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Over the past few months, we have been visiting universities in Dhaka, Bangladesh and speaking with students about WordPress, technology, their interests, and activities.
We’ve noticed hackathons, programming challenges, robotics competitions, cybersecurity competitions, and similar activities are already popular in many universities. There was a clear excitement around the idea of competing, building something, and proving what you can do.
In most of the campus connect events, we generally try to conduct workshops. But there is one issue we experience with the traditional workshop model:
Students often learn because we are asking them to learn!
What Changes When Learning Becomes a Competition?
A competition creates a different environment. Students have a problem to solve. They have to search for information, read documentation, experiment with different approaches, and build something themselves.
That is why we wanted to test whether a hackathon-based approach could be a better way to introduce WordPress to university students. Recently, we tried this at Stamford University Bangladesh as part of our Campus Connect program.
The experience gave us both positive and negative findings. More importantly, it raised several questions that we think are worth discussing with the community.
What We Tried
Our Campus Connect program followed a three-day format:
2 days of online hackathon
1 day of WPCC Seminar and Workshop
Approximately 180 registered, among 100 student registered for hackathon
40 websites created (We are working to publish website lists on the event website soon)
82 WordPress profiles created
We designed three different hackathon tracks so that students with different skill levels could participate.
This track was specifically designed for students who had little or no previous WordPress experience. Participants were asked to research WordPress online, learn about its purpose and use cases, answer related questions, and build a basic website.
The goal wasn’t to make them WordPress experts. The goal was to answer a simpler question:
Can a student who doesn’t know WordPress learn enough independently to understand what WordPress is and what it can do?
This was the most popular track, with around 20 participants.
The developer track had only two participants. They were asked to create basic WordPress plugins. Both had experience with other technology stacks but had never created WordPress plugins before.
AI tools were allowed. The requirement was simply to create something functional.
One participant created a related-posts pluginPluginA 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., while another created a counter plugin.
Although participation was low, this track demonstrated something interesting: developers familiar with other technologies can potentially use AI, documentation, and experimentation to quickly start exploring WordPress development.
What we’ve learned?
Our first experiment wasn’t perfect, but several things worked better than we expected.
Students Are Willing to Learn When There Is a Challenge
One of the strongest arguments for this format is self-directed learning. When a student is given a problem instead of a lecture, the learning process becomes more active.
They have to search.
They have to experiment.
They have to make decisions.
They have to solve problems.
This is very different from simply following a workshop instructor.
Anyone Can Participate
The Discover WordPress track gave us another positive signal. We often assume that students need to know something before they can participate in a technical competition. But a well-designed beginner track can give students an opportunity to learn while competing.
However, the challenge needs to be designed specifically for beginners. Giving a complete beginner an advanced WordPress development task will probably discourage rather than motivate them.
Competition Creates Motivation
Students already seem to have a strong interest in competitive activities. Instead of asking:
“Would you like to learn WordPress?”
We can potentially ask:
“Can you solve this challenge using WordPress?”
The second question creates a very different motivation. Students aren’t only learning technology. They are trying to accomplish something. That competitive element can make learning more engaging.
Drawbacks of the hackathon format
Although we received a large number of registrations, approximately 50% of registered students did not participate in the hackathon. This raises an important question, Why?
Based on what we observed, difficulty may be one factor. Some students started the challenge, answered several questions, and then stopped. For a student who doesn’t know WordPress, even a relatively simple task can become intimidating if they don’t know where to start. And in an online hackathon, there is another problem:
Support isn’t always immediately available.
If a student gets stuck and there is nobody available to explain the next step, quitting can become easier than continuing.
Should Beginners Be Put Directly Into a Hackathon?
This is probably the biggest question we are currently debating. Imagine a student who has never used WordPress. We tell them:
“Here is a hackathon. Build something.”
Is that really a fair starting point? Maybe!
But perhaps there is a better approach. Instead of:
Workshop → Go home
or
Hackathon → Figure everything out yourself
We could try:
Participate on Learn WordPress Courses → Workshop → Hackathon
For example, we could first run a short workshop introducing WordPress. Then give students a small challenge that they can complete within an hour. But again, this is something we need to test rather than assume.
Judging Is Another Major Challenge
A mixed-skill hackathon makes judging more challenging because beginners, designers, developers, and experienced WordPress users bring different strengths. Creating separate tracks can help address these differences, but it also makes the judging process more complex.
Multi-track vs one challenge for all?
Should we introduce multiple tracks, such as WordPress Security, eCommerce, Development, and Design, to allow participants to focus on their areas of interest? Or would it be better to create a single challenge that covers different aspects of WordPress?
Multiple tracks could encourage participants to explore their strengths and specialize in specific areas, while a single challenge could provide a more unified experience and make evaluation easier.
Which approach would work best for engaging university students with different skill levels and interests? I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on the advantages and challenges of both approaches.
What We Think So Far
Based on this first experiment, we’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on how hackathons and workshops can complement each other in WordPress Campus Connect. What role should each format play in engaging university students and helping them learn WordPress?
So perhaps the best approach isn’t Workshop vs Hackathon.
It may be:
Workshop + Challenge + Hackathon
The workshop provides the foundation. The small challenge builds confidence. The hackathon creates the opportunity to apply that knowledge independently. This is our current thinking, but we don’t consider it a proven model yet.
Where We Want to Go From Here
We are interested in taking this format to more universities in Bangladesh. But we don’t want to simply copy the same event and run it again. We want to improve the model first. What positive and negative do you see on this approach? Can you suggest some improvement or share new ideas that we can try?
We Want Your Opinion
This is where we would really like feedback from the WordPress community. We are not presenting this as a finished or proven model. This was our first attempt.
How can we design a hackathon where a student who knows nothing about WordPress can participate, learn something meaningful, and finish the event feeling more confident than when they started?
We would love to hear both positive and negative feedback.
If you’ve organized hackathons, workshops, university programs, WordPress events, or similar competitions, we’d especially like to hear what worked for you—and what you would do differently.
This started as a small experiment at WCUSWCUSWordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. 2025, grew stronger at WCAsia 2026, and hit a real milestone at WCEU 2026, where students from Kraków University of Technology, Kraków University of Economics, and VIII LO high school took the stage to show the WordPress sites they built over the year. It was one of the strongest sessions of the event, and I want to thank the WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. 2026 team for making room for it. Watching young people present real, professional work in front of a packed room is exactly the kind of moment that turns curiosity into contribution.
WCEU 2026 also pioneered a sponsorship tier that funded WordPress Credits graduates to attend the event, and the impact went well beyond the stage. They volunteered throughout the event, joined contributor dayContributor DayContributor 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/, shared their experience in a session, visited every sponsor booth, and had a blast at the parties. Watching them want to stay is the clearest sign this works. And that impact shouldn’t end when the event does: one of our goals should be creating a pathway for these students to stay connected to the community afterward, whether as contributors, volunteers, organizers, or even mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. for future cohorts.
That’s also the reason for this post. Education feeds the entire WordPress ecosystem. Every student who builds a site, joins a contributor day, or presents their work is a potential future contributor, organizer, agency owner, or pluginPluginA 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. author, and every flagship event that gives that work a stage compounds that effect for years. If we want WordPress to still have 20+ more years ahead of it, we need a steady pipeline of new builders, and flagship events are where that pipeline becomes visible to the whole community.
I don’t want this thread to debate whether Education should have a presence at flagship and major events. The last three cycles already proved it works. I want us to agree on how we make it work consistently, so every organizing team isn’t rebuilding the conversation from scratch, and so we can move faster and smoother starting with WCAsia 2027.
What I’m proposing
A lightweight, repeatable framework to pilot in 2027 that any flagship or big event team can plug into their planning, rather than a rigid template:
A bridge per team. One or two people from each organizing team should be appointed early as the WordPress Credits team’s point of contact for Education. This person doesn’t need to own an edu track, they just need to help us plan the logistics and timing on their end. (We’re also discussing whether it’s worth having someone from the WordPress Credits team embedded directly in the Speakers/Local Organizing team — thoughts are welcomed)
Reserved space, not a fixed format. One to three slots reserved for our programs at each flagship event. These don’t have to sit in a dedicated education track. They could be a workshop slot, part of opening or closing, or wherever makes sense for that event’s schedule and audience — the format should follow the outcome we want: showcasing student projects tends to work best on stage, while introducing students to contribution often works better as a workshop or as part of Contributor Day.
A pathway for student participation. Where possible, explore sponsorship or travel-support mechanisms, building on the model piloted at WCEU 2026, that allow WordPress Credits graduates and participants from other Education programs to attend the event, volunteer, join Contributor Day, and present their work. Reserving space creates the opportunity, but for students from other countries or regions, actually getting there can still be a significant barrier.
Flexibility on timing. Student and program features often can’t be confirmed as early as a standard call for speakers requires. We need organizing teams to build in some flexibility for these slots to be finalized a few weeks out rather than months. This matters especially because academic calendars don’t align with WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. planning timelines, and cohorts, student projects, institutional approvals, and student availability may only become clear much closer to the event date.
Questions for organizers
Who from your team can take on the bridge role for your event?
Where in your schedule do one to three slots for Education realistically fit, and does that depend on the format we bring?
What’s the latest point in your planning timeline where you could still confirm a feature like this?
What existing sponsorship, scholarship, or travel-support mechanisms could be used or adapted to help students participate?
I’d also like us to agree on a small set of shared metrics to track going forward, nothing too complex: number of students participating, Contributor Day participation, volunteering at the event, post-event contributions, and how many remain engaged with the community after three or six months. This would help us move from individual success stories to comparable evidence across events.
Next steps
Please leave your thoughts, suggestions, and answers to the questions above in the comments by October 30. Once we hear from each team, I’ll put together the framework based on what’s realistic across events and share it back here before we start applying it to WCAsia 2027 planning.
For weeks, or even months, an event website works nonstop. It’s where people find the schedule, get to know the speakers, buy their tickets, see which sponsors support the event, and discover the culture of the community behind it. It’s the gateway to the event.
But then the event ends, the lights go out, and the website stays the same: a schedule full of past dates, a “Buy your ticket” button that no longer works, and a countdown stuck at zero. The website we worked so hard on stops adding value just when more people come looking for it.
That’s why I recommend that communities organizing WordCamps, Campus Connect events, or any WordPress Event turn their website into a closing landing page after the event. There’s no need to rebuild it from scratch. Reorganizing the content is enough to shift the site from announcing the event to telling what happened and inviting people to stay involved.
What to include
Photos and a repository to download them Share a selection on the site and a link to the full gallery. Credit each photographer and, if you can, state the license under which the photos can be reused and how to give credit.
Talks with slides and recordings For each talk, include the title, the speaker’s name, the slides as a PDF, and the link to WordPress.tv. Videos can take a while to be published, so you can post the slides first and add the videos later.
A call to action: join the community This is the most important part. Anyone visiting the site after the event has already shown interest. Add a visible button with a message such as “Did you enjoy the event? Join our community” that links to your local MeetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. group.
News, testimonials, and blog posts Gather in one place the recaps, posts, and articles written about the event. This shows the event’s impact through the voice of its own community and gives visibility to those who wrote about it.
An example in progress
We’re putting this into practice with WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Costa Rica 2026. The event took place on September 18 and 19, and we’re turning the site into a closing landing page. You can follow the changes at https://costarica.wordcamp.org/2026/
Talks and Presentations Section
Benefits
The website stays useful for months.
People who couldn’t attend can still benefit from the talks.
Speakers, photographers, volunteers, and sponsors get recognition, which motivates them to come back.
Interest from the event turns into participation in the local community.
It creates an archive for the next organizing team and shows future sponsors what the event achieved.
Photos and testimonials show what WordPress is like in your city or country.
In summary
An event’s work doesn’t end when the last day is over. With just a few changes, the website can keep adding value: preserving the memory of the event, sharing knowledge, recognizing the people who made it possible, and, above all, inviting more people to become part of the community.
If you organize a WordCamp, a Campus Connect, or a WordPress Event, I invite you to add this task to your post-event checklist. Your next event starts with the people who stay.
Hi everyone! 👋 I’m one of co-organizers of Tokyo WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook..
I’ve run into what looks like a contradiction across three handbook pages about who can organize a Meetup event, and I’d like to ask for clarification and raise it for discussion.
First, to be clear about where I stand: I think the “any member can organize an event” setting in Group Tools should be on. I’m not arguing against it.
Three pages where describes “who organize meetup”
Five Good Faith Rules, rule 4: Meetup groups allow events to be organized by any reliable/trusted member of the community.
Any Member Can Organize an Event (handbook page, published Sept 2023): any member of the group may organize events, without gatekeepers.
Existing Meetup Group Script (2015): “trusted” mostly means nice people who are active in the community, “reliable” means they show up when they say they will.
This split is recent — though I may be reading the history wrong
In the December 2016 version of the old meetupsMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. page, the Five Good Faith Rules and the “any member can organize” paragraph sat on the same page, and that paragraph said plainly that it was about a Group Tools setting.
My guess is that when this content was split into separate handbook pages in 2023, the text carried over but the surrounding context didn’t, and the new page title ended up reading as a statement of principle rather than a request about a checkbox. But that’s just my reading from the outside — if anyone was involved in that restructure and it was a deliberate change rather than a side effect, I’d genuinely like to know. It would change what I’m asking for below.
Why this became concrete for me
Someone who had never attended any of our meetups asked to organize one. I asked them to come along to an existing meetup first, and offered a video call to talk it through.
I don’t think that was gatekeeping. But “Any Member Can Organize an Event” is a page title that travels well on its own, and set against it, what I did is hard to explain. When a member asked me “anyone can organize an event, right? Or not?”, I couldn’t give a proper answer.
So I asked @nukaga, and she checked with the Community Team. The answer: any community member can run an event without being a co-organizer, but should coordinate with the co-organizers, who are expected to confirm they’re trustworthy and following the Five Good Faith Rules.
That reconciles all three pages, and it matches how I think most of us already work. But it reached me through private DMs. None of it is written down.
What I’m asking
Is that interpretation correct?
If so, I’d suggest retiring the “Any Member Can Organize an Event” page and putting its content back where it belongs: the Group Tools setting into the group management docs, and the operational expectation alongside the Five Good Faith Rules. The rules text itself should stay exactly as it is — it has been stable for a decade and that’s worth protecting. The page mostly restates things that live elsewhere, which is what made them look contradictory in the first place.
Can this be logged as a known inconsistency in the handbooks audit?
One more thing, honestly: I hadn’t been following @adityakane‘s handbook restructure work, and I should have found it before writing this. Sorry. 🙏 If the working group still has room, I’d like to join and take the Meetup Organizer Handbook audit.
In July, it was announced that WordPress meetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups will be moving off Meetup.com and onto events.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/, built on GatherPress. And since August 28, the team working on the project has had an open call for testing which brought in a lot of useful feedback.
As the team moves the project forward for the roughly 700 groups and the people in them, I wanted to give an update on where things stand. First of all, @unintended8, @harmonyromo, and I are still talking to Meetup.com, making them aware of improvements they can make and exploring how they can better support us for as long as the WordPress community meets there. Read on!
Next: Real groups run real events on it to find what works and what breaks, including using a migrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. tool that pulls from meetup.com. If you are interested in helping test this, please comment below as it’s important to have a handful of folks try it.
Later: Everyone else moves, once the platform and the migration path have held up through real use.
What we know
The team will build a migration tool which will import upcoming events and venues as drafts for the organizer to review and publish. It does not copy the member list. The plan is for someone on the team to run the import rather than the group organizer. Past events are not part of the first round. The migration will first be done manually in order to shape the tool itself and increasingly become more automated based on feedback.
Members join the new group themselves. They follow a link from your Meetup group, sign in with a WordPress.org account, join, and RSVP. So anyone who wants to stay with your group will need a WordPress.org account. Requiring WordPress.org accounts is an important change, so please start preparing now.
If something your group relies on is not there yet, say so. The team is tracking everything on the migration milestone on GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/.
What we don’t know yet
One thing that is unknown is whether members can be moved in bulk. The tool could later match Meetup members to existing WordPress.org accounts and add them to a group, or invite people by email. Whether we can do that depends on a decision about member data that has not been made yet. Until it is, joining by hand is the plan.
What happens to a group’s Meetup.com page in the end is also an open question. During a pilot it stays up, and its event listings point at the new platform instead of holding a second RSVP list. Whether it eventually closes, stays as a signpost, or something else is still open, and we are working through it with Meetup.com.
Some groups have not held an event in a while. We have to decide what to do with those dormant groups. My preference is that we reach out to them and ask whether they want help to get going again, and if so help them start on the new platform.
How you can help
Pilot! If you organize a group and would run one or two events on the new platform, volunteer in #gatherpress-migration on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ or in the comments here. We especially want groups outside Europe and North America and groups that don’t run in English.
Start on WordPress.org accounts now. If your members already have a WordPress.org account when your group moves, there is nothing for them to do on the day. Mention it at your next event.
One of the most important aspects of any open sourceOpen SourceOpen 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. community is mentorship. In many ways, WordPress is what it is today due in large part to the many established contributors who have been willing to help others find their place within the project.
The WordPress Campus Connect and WordPress Credits Programs are important variables in the equation for WordPress to remain strong for another 20+ years. This is an explicit and organized mentorship program
While we should be welcoming to everyone who shows up in our community spaces, it’s critically important that the participants of these programs are celebrated, recognized, and most importantly, adequately supported by experienced contributors when they show up to participate. Novice contributors often need a bit of extra guidance as they learn to participate while following the expectations of the community.
However, it can be hard to know who is participating in these programs without asking directly.
Proposal 1: Indicate Participation on Profile
To help everyone in the WordPress community better support, welcome, and embrace the participants of these programs, I’m proposing that a designation be added to their wordpress.org profiles. It could be a badge, but I also envision something more obvious than that. This is a very quick mock up of a possible option I came up with.
Proposal 2: Display Individual MentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.
I’d also like to propose that each participant’s mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. or program facilitator be listed on their profiles. This is something the Drupal project has done for over a decade that I think we should borrow.
It’s a great way not only to recognize the amazing mentors within the project, but it also shines a light on each person’s unique contributor journey. It can also provide a path for other contributors to share feedback indirectly with someone’s mentor to discuss with them during their time through the educational programs.
For now, I think it makes sense to limit this to only participants of these programs. But in the future it could be opened to all WordPress.org users provided there is a standardized way to approve or confirm these relationships, and an established minimum threshold for what is considered a mentorship (reviewing someone’s patch twice is not necessarily active mentorship).
Right now, the Student Clubs pages on this handbook are mostly an agreement: what a club is, and what’s expected of it. They don’t say how a club should actually run week to week, who’s watching whether it’s healthy, or what happens when it isn’t.
Defining the full onboarding -> active process has been a top priority for our team this cycle, and we want to close that gap through the following proposal.
Why this matters
Students deserve a better experience for the students actually running these clubs
We need honest and easy way to tell which clubs are active or inactive (and why)
Institutions need to be better prepared and guided to set up and launch a club
We strive to have clubs that actually succeed and sustain themselves past their founding leadership.
Everything below is in service of one of those four.
What’s missing today
The current pages don’t define a mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. role, a lifecycle from application to offboarding, any activity or health monitoring, a leadership succession path, a readiness checklist for the institution applying, or a way for the public page to show off active clubs (no logos linked to club sites, no showcase). Below is what we’re proposing to fix that, and what we’re holding off on until we have real data.
The proposed flow
School Applies ↓ Institute Readiness Confirmed (Faculty Advisor + institutional support + minimum founding members identified) ↓ Onboarding + Mentor Assigned ↓ Resources Provisioned + Site Launched ↓ 30/60-day Goals Set Against Shared Program Guidelines ↓ Monthly Engagement + Health Check ↓ At-risk Support ↓ Off Boarding If It Doesn’t Recover.
Here’s the proposed workflow to support the above:
Institutions know what they’re signing up for before they apply. Right now the application page is just a form. We want a short checklist alongside it: who’s needed (a Faculty Advisor + 2–3 founding students), that the Faculty Advisor’s real commitment kicks in after setup, once they become the club’s ongoing mentor, and what’s explicitly not required (no curriculum changes, no budget).
No club-authored playbook, no commitment agreement. Instead, we publish one shared guidelines doc with success metrics, and clubs set their own 30/60-day goals against it. Lighter to start, easier to keep current.
MentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. focus on setup, not indefinite check-ins. A community mentor gets a new club launched (roughly the first 60 days), then hands ongoing mentorship to the Faculty Advisor, who has the continuity a rotating volunteer pool doesn’t. It’s also the only way mentor time scales past a handful of clubs.
A real plan for graduating students. Today a club leader graduates and we lose touch by default. We’re proposing three paths: mentor their own club, mentor a different, newly onboarding club, or stay connected as an independent contributor. The middle option is also where new setup-phase mentors can come from.
An achievable health score, not a binary label. Eight indicators (meetings, events, member growth, documentation, website updates, contribution count, engagement, reporting) replace a vague Active/Inactive tag. We dropped “organized a WPCC event” and “WP Credits participation” from the score: not every club can pull those off, and the baseline shouldn’t penalize clubs for stretch goals. Both stay valuable as things we track separately (more below).
Planned institutional breaks. We also want to account for periods when clubs naturally need to pause because of institutional vacations, examination periods, semester breaks, or other major academic commitments. We’re considering allowing each club one or two planned breaks per year, during which the club would not be expected to maintain its normal activity cadence or be penalized by the health-check process. The exact duration, approval process, and how breaks affect monthly scoring are still open for feedback.
Baseline first, then changes
We don’t currently know which clubs are active, which aren’t, or why: that data just doesn’t exist yet. Before any of the above changes status for a real club, we want to run the health score against every currently recognized club and publish that roster as our starting point. That’s the first thing we’d do, not an afterthought.
Shipping now vs. later
In the next 30 days: run that baseline audit; publish the mentor, lifecycle, and shared-guidelines content to the handbook; publish the institution-readiness checklist and the graduating-student pathway; and link club logos to their sites on the hub page.
After that: an Active Clubs showcase on the hub page (needs the audit first), a real mentor-matching process sized to the new setup-only model, an offboarding workflow, and a lighter monthly reporting flow.
One more thing: Student Clubs as a WP Credits pathway
Curriculum change is slow and outside our control, so not every institution can integrate WordPress into formal coursework. A club can adopt a contribution activity (a translation sprint, a documentation day) as easily as a workshop, with none of that friction, and several activities already in the Guide (translation sprints, pluginPluginA 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. testing, documentation review, contributor orientation) already count as real contribution work. We think clubs are an underused on-ramp into WP Credits specifically where curriculum integration is hardest, and wanted to flag that for the broader program leads rather than sit on it.
We’d love your input
Does the mentor → Faculty Advisor handoff make sense, or does it lose something?
Anything missing from the institution-readiness checklist that’s bitten a club or school before?
Any concerns with dropping the club-authored playbook and commitment agreement?
Is 60 days the right setup window for community mentors, or should it flex by club?
For program leads: does the WP Credits framing above match what you’re seeing, and is per-club tracking (without scoring it) useful to you?
If you can, weigh in by 30th September. We’d like to start the baseline audit in October.
Please comment with any questions below, and if you’d like to help bring this plan to life please reach out in the post or to me directly at @Muhibul Haque in the Making WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
