Community – WordPress Foundation

do_action Karnataka 2021: A report

WordPress Community members in the state of Karnataka, India organized a do_action charity hackathon from 07 to 15 August 2021. The event, which was supported by 12 volunteers, helped create websites for 3 non-profits. do_action Karnataka was held completely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it concluded symbolically on August 15th 2021 — the 75th Independence Day of India. This is the second do_action Hackathon in Karnataka — the first one being do_action Bengaluru, which was held in 2019.

Karnataka 2021

Efforts behind do_action Karnataka kicked off three months prior, in April 2021. N Suresha, Prem Tiwari, UC Riyaz, Sagar Vora, SR Venkatesh, and Yogesh Londhe (myself) from the WordPress Community of Karnataka, joined hands to support local non-profits by helping them build websites. The following non-profits signed up for our hackathon:

Luv Kush Foster Home: A foster home that aims to care for animals in need
Vridhi Foundation: which aims to support the education of underprivileged children
Peacespark Foundation: Welfare of women and children

12 volunteers immediately signed up to build websites for these non-profits. Not everyone could participate due to personal challenges related to COVID-19, but the teams worked hard to complete the work within the stipulated time. As a result of all that hard work, two non-profit sites were launched, and one is in the pipeline!

Peacespark Foundation: https://www.peacespark.org/

A screenshot of the Peacespark Foundation website created by the do_action Karnataka 2021 team.

The website of Peacespark Foundation was built by SR Venkatesh (project manager) and Hari Shanker (content writer). Venkatesh collected all the content and the photos from the non-profit, and he was also in constant communication with the team. He also single-handedly designed and developed the website for the team! Since the content manager volunteer could not join on time, Hari stepped in to prepare the content for the site. As a result, the site was ready well within the deadline, and the non-profit was happy and grateful!

Vridhi Foundation: https://vridhifoundation.org/:

A screenshot of the Vridhi Foundation website created by the do_action Karnataka 2021 team.

N Suresha (project manager), along with Hussna Hussain (content writer) and UC Riyaz (designer) built the website for Vridhi Foundation. Makarand Mane helped with the multilingual translation plugin, the theme, and the required templates. Prem Tiwari set up the site and provided technical support during the development, as well. Together, the team worked in synergy to burn the midnight oil and deliver the site for the non-profit, which formally launched the same in a function at their premises, on August 15th!

Representatives of the Vridhi Foundation at their website launch event on August 15, 2021

Since representatives of Luv Kush foster home were out of the country during the hackathon, they couldn’t collaborate to give the content and the photos for the website. Most of the technical groundwork for their website is done, and it will formally be launched once the non-profit provides content for the teams.

The hackathon would not be possible without the support of our kind sponsors who provided hosting, domain names, WordPress plugins/themes, and post hackathon support guarantees for all the non-profits. A big thanks to all of them! Our sponsors include:

Give WP – Who kindly sponsored a premium license for their flagship donation plugin
Yoast – Who kindly sponsored a premium license for their SEO plugin
Themeisle – Who provided premium licenses for their theme
WP Job Openings – Who provided a license for their job board plugin
WPGenius – Who provided a translation plugin, templates, and themes
Prem Tiwari – Who has offered post-hackathon tech support for non-profits
Bluehost India – Who provided hosting and domain names for all three non-profits

In addition to our sponsors, I wish to thank all stakeholders who helped make our event a grand success — especially our team of passionate volunteers and organizers who battled several personal challenges and a global pandemic to build an ever-lasting online presence for non-profits. Special thanks to the WordPress Foundation for supporting these do_action charity hackathons which empower non-profits across the globe, especially in these tough times.

As we were wrapping up the event on the final day of the hackathon, I asked our team of organizers and volunteers one question: “Despite all the challenges, would you do this again?” They all answered in one resounding voice: “YES!” 🙂

On behalf of the do_action Karnataka 2021 Organizing team,
Yogesh Londhe

Feeling inspired, already? You can use WordPress for social good, by organing a do_action charity hackathon in your own city! Check out our handbook for more information. It just takes five minutes to fill out the application form. So why wait? Apply now!

Charity Hackathons: 2018 Mid-year Report

At the end of 2017 we reported on how the recently introduced do_action charity hackathon event series had been going — by the end of the year, we had worked with four local communities to help them run their own do_action events, which was a great start to the program and one that we were looking to build on for 2018.

Participants at the Bristol do_action event

And build on it we did! With word getting out about the events and more people in the WordPress community finding out about them, we have already worked seven different communities who ran their own local do_action events — starting with Bristol in February, followed by Pune, Zurich, McAllen, Lagos, Cape Town, and finishing with Harare at the end of July. On top of that, a further three events are scheduled for the rest of the year — Port Harcourt, Stuttgart and Montreal — with another three in pre-planning that are not yet scheduled.

The do_action event in Zurich, Switzerland

At the seven events that have already taken place, there were a total of 220 participants from the local communities, and they built websites for 32 different non-profit organizations in their cities.

Some of the websites built at these events include:

All the participants at the McAllen, TX do_action event

Aside from these fantastic new websites, each organization also received enhanced social media profiles, newsletter integrations and easy to use donation platforms.

In order to make sure the organizations are able to work with their new websites, each event runs training sessions for the non-profits coaching them on how to use WordPress to manage their content and get the most our of their sites.

On the surface these events provide an improved online presence for each of the non-profit organizations, but they really do so much more than that. A website is essentially just code on a server, but what these organizations are getting is so much more than that — what they’re really getting is a platform that allows them to get on with the great work that they do without having to worry about the technical side of things.

With these new websites working for them, each of the non-profits can receive donations, attract volunteers, help more people, and further their work. It is a great gift that goes beyond a bit of programming and really touches the heart of what the founders of organizations like these set out to do in the first place.

As we look ahead to the rest of 2018 and beyond, we’re excited to see what our communities do for even more non-profit organizations and where the do_action program will grow from here.

Successful Open Source Workshops in Mombasa and Kanpur

In 2017, we set a goal of supporting the organizing of two “Introduction to Open Source” workshops in parts of the world with less participation in open source: Latin and South America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia*. This was accomplished with events in Mombasa, Kenya and Kanpur, India.

Mombasa

The Introduction to Open Source workshop in Mombasa was held on September 23, 2017 at Swahili Pot Hub. Though only 10 people signed up online, 38 people attended.

Daniel Joakim, lead organizer of the event, commented that this kind of workshop was a good fit for the Mombasa community because:

Currently, in Kenya and more specifically in Mombasa, the rate of unemployment is extremely high. Thousands of high school graduates normally don’t make it to the university or any higher learning institutions every passing year, so where do they end up? It is so sad, the majority get wasted on the beach and in the local clubs, this is a negative growth to the community.

Introducing open source software to these generations might be the solution to unemployment. The main agenda in mind for that event was to open up minds of the youths to seek other alternatives to tools that are readily available, and build amazing technology on top of these.

The WordPress Mombasa group was founded a little over a year ago, and currently has 168 members. Daniel said that organizing the workshop helped spread the word about the monthly user group, as well as educating the community about open source. Regarding the response of attendees to the information about open source shared in the workshop, Daniel said, “some of the attendees liked the fact of ease of use without the technical background of coding. Others found it to be handy in terms (of) speed in web design compared to other conventional methods we know.”

Kanpur

The WordPress Kanpur user group held its Introduction to Open Source workshop on November 11, 2017 at Allenhouse Institute of Technology. Online sign-ups were counted at 44, but event attendance was estimated at 150-200. Hardeep Asrani, one of the organizers of the event along with Himanshu Awasthi, said that the Kanpur community was interested in organizing this workshop because:

We love open-source and wanted to spread more knowledge about what open-source is, and why it’s important. We’ve been trying to take our workshops to colleges and schools to bring more awareness, and the [Introduction to] Open Source workshop allowed us to do this exactly.

In addition to presenting the material outlined in the lesson plans on WordPress.org, the Kanpur organizers included an open mic session. Hardeep commented that this allowed attendees to talk about anything they had coded and published open-source. “There was a guy who coded a pretty cool application using C++, and he was unsure how to release it, and open-source wasn’t his first choice, but we sat with him and explained him how it can benefit him and the community, and he decided to release it under GPL once it’s finished,” said Hardeep.

When asked about what part of the workshop particularly interested attendees, Hardeep responded, “When we talked about the freedom that open-source and Free Software gives you, a lot of people were interested, as well as when it came to privacy.”

Looking forward to more workshops in 2018

Based on the success of these two workshops, we hope to expand this program in the future, with a plan to sponsor at least four events in 2018. If you’re interested in organizing an event of this kind in your community, please keep an eye out for the next call for organizers, which will be posted early next year!

If you’re interested in helping the WordPress Foundation support open source education all over the world, please donate today!

*According to a recent study, the majority of Github participation in OSS projects is centered in North America and Western and Northern Europe.

Charity Hackathons in 2017

When we were looking forward to 2017, one of our goals was to work with local WordPress communities to organize charity hackathons in order to help non-profits benefit from open source tools. We made sure to achieve this goal by bringing the do_action event series into our program.

do_action is a charity hackathon that uses WordPress to uplift local communities by having volunteers come together to build websites for non-profit organizations.

Over the course of the year, we supported four local communities in running do_action events – Johannesburg, Beirut, Cape Town and Montreal. Each event was very successful, resulting in a total of 122 volunteers building WordPress sites for 17 different non-profits organizations — with the financial and logistical support from the WordPress Foundation to make it all possible.

Here is a small selection of the sites that were created at these hackathons:

Along with their websites, the non-profits also received invaluable WordPress training, making these events educational as well as charitable.

Looking back

We chatted to the organizers of the four events this year to get an idea of why they chose to do them, and how they feel about it all – they had some interesting insight into their events and the impact that the do_action events can have worldwide.

Beirut

The Beirut event was held on July 8 — they had 30 volunteers attending and helped 3 organizations get online with WordPress.

The primary organizer for the Beirut event, Marina Pape, had a great team working with her to make it happen. She said that “do_action seemed a good fit as the tech scene in Beirut is pretty alive and there are a lot of NGOs doing great stuff, but needing websites.”

The event “went smoothly, with a great group of people. It met the goal of rallying the WordPress community, creating connections between WordPress developers, designers, and marketing people.”

Marina and the Beirut community are interested in organizing another event in the do_action series for 2018.

Cape Town

This was Cape Town’s fourth annual do_action event — this year they held the event on July 15 and had 70 volunteers working to build new WordPress websites for 9 organizations.

I was the lead organizer for the Cape Town event and we put the event together because we wanted to open our local WordPress community to the broader community of Cape Town and using our web-building skills for this just made sense — we, as a WordPress community, have all the skills needed to build a great online presence for anyone. Couple that with the fact that there is a lot of need amongst Cape Town non-profits for this kind of thing, and an event like this becomes the logical next step.

Cape Town do_action participants working on the non-profits websites — Photo by Basil Parker: Instagram @basilparker

While it’s difficult to gauge the impact of a do_action event in its entirety, we’re confident that we met the goals for the day. The non-profits all left with great new websites along with training on how to use them effectively in order to grow their own causes — that’s the goal of this event.

Aside from the broader impact of the non-profits being more empowered to continue their good work, our WordPress community worked together in a way that we never have before — the impact of this on each of us as individuals and our community as a whole has been fantastic. We now have a greater awareness for organizations outside of our usual circle, and we have shown that we can use WordPress as a powerful tool to provide a dynamic platform for any non-profit organization.

Johannesburg

Johannesburg held their event on February 4; 10 volunteers attended and they helped 1 charity with a new WordPress website.

Seagyn Davis, who was the lead organizer for the Johannesburg event, said that they “always love giving towards good causes and do_action is a great initiative that allows them to use the great skills found in the WordPress community to do something really great for someone who really needs it.”

When we asked about the possibility of doing do_action again in 2018, he said that “the people that were involved really loved it and would do it again” — they are in the process of recruiting an organizing team for the next event already.

Montreal

Montreal hosted their event on October 14 — they had 28 volunteers coming together to build WordPress websites for 4 organizations.

The motivation behind the Sasha Endoh’s plans in leading the Montreal event, was that though her “business is focused on working with non-profit clients, there are many times when smaller organizations who do important work can’t quite afford to hire a professional team for their project.” She wanted to give back to the community “by giving support to these organizations and helping them have a greater impact.”

Montreal do_action participants working on the non-profits websites — Photo by Jer Clarke: jerclarke.org

When asked after the event about what impact she felt the hackathon had on the broader community of Montreal, Sasha commented that, by assisting the organizations that took part, “we hope to have helped to bring more cultural events, create a community space, connect and support folks who’ve been through the foster (care) and adoption system, and put a dent in the abandoned animal problem in our city.”

“It was amazing to see so many different folks come together for a good cause — the organizing team is eager to go to work on the next event!”

Looking ahead

The plan for 2018 is to continue promoting the do_action hackathons and supporting more communities that wish to organize them, around the world. There are already four events on the schedule for next year – three of which are in cities that have never hosted one before (Bristol, Pune and Zurich) along with one returning city (Cape Town) – and we fully expect at least another five communities to be organizing their own events over the course of the year too.

If you’d like to become an organizer for a local do_action event, you can find out more in the organizer’s handbook.

To help support this program, and the WordPress Foundation’s other efforts to educate people about open source and WordPress, you can donate here!

WordPress.tv in 2013: Video Selections

There’s always something new on WordPress.tv, from keynote presentations to behind-the-scenes looks at recent WordCamps all over the world. Here, we’ve compiled some great videos uploaded this year, primarily of first-time presenters at WordCamps. You’ll find an assortment of topics, so dive in — there’s something for everyone.

Kronda Adair — WordCamp Portland 2013
WordPress DevOps Power Hour
Kronda introduces Capistrano, what you can do with it, and what it takes to get started using it. She also provides starter resources to help you get going with automated deployments.

Nicole Rose Dion — WordCamp Reno-Tahoe 2013
Integrating Social Media Into WordPress
Nicole discusses how to make it easy for visitors to engage with your site socially, and how to make sure you’re tracking everything with Google Analytics.

Mark Tilly — WordCamp Reno-Tahoe 2013
How Content Curation Makes You a Better Writer
Mark covers the essentials of content curation and explains how, with regular practice, this type of content can enhance your site and improve your own writing.

Steph Yiu — WordCamp Providence 2013
VIP Tools for Writers and Editors
Steph’s presentation shares plugins an editorial team at a small publication can use to get the VIP treatment.

Kyle Unzicker — WordCamp Grand Rapids 2013
My First 414 Days as a Freelancer: A Retrospective
Kyle’s talk is a straightforward and candid retrospective of the first 414 days as a freelancer.

Alison Barrett — WordCamp Phoenix 2013
Advanced Actions and Filters
In this session, Alison talks about actions and filters, and covers some lesser-known yet useful WordPress hooks. She discusses creating and using your own hooks when making theme frameworks, parent themes, and plugins.

Michelle Weber — WordCamp Phoenix 2013
Zero to Hero: Customization, Content, and Community
Michelle offers an overview on getting started on WordPress.com, covering site customization, creating content, and becoming part of the blogging community.

Andrea Tetrault — WordCamp Winnipeg 2013
Ride. Write. Repeat.
Andrea talks about blogging on WordPress within her niche and the relentless use of social media.

Lindsay Branscombe — WordCamp Providence 2013
Navigating the Forest of E-commerce: A Guided Tour
Here, Lindsay talks about developing an e-commerce site.

Interested in upcoming WordCamps? Browse the WordCamp schedule. Don’t see your city on the list? Check out what it takes to become an organizer.

Making WordPress: How to Get Involved

WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world contributing to it — they work on code, provide support, do translations, organize events, write documentation, review plugins and themes, and are involved in many other projects.

Contributors are grouped into teams, and each team has a site on make.wordpress.org to communicate with others and share updates about what they’re working on. Want to get involved in the WordPress community but not sure how or where to start? Start your search at make.wordpress.org, where you can follow these official team blogs and WordPress developer resources.

WordPress contributor teams at a glance

Accessibility: This is the site for the WordPress accessibility group, dedicated to improving accessibility in core WordPress and related projects. To get in touch with the team, use the contact form. They’re also seeking WordPress users to join their Working Group — from assistive technology users and users with disabilities to developers who have experience in the field of web accessibility. You can tweet the team @WPAccessibility or join the weekly chat on Wednesday at 19:00 UTC in #wordpress-ui on Freenode.

Community: This blog of the WordPress community outreach team is dedicated to growing and strengthening the WordPress contributor community. The group strives to improve the contributor experience with projects like the welcome wagon, mentorship programs, and diversity initiatives. If you have a question about one of the team’s projects, use the Ask a Question form.

Core: Interested in what the core development team is working on? Here, follow the team’s progress with weekly meeting agendas, project schedules, and updates. To learn how to get involved with core, the core contributor handbook offers resources on contributing with testing and with code, best practices and coding standards, and tutorials and guides. You’re welcome to attend weekly developer chats to keep up with what’s happening (Wednesdays at 20:00 UTC in #wordpress-dev on Freenode), though the agenda is generally limited to discussion by active contributors.

Documentation: This site is the hub for all things documentation — the WordPress Codex (the online manual for WordPress), developer handbooks and other projects, and best practices. The team’s weekly chat is on Thursdays at 20:00 UTC in #wordpress-sfd.

Events: The events blog is the nerve center for events-related news and updates, including WordCamp and WordPress meetup announcements, WordPress.tv moderation discussions, and general event planning and guidelines. Join in on weekly chats in #wordpress-events (check the site’s sidebar for times). (You can also learn about organizing a WordCamp or getting involved with WordPress.tv, too.)

Meta: The meta blog is for announcements and resources by (and directed to) the developers of the WordPress.org website.

Mobile: This development blog for all the official WordPress apps (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry) compiles dev chat summaries and project updates. For developers itching to get involved, the best place to start is the mobile handbook, which gives instructions on how to get set up with any app environment. You can also join the team in #wordpress-mobile on Wednesdays at 8:00 am PST to learn about the status of mobile projects and how to contribute.

Polyglots: The polyglots site is for translators working on the latest releases of WordPress, and the blog to follow if you’re interested in contributing language support.

Plugins: If you’d like to keep up with announcements and read resources for WordPress plugin developers and the Plugin Directory, this P2 is for you!

Support: The Supporting Everything WordPress site is for people who wish to make WordPress Support the best it can be and to help improve support in the forums, codex, and IRC. (To clarify, this site is *not* the place to go if you seek support for your own site — the WordPress.org Forums are the best place for this!) The weekly chat is on Thursdays, 20:00 UTC, in #wordpress-sfd.

Themes: This is the space for the theme review team, who reviews and approves themes submitted to be included in the Themes Directory. The team also maintains theme review and testing guidelines and educates the theme developer community on best practices. If you’d like to dive in, check out the How to Join WPTRT page. If you have questions about theme review guidelines or best practices, ask on the mail-list.

UI: Here, you can follow along and chime in on project updates and big-picture discussions of the WordPress UI design and development team. Weekly UI chats are Tuesdays at 19:00 UTC in #wordpress-ui.

Updates: This blog is a space for the reps of the WordPress teams above to post weekly updates on project activity for the week, as well as to discuss notable changes to the WordPress project to keep all contributors in the loop. Refer to the site’s sidebar for the schedule.

With nearly a dozen teams contributing to WordPress in different ways, there are many ways to get involved, depending on your background and interests. So, follow along and subscribe to the sites that interest you, and check out this list of team reps to see who’s currently representing a particular team.

WordPress Meetups

In our October update, we mentioned the WordPress Foundation has an official Meetup.com account through which it covers costs of organizer dues.

As of this month, 23 meetups are now under this central account.

There’s a lot of cool stuff in the works for the Meetup.com Program:

Making WordPress Events is a discussion forum for WordPress event news and updates, as well as an online resource for organizers and volunteers (including, most recently, a series on meetup best practices).
Buying and sending out items like projectors and video cameras to meetup groups that need them.
A variety of training sessions, with the help of the Support and Community teams, to bring professional WordPress education to more people. As curriculums are tested and approved, they will be available online for use by meetup groups running official training sessions.
A core team of volunteers to work on meetup guidelines for organizers.
Other plans to expand the program, from a monthly email that suggests and provides possible content to groups, to meetup starter packs with fun stuff like flyers, table signs, buttons, stickers, sign-in sheets, and a T-shirt for a new organizer to wear to their first meetup.

As you can see, 2013 is already a busy year for WordPress meetups. We expect more groups to join in this spring — if you’re looking to add your meetup group to the WordPress Foundation account, please visit and follow along at Making WordPress Events for what’s happening with meetups.