See, color can manipulate the way we think and feel and hold different meanings for different cultures. No wonder it’s such an essential foundational aspect for any website design.

If you aren’t a graphic designer or artist, choosing the right colors might seem like a daunting task. You might be able to tell whether or not a color combo looks good when you see it. However, successfully creating a great combo requires a lot of experience. Thankfully, we live in a digital age where you can find just about anything online. That includes color tools for web design.

There are lots of color tools for web design available, and many of them have similar functionality. These are my five favorite online color tools that I use on all of my web design projects.

Extracting Colors from an Image

The Extract Theme option on Adobe Color is my go-to when I have no specific colors to start with but do have an image for inspiration. All you have to do is upload the image and let Adobe Color perform its magic.

Let’s use a nice beach scene, complete with blue water, green trees, and light brown sand as an example. Once the image is uploaded, we get five automated color palettes to choose from: colorful, bright, muted, deep, and dark.

Each of these palettes has five colors which are pulled from specific points in the image. You can move the spots around the image to choose a different color if you prefer.

The hex codes, which are used to specify the color in web design, are displayed below each color swatch and will be copied to your clipboard if you click on them. If you have a free Adobe account, you can save your palette and get access to different types of color codes and additional functions.

Finding Complementary Colors and Inspiration

Whether you are starting from scratch or have a couple of colors but need to find more to form a broader palette, Coolors has a fun generator to help. When you land on the Generate page, it displays a random palette of five colors that work well together.

To see another palette, simply hit the space bar and voilà! Five new colors magically appear. Each of the colors is identified by its hex code and its name.

Hover on a specific color and you get some useful options, like choosing a different shade of that color or marking the color as a favorite. If you find a color you like but want to see what other colors might complement it, you can lock in that color. Hit the space bar again, and you’ll get a new group of colors including any in which you locked.

Another really neat option can be found by hovering between two colors. Click on the plus sign to add a blend of the two colors. When you are happy with the color palette, you can export it in a variety of ways for sharing and using directly in your project. A word of caution with this site: it’s very easy to spend hours hitting the space bar and playing around!

Expanding Your Color Palette

Now that you have your main colors selected, it’s time to start using them. Often these main selections will be all that I need for a site, but what if I need a variation of a color?

For example, if all the colors are pretty dark and bold, I may want to use one for just a hint of a background color. Enter Tint & Shade Generator!

This site lets you enter in your base colors and displays 10 tints through to white and 10 shades through to black for each color. As with the other tools, the hex code is shown for each color swatch.

While you can get similar information from the previous color tools mentioned, the Tints & Shades Generator is great for having all of the options readily available at the same time.

Color Conversion and So Much More

If I have been given a palette to work with and the color codes provided don’t include hex format, I hop on over to Colorhexa. You can look up a color by any format type you can think of (eg RGB, HSL, CMYK), as well as formats you didn’t even know existed.

Each color has its own page that lists out how the color is represented in 14 formats. So, you can grab whichever version suits your needs. But as they say on late night TV, “Wait! There’s more!”

There is a wealth of information about your chosen color, including suggested color schemes, alternative options, and a color blindness simulator. If you like one of the new colors you see, you can click on it to go to its information page, or hover over it to display the hex and RGB codes. This is another color tool for website design that I could spend hours on, if I’m not careful.

Check Contrast

No list about color tools for web design would be complete without addressing accessibility. Most of the tools I’ve mentioned have some accessibility options within them. But there is an extra tool that I find really helpful: the Accessible Color Palette Builder.

This site lets you enter up to six hex codes, and it will create a visual table of accessible color combinations. This table indicates which colors can be paired together as text and background, based on a contrast ratio of 4.5:1, and shows what the combination would look like.

Please note, the options provided should be considered a guideline, not hard and fast rules. Some components or larger text might be okay to implement combinations with less contrast. On the flip side, some of the passing combinations might be a poor choice for specific font styles and sizes.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy playing around with these color tools and find some fantastic palettes to work with. Bonus tip: you can use these tools for inspiration for anything that uses color, not just websites. Find colors to decorate your home with or choose pencil crayons to color a mandala.

If you’d rather leave color selection and design to the professionals, get in touch with us at WebDevStudios. We love color and would be happy to help make your brand shine online!

Want more inspiration? Check out this Spotify playlist. These tunes are sure to stimulate your palette.

The post Color Tools for Web Design appeared first on WebDevStudios.

It’s not every day I get to work on a project for someone who isn’t just known by me but is also beloved throughout the WordPress community. When I found out I would be working on the rebrand for Do the Woo, I was naturally excited, albeit a little nervous.

That’s because Do the Woo is a WooCommerce builder community run by Bob Dunn, aka BobWP on Twitter. The goal of the website is to help WooCommerce builders across the globe by elevating, connecting and guiding them, while helping to grow their skills and businesses. This is done through podcasts, blog posts, and a membership community of Friends.

Logo and Branding

The first step of this website redesign project was to create a new logo. From there, a new brand identity for Do the Woo was born.

Bob provided some general insight into his visual desires. Then Jennifer Cooley, our talented UX Designer, set to work. First up: pinning down the look and feel for the brand with color and typography. This enabled Jennifer to ideate on several designs to really hone in a logo that distinctly represents Do the Woo.

Many people are familiar with the Do the Woo podcast, but Do the Woo is more than that. It’s about community. The new brand is clean, modern, vibrant, and fun, just like the WooCommerce community it serves!

“Working on the branding for Do the Woo was a really fun challenge,” says Jennifer. “The audience is so wonderfully varied, with designers and developers alike. Keeping all of that in mind when choosing colors and styles was both demanding and a neat exercise in creative thinking.”

With the new logo and branding established, Jennifer created various designs to ensure a cohesive look for Do the Woo across the web, including:

• Poster artwork for the podcasts
• Style elements used on the website to pull it together
• Creative assets used for other future design elements

Website Redesign

With branding ready to go, the website redesign and development began. As part of the discovery process, Bob walked me through the different parts of his current website and explained what he was hoping for with the new site.

There were different categories of podcasts, blogs, and Friends (the community). These categories were used in a variety of ways on the site pages.

It was my responsibility to determine efficient ways of integrating all of these features, in addition to creating a new visual design. I considered the functionality of the whole site and found ways we could improve editorial workflows for Bob.

Leveraging Post Categories and Other Post Meta

Looking at the podcast as an example, there is the main podcast and WooBits, which is a shorter episode specifically about WooCommerce news. Within the main podcast, there are a variety of categories an episode might fall under, like Roundtable or DevChat. These subcategories indicate the type of content. The categories Site Builder or Product Builder reference the guest’s role in the WooCommerce community.

We used the Advanced Posts module by Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder to display podcast episodes in different ways throughout the site by modifying options like the category and other variables. On the Podcast page, the first row is the most recent episode of the main podcast; the second row is specifically selected episodes, and the remaining rows are each pulling in episodes from a specific category.

All of these rows are using the same module, but with different options selected to display the correct content. When a new episode is added to the site, the corresponding sections will automatically update to include it.

Dynamic Templates

Themer is a really powerful and useful Beaver Builder tool. We made good use of it on Do The Woo.

Using Themer allows us to create dynamic templates and connect them with specific post types to ensure there is design consistency from one post to the next within a specific category. Podcasts, Profiles in Woo, and the blog all have different layouts, with different content in each.

By setting up one Themer template for Podcasts, another for Profiles in Woo, and so on, all Bob has to do is choose the appropriate category and add the content. He doesn’t need to get bogged down in remembering which layout is needed or have to create it from scratch. More efficient content management means Bob can spend more of his time doing the things he loves.

Reusable Elements

Beaver Builder makes it really easy to set up clients for continued success. Newly created pages, rows, or modules are saved as reusable elements and used on any page or post—new or existing.

I set up numerous reusable elements while building the site, which were just as handy while I was developing the site as they will be for Bob when he has develops new types of content.

Rather than starting with a blank page, he can apply a saved template and add or remove elements as needed. Or, he can create a new template by starting with the saved Page Header and Call To Action (CTA) rows and adding some other modules in between.

The Page Header row will automatically add the textured blue background image and the page title, complete with font size, color, etc. Bob can edit the title or add a line of text if he wants to customize it a bit more. The CTA row is similar in concept to the Page Header row, with an added bonus of being a global element.

This means that any customizations that might be done to it would affect every instance of the CTA row across the site, which is helpful for keeping messaging consistent without having to remember every page that includes it.

Editable Friends Pages

The Do The Woo membership consists of three levels of Friend: Builder, Community, and Pod. Community and Pod Friends get their own profile page which includes information about their company and products/services. Before the website redesign, new Friends filled out an intake form with their information and then Bob manually transferred that information to their associated profile page.

With the new site, Bob wanted to allow Friends add and update their profiles themselves. With the help of Frontend Engineer, Adam Bates, we created customizations to allow for this.

Our team considered options and decided on using Advanced Custom Fields, paired with a dynamic template created specifically for these Friends. The template contains the style and layout elements. The information supplied from Friends feeds content.

Now, these Friends are able to log into the website, navigate to the Public Profile section of their account, and easily add or update their details, including:

• Logo
• Company description
• Product/service information
• Social media links and other URLs
• Blog feed URL to show up to five of their most recent posts

Bob still has full control over these profile fields. However, now there’s one less manual step for him to complete when a new Friend joins the community.

A Success Story

In the end, it turns out I had no reason to be nervous. Working on this project was as fun as I anticipated, and Bob has been a pure delight to collaborate with.

Most importantly, we delivered a great product for Bob. In his own words, Bob says:

When I needed a major rebranding and website redesign, I chose WebDevStudios as they are an iconic agency in the WordPress space that brings experience, talent and a commitment to their clients. Not only did they deliver a final product that exceeded my expectations, but working with their team members was an absolute joy. They brought a combination of professionalism and creativity to the project, with the perfect human touch.

I count that as a win!

New Sites and Website Redesigns

WebDevStudios considers every project to be unique. We take time to understand the goals of your website and build your customized website with the appropriate solutions.

Do you need a new website? Maybe it’s time for a fresh new design. Contact the WordPress experts. Reach out to WebDevStudios and let’s start the conversation.

The post Client Success Story: Do The Woo Website Redesign appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Because WordPress is open-source software, it relies on community members like you and me to maintain and improve it. There are lots of different roles that need to be filled, and everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate if they can, regardless of their skill set or experience level.

In a previous article, we shared 5 Ways to Contribute to WordPress Five for the Future. There are one or two that are no longer available, but most are still relevant. We felt compelled to update the options available for you to contribute to Five for the Future; so, here are five more ways you can give back to WordPress, even if you aren’t a developer (but also if you are!).

Polyglots

Do you speak another language, other than American English? WordPress is used all over the world, and users can set the language for their admin side to be one of hundreds of languages available.

With every new core release, there are new strings that need translations. Themes and plugins also need translations. Which means, WordPress needs translators.

You’ll notice, earlier, I specified American English. That’s because there are several versions of English that have their own translations for WordPress including Canadian, Australian, and Pirate! So whether you are fluent in an actual other language, or just speak a different dialect like me (I’m Canadian, eh), there’s a need for your multilingualism. Being a translator is a great way to contribute to Five for the Future.

Docs

WordPress now powers over 40% of the web. That’s a lot of people using this software, in lots of different ways.

Some are new users, some are learning new ways to use it. Either way, many of them are going to have questions and they’ll be looking for information about how to do different things with WordPress.

Good documentation is critical, for both developers who need to know how the code works and end-users who need to know how to build, design, and populate their sites. This is a great way to contribute if you like to write. Every part of WordPress, including the other areas I mention in this post, needs documentation.

Training

WordPress usage has seen rapid growth in recent years, particularly this last year, as many businesses have had to move online. Those of us who work with WordPress every day think it’s very simple to work with, but we forget the initial learning curve that everyone has to go through. And depending on just how deep you want to get into things, there can be a lot to know.

Enter the Training team. Training puts together various lessons and courses to help users on their WordPress journey. Recently they launched Learn WordPress, a repository of community-submitted workshops and lesson plans. They are actively seeking contributors to create workshops and lesson plans, facilitate discussion groups, and join the Learn WordPress Working Group.

Accessibility

Most of the time, when we think about accessibility on the web, we consider how people interact with websites they are visiting. But it’s equally important to ensure the tools we use online are accessible, and that includes WordPress.

The Accessibility team works towards improving the accessibility of the core code and resources, including tagging themes that are accessibility-ready. If you know how to use assistive technology, you might consider testing new or updated code. If you are looking for a different way to flex your developer skills, check out the open accessibility tickets. Other ways to contribute to the Accessibility team include reviewing themes and helping write documentation.

Marketing

You know those feature summaries you see when you update to the latest version of WordPress? Guess who writes them. Marketing! The Marketing team provides content and marketing strategy to the other teams and helps with the promotion and perception of WordPress in a variety of other ways.

They have lots of great first tasks for beginners, ranging from collecting data in a spreadsheet to creating screen recordings to coordinating with other teams on various projects. Last year, the team created videos explaining how to get set up with WordPress.org and Slack accounts, and they are working on getting people to record them in as many languages a possible. The list of ways to contribute to Marketing is long and varied, but you’ll be glad you did.

As you can see, there is no shortage of ways to contribute to WordPress, and there are opportunities for everyone. If you’ve been struggling to find your perfect place, I hope I’ve given you some new ideas. And if you can always see what we’re up to at WebDevStudios by following #5FTF on Twitter. We always appreciate re-tweets and shout-outs of support, and share with us how you’re contributing too! Don’t forget to check back on our blog for updates on our contributions.

The post More Ways to Contribute to Five for the Future in 2021 appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Think about that for a minute. How do you know that? Whether or not your visitors have a disability is not a metric tracked by your favourite analytic software. I guarantee you the opposite is true. Your website absolutely does have visitors who have disabilities.

How can I be so sure? The answer is simpler than you might think: we have all experienced some form of disability, and we will again.

What’s a Disability?

Often the image of a person with a disability is someone who is blind or deaf. These are permanent disabilities. However, there are also temporary and situational disabilities that exist, too.

To put these into context, consider your dominant arm. If it were amputated, that would be a permanent disability. If it were broken, that would be a temporary disability. If you were holding a bag of groceries, that might be a situational disability. All of these scenarios would prevent you from using that arm for a period of time. So you can imagine how having a mobile version of your website that is easy to navigate with only one hand would benefit more than just people who only have one hand.

There are lots of other examples of temporary and situational, as well as permanent, disabilities that people experience which impact how they use a website. Improving the accessibility of your website will ensure all your visitors have the best experience possible. Let’s look at how an accessible website benefits everyone and what the potential barriers to a successful site visit might be, as well as some conditions that might be affected.

Neurological Scenario

Imagine: You get home from work and have to feed your kids. You have a migraine. The kids are excited and loud, adding to the brain fog from your migraine. You decide to order delivery from a website.

Potential Barriers

As you visit the restaurant’s website, you want to place your order and pay as easily and quickly as possible. Navigation, buttons and links should be easy to find and their purpose should make sense, otherwise you could get confused and frustrated. Too many calls-to-action fighting for your attention are distracting at the best of times, but when you can barely concentrate on the task at hand, they can also cause confusion.

Fast-moving animations can make your headache worse and might even make it hard for you to look at the screen. And if you make it to the checkout page, there are a variety of form issues that can make it hard to complete your order, like disappearing placeholder text or not being able to click into a particular field. Encountering any of these issues could result in you giving up and taking your business elsewhere.

Migraines fall under the neurological category of accessibility, which includes ADHD, epilepsy, and autism as permanent disabilities. Other disabilities and related situations include:

• Brain fog
• Lack of sleep
• Flu/cold
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Stress
• Distracting environment

Audio Scenario

Imagine: You decide to remote work from the local coffee shop. Stuck on a problem, you search for a tutorial and find the perfect video embedded on its own webpage. But darn it… you forgot your headphones at home!

Potential Barriers

Without your headphones, you won’t really be able to hear the sound on the video without disturbing everyone in the shop. If there are no subtitles or closed captioning, you can’t put the video on mute and follow along. If the person didn’t include a transcript, summary, or other written form of the content, and your only way to get the information is to watch the video, you are out of luck.

Another issue that isn’t a barrier, but can cause issues, is when videos (and audios) are set to autoplay. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve jumped out of my seat being startled by autoplaying videos, even on sites that I visit every week! These situations all fall under the audio category of website accessibility, which includes people who have some form of permanent hearing loss. Other disabilities and related situations include:

• Tinnitus
• Plugged ear
• Skimming text to find a quick answer
• Learning a new language
• Loud environments

Keyboard Scenario

You are a WordPress developer who never takes your hands off the keyboard. There is not a mouse to be found anywhere in your office and you know all the keyboard shortcuts. You decide to register in an online course for the latest and greatest headless platform.

Potential Barriers

As you start tabbing through the page, there are several potential frustrations you might encounter. If there is no “Skip to Content” option, you’ll have to tab through every menu item in the main navigation. And speaking of that navigation, hopefully it’s set up correctly so you can easily avoid all of the sub-menu items, otherwise you’ll start to wonder if you’ll ever get out of the header area.

Some sites have removed any focus indications on links and buttons, so you’ll have no idea t where you have tabbed. Others have implemented a tab flow that doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to it, taking you from the top of the page to a form at the bottom of the page, then to the middle left and maybe over to the top left then down to the middle right… are you confused yet? Me, too.

By the time you get through to the registration form, you might get stuck in “keyboard traps,” like not being able to return to a field once you’ve move on to the next one, or being unable to leave the form any way other than hitting the submit button. These frustrations are in the physical category of website accessibility; and in this case, specifically those who require a keyboard or other button-based device to navigate the web. Other disabilities and related situations include:

• Broken arm/wrist/finger
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Mouse battery died
• Sleeping baby or pet on your lap (they’re too cute to move!)

Visual Scenario

You live in California and work online from home. It’s a hot summer day and you don’t have an air conditioner, so your windows are open. Wildfires break out nearby, causing poor air quality that irritates your eyes and blurs your vision. Utilities are affected and your wifi signal has become weaker than normal.

Potential Barriers

Your poor eyes are having a hard enough time staring at the screen all day. Visit a website with small text, in a thin condensed font, and you’ll feel like you’re trying to read the last row on an eye exam chart. Sure, you can try to zoom in and make the text bigger, but there’s the possibility the layout isn’t well-suited to resizing either.

If there isn’t enough contrast between the color of the font and the background, maybe it’s a light grey on off-white, and it might seem like you are looking at a blank page. What if the only difference between linked text and regular text is navy blue instead of black? There is a good chance you won’t realize that you can click on that navy blue text. Remember that weak wifi signal? It could prevent images from loading, and if there isn’t appropriate alt text set up, you could be missing important information.

These scenarios all fall into the visual category of website accessibility, affecting people who have colour blindness or reduced vision. Other disabilities and related situations include:

• Eye injury
• Dilated eyes from eye exam
• Aural migraine
• Bright sun shining in eyes or on screen
• Allergies
• Forgotten reading glasses

Normalize Accessible Websites

All of the scenarios were based on real examples, many that I have personally experienced. Maybe you can relate to many of them, too. If not, I’m sure you have experienced some of the other disabilities and related situations listed at the end of each scenario. I challenge you to come up with your own examples, which you can share with others, helping make website accessibility considerations become more commonplace. At the very least, I hope I have convinced you that owning, maintaining, and making an accessible website benefits everyone.

The post Accessible Websites Benefit Everyone 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.

Mr. Rogers is often quoted during hard times:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’

This couldn’t be truer in the WordPress community, in general, and it’s increasingly evident as more and more people self-isolate. For example, as office employees are starting to work from home for the first time, remote workers are offering tips and support. By staying connected with the WordPress community, you can help lift spirits (including your own), reduce feelings of isolation, and find strength to help make it through this rough patch. Here are some ways you can do that.

Virtual WordCamps

Most WordCamps that were scheduled between now and June 1 have been cancelled or postponed. For many, WordCamps are the only time we get to connect with other WordPress community members in person all year. We look forward to them and all the excitement they bring.

It can be devastating watching WordCamps being cancelled left and right, but there is some good news. A handful of WordCamps are choosing to keep their original dates and become virtual WordCamps! You can attend sessions streamed online and soak up the lessons from the comfort of your couch. And even though you won’t get to see the other attendees, you can bet there will be a hashtag to follow on Twitter, just as if it were an in-person event. You have to provide your own lunch, though.

Virtual WordPress Meetups

Depending on the restrictions in your area, Meetups may be cancelled, as well. But with the variety of video options available, a lot of WordPress Meetup groups are also going virtual for the next few months. If you are a member of a local WordPress Meetup, you are able to suggest and organize events for your group. So if you have an idea for a virtual option, you don’t need to wait for someone else to plan it. Take initiative and use technology to connect with your local WordPress community.

If you want to organize a virtual meetup, but aren’t sure what to do, here are a few suggestions:

• Organize a speaker (local or otherwise). Take advantage of the opportunity to have someone present over Zoom or Facebook Live, who wouldn’t be able to attend your regular meetups in person. That means, you can have a guest speaker from a different town, even a different country!
• Run a virtual help desk. Lots of video conferencing tools allow you to share your screen, so you can help each other troubleshoot issues as easily as if you were sitting next to each other.
• Offer a virtual co-working session. Fire up your favorite video conference tool and hang out together while you work.

This is also a great time for people who don’t have a local meetup group nearby. Virtual meetup events mean you can attend from anywhere! MyCamp.Rocks has started compiling a list of WordPress Meetups that are happening online.

Twitter

Of all the social media platforms, Twitter seems to be the main space for the WordPress community to keep in touch. So it’s not surprising that there is a lot of activity happening on Twitter from community members to check in with each other, lighten the mood, offer all kinds of help, and more.

We’re all experiencing similar emotions and struggles right now, and you’re bound to find someone you can support you or be supported by you. If you haven’t been active in the Twitter WordPress community and don’t know who to follow, I’ve curated a list of WordPress-related Twitter accounts.

I have also seen some fun and creative activities being organized on Twitter:

• Online karaoke
• Requests for silly memes to help lighten the mood
• Game shows
• Various video hangouts

WP&UP

Don’t forget to take care of yourself, and your mental health in particular. If you find yourself struggling, I encourage you to seek help, sooner rather than later. There are lots of options available, and wouldn’t you know it. The WordPress community has started a great initiative. WPandUP is a registered charity based in the UK offering a ton of resources, including the option to chat with a trained expert about your mental or physical health. Our very own Alex Juchniewicz, Technical Project Manager, is part of the team, so you know it’s a good group of people!

WordPress Slack

You may be familiar with Slack as a workplace communication tool, particularly if you were already working remotely. There are also a lot of community work spaces for the WordPress community. While WordPress Slack is mostly for communication about the project, signing up does give you access to a bunch of regional groups that are built more around community, like WordPress Canada.

Here are some other Slack work spaces supporting the WordPress community:

• PressTribe
• WordPress Developers’ Club
• Ladies of WP (Send a DM to Michele or Stephanie to request an invite.)

Five for the Future

A great way to feel connected with any community is to give back to it. Contributing to the WordPress project is rewarding and you will meet amazing new people. At WebDevStudios, we participate in Five for the Future. Once a month, we spend an entire day contributing to WordPress. It’s often the last Friday of the month, but we always announce it on our blog and social media. Join us on Twitter using the hashtag #5ftf.

This may be a crazy time filled with lots of uncertainty, but you can always count on the WordPress community. I hope to see you around!

The post Staying Connected to the WordPress Community appeared first on WebDevStudios.

What Is a WordPress Meetup?

A WordPress Meetup event can take on a variety of forms, from casual coffee to a formal presentation and everything in between. At its heart, though, a WordPress meetup is a gathering of people interested in WordPress who want to meet others in their local community. There is no experience required and members include developers, designers, marketers, content creators, end-users, professionals, hobbyists, etc.

Like WordPress, meetups are open-source, too, in that anyone can organize an event. You don’t have to be listed as the official meetup organizer.

My Story

I have been organizing my local WordPress Meetup Group in Calgary (YYCWPMUG) for a few years now. I had become one of the regular attendees at our monthly events. At the time, there was only one organizer, and he was doing everything. When he asked if I would be interested in helping, I didn’t think twice. It was an opportunity to become more involved in the local community, help keep the community growing, and develop as a leader. I didn’t know it then, but it was one step in a long path that eventually led me to where I am now: working at WebDevStudios, organizing WordCamps and Contributor days, and even hosting my own podcast. As you can imagine, I highly recommend being part of your local organizing team.

How You Can Start Organizing

Assisting a Current Organizer

If you are lucky enough to live in an area that already has an established WordPress Meetup group, you’re all set. Head over to Meetup.com, search for WordPress, and your local group should appear. You can see who the current organizers are and send them a message. Since we are all volunteers, it’s always nice to have new people join the team. Fresh blood helps promote new ideas and prevent burnout.

Establishing a New Meetup Group

Don’t have a WordPress Meetup group in your area? Then start one!

First things first, to become part of the official WordPress Chapter program, you’ll need to apply. There is a lot of information in the handbook that will help you make some important decisions, and once you are approved, you will be onboarded by someone with experience. Take the opportunity to ask any and all questions you can think of.

Let’s Get This Party Started

Now that you’re part of the organizing team, it’s time to start planning. You can have different types of events every month, or find what works best in your community and stick with that. Whatever you decide, there are three main points you need to consider:

1. What type of event will you have
2. Where will you hold your event
3. Who will present or lead the event

What to Do

Before you can tackle the where and who, you need to know the what. Knowing the type of event you want to have will help shape your other decisions. YYCWPMUG events tend to be mostly presentations, but every now and then we like to mix it up with something special like Contributor Day or with a more casual evening like a coffee social. Here is a sampling of ideas:

• Have an educational presentation
• Host a mixer/social
• Organize a hackathon
• Have Q&A
• Video conference with an expert
• Run a site clinic
• Plan a stand-alone contributor day
• Explore a theme or plugin together

Location, Location, Location

A meetup can’t exist without a place to hold your event. Once you know what type of event you are having, you can start looking for a venue. Some criteria to consider when choosing a location:

• Cost: free or donated is ideal
• Accessibility: make it easy for all people to get to and access
• Size: how many people to expect
• Diversity: everyone should feel welcome

Our main venue for YYCWPMUG is a co-working space that has been generously donated to us, but every now and then we try somewhere new. See if any of these common venues are available:

• Co-working spaces
• Libraries
• Coffee shops
• Educational institutions
• Community centres
• Local small businesses

Now Presenting…

One of the quickest ways to burn out is to try to do everything yourself. If you are organizing the events, try not to be the one presenting all of them, too. Recruit others to speak on a topic they enjoy. They don’t have to be professional speakers. We’re all friends here, and meetups can be a great place for people to practice speaking in front of a group. Don’t wait for people to offer; many often don’t realize they would be a good fit until you ask them. If you are looking for speakers:

• Ask your members if they are interested, or if they have recommendations.
• Reach out to local companies using WordPress.
• Create a speaker submission form.
• Don’t be afraid to ask some people who aren’t local every now and then… you can always do a video conference.

A Few Final Tips

• Follow and enforce the Code of Conduct. TL;DR Don’t be a jerk.
• Be creative! Try out new ideas and venues, different days, and times.
• Don’t do it alone. More is merrier, and you’ll burn out quicker if you don’t have help.
• Consider getting a local restaurant to sponsor some grub.
• Take lots of pictures!
• Use social media and other platforms to your advantage. YYCWPMUG has a Facebook group and soon a website and Slack work space.

Most importantly, have fun!

The post Tips for Organizing a WordPress Meetup appeared first on WebDevStudios.

WCUS’ Contributor Day was held on the third day of this national WordPress conference, which took place in St. Louis, Missouri this year. In an effort to recruit more people to participate in WordCamp Contributor Day, we worked hard on education and awareness. This included publishing blog posts about the different teams and running workshops, which took place on the first two days of WCUS. These workshops were designed to demystify Contributor Day. You can watch videos from the workshops at WordPress.tv. We even had buttons made that say, “I make WordPress. Ask me how,” which experienced contributors wore throughout the weekend.

Want to know more about Contributing to #WordPress @WordCampUS ? Ask anyone wearing this button. #WCUS pic.twitter.com/hsOeLyySBa

— WordCamp US (@WordCampUS) October 31, 2019

The 411

The best part about WordCamp Contributor Day is that anyone can participate. Yes, even you!

The WordPress project needs people of all skill levels and backgrounds to help move it forward. There are 18 official teams listed on Make.WordPress.org that you can contribute to, ranging from technical (Core, WP-CLI) to non-technical (Community, Polyglots). You can choose to contribute in an area that you are an expert in or use this opportunity as a way to learn a new skill.

Common ways to contribute include:

• feature improvements and bug fixes on core
• reviewing themes and plugins to be added to the general repositories
• answering questions in the support forums

Some less obvious ways to contribute include:

• writing or editing documentation, marketing collateral, release notes, etc.
• testing new features as a regular user
• creating and improving workshops and other materials for the user community to learn
• adding closed captioning to videos posted to WordPress.tv
• organizing a meetup in your area

Kicking off #WCUS contributor day! @aaroncampbell asks how many are first time contributors and nearly half the people in the room raise their hands… pic.twitter.com/vI6baX6wf1

— Andrea Middleton (@andmiddleton) November 3, 2019

Back to WCUS 2019 Contributor Day, we had a few hundred people participate this year and at least a third of them were first-timers. Everyone settled into the teams they wanted to help and got to work. We kept track of accomplishments throughout the day. Here are some highlights:

• onboarded  new contributors to several teams
• translated all of WordPress 5.3 for Dutch
• started the first WCUS KidsCamp
• reviewed and edited various pieces of text content (handbooks, documentation, etc.)
• ensured all support topics had a reply (except for a few that came in during the day)
• closed issues and tickets on multiple teams
• edited videos

And, of course, the list goes on. See the complete list of what we contributed on this monumental WordCamp Contributor Day here. 

Participating in WordCamp Contributor Day is like eating a potato chip.

At the end of the day, in addition to all the defined accomplishments listed, new friends were made and new regular contributors were born. Once bitten by the contributing bug, people often want to keep going. And the great thing is, they can!

Whether it’s becoming an active weekly member of one of the teams or finding a new way to enhance the community, I encourage everyone to contribute as often as possible, all year long. Not only will you be helping to shape the future of WordPress, you’ll find there’s personal and maybe professional growth as well, just from taking that first step and showing up, like I did.

If you’d like to get started, but don’t have a WordCamp Contributor Day happening soon nearby, you can learn more about the teams and find their meeting details at Make.Wordpress.org. I also invite you to ping me on Twitter to ask me any questions about contributing. You can join WebDevStudios for our monthly Five for the Future (a WordPress initiative designed to give back) contribution days, too!

The post Get the 411 on WordCamp Contributor Day appeared first on WebDevStudios.