Let’s face it. WordPress wouldn’t be what it is today without the support of its community. This makes 5FTF imperative. After all, its primary purpose is to bolster the success and growth of WordPress by increasing the number of community contributors actively involved in its development.

This is why WebDevStudios dedicates every last Friday of the month to giving back to WordPress by sponsoring our team’s contributions to 5FTF. More contributors mean a stronger, more resilient platform where issues such as bugs and security vulnerabilities can be addressed more efficiently. This benefits everyone—WordPress users, designers, developers, and companies selling WordPress services. The Five for the Future initiative also fosters a community where innovation thrives as diverse groups of individuals collaborate to enhance the platform. That’s the best part!

5FTF Benefits

Participation in Five for the Future offers numerous benefits. For example, it ensures regular updates and improvements, keeping the platform competitive and relevant in the fast-evolving web landscape. That’s because contributors’ collective effort leads to new features, enhanced security, and overall better performance of the WordPress core, plugins, and themes.

In fact, more than 630 contributors (150 first-timers) in at least 51 countries are responsible for WordPress 6.6, aka “Dorsey.” This includes two of our very own team members: Frontend Engineer Aslam Doctor and Principal Engineer Sal Ferrarello.

Sal discovered a bug that prevented the global Javascript code from loading on the login page using the (wp_localize_script) method. He submitted a ticket for it. Aslam then created a fix and pushed the patch to the WordPress repository for review, which was approved after a few tests and updates. Sal and Aslam collaborated to create PHP test cases for the fix.

Voila! That’s the power of 5FTF—discovery, investigation, collaboration, and contribution. How can you not participate in such an amazing opportunity?

5FTF Requires Support from WordPress Companies

For organizations, the initiative presents a unique opportunity to give back to the community that supports their business. By contributing to WordPress, companies can gain recognition, build stronger relationships within the community, and stay ahead of industry trends. Additionally, it provides a platform for employees to develop their skills, share knowledge, and gain recognition for their individual contributions.

Getting involved in 5FTF is straightforward. Organizations and individuals can pledge 5% of their resources—whether time, personnel, or financial support—to various areas of WordPress development. This can include core development, plugin and theme development, documentation, security, support forums, translation, and organizing or volunteering at WordCamps. Interested parties can visit the Five for the Future website to sign up and start contributing.

At WebDevStudios, our commitment to Five for the Future is a testament to our dedication to the WordPress community. Since the initiative’s inception, we have proudly dedicated 5% of our resources to contributing to WordPress. Our team members engage in numerous activities to support the growth and sustainability of open-source software.

We encourage all WordPress companies to sponsor their employees’ involvement in Five for the Future. It’s an easy and rewarding way to contribute to the platform’s longevity and success. Your contributions, no matter how small, can make a significant difference in the continuous improvement and innovation of WordPress.

Tomorrow, July 26, 2024, is Five for the Future Friday at WebDevStudios. Below, take a look at some of the ways our team participated in 5FTF last month. We appreciate everything they do to contribute.

From Our Internal 5FTF Slack Channel

I spent some time on client work, and I am now going to spend some time on my plugin. I will also spend 1-2 hours of time researching auto-repeater fields and form structure. –Awais Altaf, Backend Engineer

To start, I want to submit https://github.com/salcode/require-auth-users-rest-endpoint to the WordPress.org plugin repository. -Sal Ferrarello, Principal Engineer

I’m browsing Core Trac for the oldest tickets alive. –Michael Beckwith, Backend Engineer

When I was working with the BT theme, I noticed a funny issue when using non-native blocks (aka ACF). That’s my task for today. –Alfredo Navas, Senior Frontend Engineer

I’m going to ride along with Sal while he submits his plugin to the WordPress plugin repo. Helping to create some of the assets and whatever I can do to help. –Marty O’Connor, Senior Frontend Engineer

I’m going to finish my WP_HTML_Tag_Processor article. I added some performance sections, comparing it with other tools. –Ramsés Del Rosario, Backend Engineer

I’ll be working on a migration tool to hopefully make migrations easier in the future. –Keith Frey, Technical Strategist

Gonna do some experimenting with the Interactivity API. –Garrett Baldwin, Backend Engineer

I will be contributing to the Polyglots Team with more Spanish translations for some plugins. Then I will try to start some new article for the WDS blog. –Jairo Perez, Senior Backend Engineer

From X (Formerly Twitter)

Seeing everyone working behind-the-scenes on #5FTF makes me super happy. It would be so easy to ‘check out’ given that next week is a holiday week for our US team. But nope – everyone’s giving back as hard as they can.

Keep it up friends!

— CMDR Mitchcraft (@thatmitchcanter) June 28, 2024

It’s #5FTF @webdevstudios today and I can’t wait to play with #BlockThemes, wrangle some stuff for #WCAsia, take care of #WordPress #ProgramSupporter tasks, and teach PMs how to do their first PR for @LisaSabinWilson #ErasPlugin tagging #ErasTour @taylorswift13 just in case pic.twitter.com/OE8KZFxUsh

— JC Palmes #WCAsia2025 (@jpalmes) June 28, 2024

#5ftf June 2024 highlight! Contributed to a core ticket for some a feature enhancement at @webdevstudios!
Check it out: https://t.co/nir3qMzFnd #WordPress #OpenSource #WebDev

— Aslam Doctor (@aslammdoctor) June 28, 2024

It’s #5FTF at @webdevstudios again today!! Today I’m working on some updates to the build processes for our open source #WordPress block theme starter wds-bt!

— Amor (@itsAmorEh) June 28, 2024

It is #5FTF day thanks to @webdevstudios. Today I’m learning more about Block Bindings API improvements on WP 6.6 and trying to include my passion for in a Demo about it. pic.twitter.com/oOoBOYi71y

— Jennifer Farhat (@jenniFarhat) June 28, 2024

#5FTF here at @webdevstudios and I’m working my way through the onboarding process on the training team. Shout out to to @courtneyr_dev https://t.co/y3jj0zhy9u pic.twitter.com/AGLj7MqTAP

— Laura Byrne (@NewYorkerLaura) June 28, 2024

It’s #5FTF at @webdevstudios! Today I created a little #WordPress block that can be used to display post meta in a query loop block.

— Lindsey Bell (@lindseywb) June 28, 2024

The post Summer Is Sizzling with Five for the Future Contributions appeared first on WebDevStudios.

I’m willing to bet you picture a developer, whether it’s you or someone else. Or, perhaps you aren’t familiar with the concept of contributing to WordPress at all. If either of these ring true, you are not alone, and this is something I have thought about a lot over the last few years.

As I have met and talked to many people in the WordPress community, I have discovered that a surprising amount of people don’t realize that there is an opportunity for everybody to contribute to the WordPress project, no matter their skillset or experience level. And there are many potential reasons for this: lack of awareness, difficult or inaccessible onboarding processes, or Contributor events being fairly rare outside of big WordCamps, to name a few.

I knew some WordPress Teams had been working on some of these items in general, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed we needed to have one go-to place for all things Contributor-related, where someone could not just start contributing or get some info about a team but also:

• Create a Contributor Day website
• Find a Contributor Day mentor
• Ask questions about contributing in general
• And more!

Luckily, I knew just who I could talk to. Over the last couple years, I have been involved in organizing the WordCamp US Contributor Days and had my own mentor, Angela Jin, who is also a Deputy on the Community Team. I shared my thoughts with Angela, and we discussed the idea of creating a Contributor Working Group as a sub-section of the Community Team. She brought the idea to the other deputies and it was generally agreed that it was an idea worth pursuing. The next thing I know, I’m posting a Call for Volunteers and holding our first meeting!

That was a few months ago and we are starting to find our rhythm as a group. There are currently about a dozen of us, with varying backgrounds, experiences, and skill levels. That’s one of the great things I love about this group: we truly benefit from a variety of people. People with more experience in the WordPress world are able to make sure we touch on all the things that need to be considered, and people newer to WordPress have a fresher view and remind the more experienced folks of those things we have forgotten or take for granted.

Fun Fact:  Contributing to the Contributor Working Group is one way to contribute! Say that five times fast!

Our main goals can be grouped into three main categories:

• Compiling and expanding onboarding resources (for contributors and event organizers)
• Providing guidance with contributor events
• Enhancing new contributor experiences

This is all the while collaborating and coordinating with the other Make teams!

We are always happy to have new volunteers join our group, whether you just heard about contributing to WordPress for the first time today, or you’ve been contributing since the very beginning. No coding skills are needed!

We meet in the community-team Slack channel on the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 3:00 p.m. ET. Agendas and meeting recaps are always posted on the Community blog. If you are interested in joining the WordPress Contributor Working Group, attend one of our meetings and say hi! Or, if you want to talk to someone first, you can ping me on Twitter or the WordPress Slack at @amethystanswers.

Hopefully, as we progress through the year, more people will know about contributing and recognize that they DO have something of value to contribute to WordPress. New contributors will find it easier to get started, and there will be even better resources for contributors and organizers alike.

The post Volunteer for the WordPress Contributor Working Group appeared first on WebDevStudios.