and describes patterns of participation over time. It does not rank contributors or imply that some contributions matter more than others. All contribution types and all contributors matter.

The goal is to help teams understand participation patterns, identify where support may be needed, and improve contributor experiences over time.

Why We’re Doing This

The project addresses several challenges across the project:

  • Contribution activity is scattered or not tracked
  • Non-code contributions often lack visibility
  • Teams have limited insight into how contributors progress over time
  • Cross-team onboarding, retention, and engagement patterns are difficult to assess

How We’ll Build the Pilot Dashboard

For the pilot, we’re taking a multi-team approach using a custom pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party. that maps existing contribution activity from WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ systems to ladder stages. This activity-based approach allows us to validate the model, identify data gaps, and gather cross-team insights without introducing new infrastructure or requirements for contributors.

Additional technical details and implementation notes are documented in the project’s public reference materials.  

Scope and Data

This pilot starts intentionally small and focuses on a limited set of existing contribution signals to test the dashboard and ladder approach. It does not aim to capture 100% of all contributions across Make teams.

The pilot does not replace or change Five for the Future, contributor recognition programs, or existing team processes, and it introduces no new requirements for contributors or Make teams.

Contributor privacy is a coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. consideration. The dashboard uses existing WordPress.org accounts and activity data, does not display personal or sensitive information, and does not create new contributor profiles.

Hosting

  • The pilot dashboard will be hosted on Pressable to support development, testing, and iteration during the pilot phase, with the intention of moving to WordPress.org infrastructure in a future phase.
  • The custom plugin is designed to work within existing WordPress.org MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. systems and data constraints, without introducing new external dependencies.

Timeline & Milestones

• January–February 2026: Implementation, testing, and review  

• End of February 2026: Pilot launch

How to Get Involved

We’re looking for contributors to help bring this pilot to life and welcome collaboration from across Make teams. For this pilot, we’re especially looking for contributors who can help with the following: 

  • Building and improving the dashboard and plugin
  • Reviewing and validating contribution signals and ladder mappings
  • Testing the dashboard experience and reviewing insights
  • Helping iterate on documentation and communication as the pilot evolves

If you’re interested in getting involved:

We welcome ideas and participation from all Make teams and contributors during the pilot and as the project evolves. Community input will help inform iteration and improvements, while the pilot proceeds unless material concerns are raised around privacy, security, or alignment with WordPress project values.

Props @4thhubbard for post review.

#contributor-dashboard

Image Jonathan Desrosiers 9:30 pm on December 18, 2025  

Proposal: 2026 Major Release Schedule

As 2025 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect and start thinking about what the major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. schedule for the 2026 calendar year will be. This year, the community came together and published two fantastic new major versions of WordPress to the world: 6.8 “Cecil” in April and 6.9 “Gene” in December.

While 2025 saw just two releases, the goal is to return to 3 major releases in 2026 (roughly one every 4 months).

This cadence has proven to effectively balance the many different factors at play within the global contributor community. The 4 month release cycle also:

  • Is long enough to build out quality new features for each release.
  • Is short enough to encourage shipping iteratively rather than pursuing perfect software (release early, release often).
  • Allows for 1-3 minor releases in between when following a 6-8 week timeline.

2026 Schedule (Proposed)

Using the ideal 4 month spacing between each release and making efforts to avoid major holidays, the final release dates for the next three releases fall within close proximity to a few prominent in-person WordPress events for 2026.

Following the successful live release of 6.9 during State of the Word earlier in December, the schedule below was created to continue trying out this model.

WordPress 7.0 – Thursday, April 9th

To start off the year, 7.0 is targeted for release during Contributor Day of WordCamp Asia. This creates some unique and exciting teaching opportunities! Newer contributors can observe the release process live to learn about how to contribute, or even participate in the release process, pitching in to help ship a version to WordPress to the world on their first day contributing.

Important dates

  • BetaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. 1: Thursday, February 19, 2026
  • RC1: Thursday, March 19, 2026

WordPress 7.1 – Wednesday, August 19th

This date for the public release of 7.1 coincides with the final day of WordCamp US. WCUS begins on a Sunday and ends on a Wednesday, which makes the final day more suitable for a release.

Important dates

  • Beta 1: Wednesday, July 1, 2026
  • RC1: Wednesday, July 29, 2026

WordPress 7.2 – December 8th, 9th, or 10th

To round out 2026, the community can celebrate the year’s accomplishments by releasing 7.2 on or around the annual State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/. address.

Important dates

  • Beta 1: October 20-22, 2026
  • RC1: November 17-19, 2026

A Few Notes

  • A call for volunteers interested in serving on the 7.0 Release Squad will be published the week of January 4th. If you are interested, please keep an eye on Make WordPress Core or subscribe for updates via email in the site’s sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme..
  • While the releases are lining up with in-person events, there is no requirement to travel in order to be on a release squad. All communication and coordination will continue to happen in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
  • A healthy balance between in-person and distributed contributors on release day is actually preferred. This helps ensure that any unexpected technical issues such as poor/unavailable WiFi do not result in a delayed release.
  • The spacing between the three flagship WordCamps in 2026 presents a strong opportunity to be intentional with release timing. With the proposed April 9th date for 7.0, moving straight into the 7.1 cycle would significantly compress the alpha period for feature work. The eight-week window between WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Asia & WordCamp Europe is an excellent fit for a minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality., which could help to deliver meaningful improvements with confidence and adequate breathing room.
  • During the 6.9 dry run and final release, contributors identified several opportunities to improve the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. handbook, especially the pages aimed at documenting the release practices and processes. The live release of 6.9 notably shined a light on areas that require clarification to ensure both in-person and distributed contributor groups can synchronously collaborate more transparently and effectively. These will be collected and shared in a separate Make Core post in January.
  • The WordPress 7.2 date is the least flexible of the three with earlier dates encroaching on the major global financial holidays of Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Giving Tuesday, and later dates getting too close to major religious holidays and end of year time off.
  • Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday have historically been considered unsuitable for a release to avoid spoiling weekends of those who use, build with, maintain, or support anyone with a WordPress site.

Discussion & Feedback

As always, the dates above are being proposed to allow contributors to begin planning for the rough timing of each of the 3 releases in 2026. There is some flexibility to make adjustments if necessary based on community feedback or factors that were not considered.

Do you have questions or thoughts about the release schedule as proposed? Ideas for ways to improve the Core Handbook or the release process itself? Or maybe a specific feature that you’re most looking forward to in 2026? Share them below and join the conversation.

Props @annezazu, @jorbin AND @4thhubbard for helping to narrow down possible dates and/or reviewing this post.