Alumni Program: Plan your contribution beyond the WP Credits

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

• Identify the WordPress contribution team you intend to keep contributing to after the program
• Locate that team’s meeting schedule and communication channels
• Introduce yourself to a contribution team as an ongoing contributor
• Describe your contribution record in terms a prospective employer would recognise
• Join the WP Credits alumni program and record contact details that allow us to reach you after you graduate

What you gain by doing this now

Your WP Credits program ends, but your access to the WordPress project does not. Every team you have worked with stays open to you, permanently, with no application and no gatekeeper. This lesson is about setting yourself up to make good use of that.

Keep the momentum you have built. You have spent this term learning a workflow, a codebase, and a set of conventions that took real effort to absorb. That knowledge is at its sharpest right now. Carrying it straight into your next contribution costs you very little; picking it back up in six months means relearning things you currently know cold.

Keep meeting people in the community. The contributors you have worked with are a professional network that took you a term to build, and it grows every time you show up. Attending a team meeting while you are still an active contributor means you arrive as someone people recognise. That recognition is what makes the next conversation easy — asking for a review, asking who owns something, or asking whether anyone is hiring.

Keep building a portfolio that works for you. Your contribution history is public, permanent, and verifiable by anyone. Most graduates apply for jobs with coursework; you can apply with a record of shipping work that experienced engineers reviewed and accepted. Every contribution you add after this term makes that record stronger, and it keeps growing whether or not you are enrolled in anything.

Four to six weeks is enough time to attend a meeting, introduce yourself, and leave with relationships that will last beyond the program.

Step 1 — Choose the team you will keep contributing to

This may be the team you contributed to during the program, or a different one you encountered along the way and found more interesting. Either is fine.

Step 2 — Attend one team meeting before the program ends

Find your team’s meeting time on their Make site, and attend one. Meetings are held in Slack or on Zoom depending on the team, and they are open — you do not need an invitation.

You do not need to say anything substantial (but participation is encouraged!). Turning up, following the agenda, and seeing how decisions actually get made is the point. Most teams also post an agenda in advance and notes afterwards, so read those too.

Step 3 — Introduce yourself as someone continuing

Post a short message in your team’s channel. This is the step that does the real work, and it takes five minutes:

Hi all — I’m [name]. I’ve been contributing through the WP Credits program this term, where I [one sentence on what you did, with a link]. My program finishes in [month], and I’d like to keep contributing to [team]. Happy to pick up [the kind of work you want]. What would be most useful?

Two things happen when you post this. The team learns your name while your work is still recent, and you get told what is actually needed — which is usually more useful than guessing.

Step 4 — Get onto the team’s contributor list

Most teams maintain a list of active contributors, and some run onboarding or new-contributor sessions on a regular cycle. Ask in the channel how to be added.

If you are continuing as part of paid work, or your employer sponsors contribution time, look at Five for the Future and whether a pledge applies to you.

Step 5 — Build your contribution record

Your contribution history is public, permanent, and verifiable by anyone — which makes it unusually valuable evidence in a job search. Most graduates have coursework; you have a documented history of shipping work that strangers reviewed.

Assemble it now, while you remember the details:

• Your WordPress.org profile — check that your contributions and any badges are showing, and that your profile says who you are
• Direct links to your tickets, patches, pull requests, translations, or published content
• Release credit — if your work shipped in a WordPress release, note the version number; your name is in it permanently
• A short written account of one contribution, start to finish: what the problem was, what you did, what the review process changed about your approach

That last one is the item that interviews turn into conversations. “I found a bug, submitted a fix, and a maintainer told me my approach was wrong for reasons I hadn’t considered — here’s what I did next” demonstrates something a grade cannot.

Add these to your personal website alongside your reflection posts.

Step 6 — Join the WP Credits alumni program

The alumni program is how we stay in touch with you after you graduate, and how you stay connected to the people you have been working with. It is deliberately light: a channel, occasional news, and one invitation a year.

Record three things. Your university email will stop working, so without these we lose you entirely:

• A personal email address that will still work in a year
• Your WordPress.org username
• Your Slack handle in Making WordPress

Join the alumni channel. This is where cohorts stay in contact with each other and where we post opportunities, calls for testing, and events. Alumni from previous cohorts are there too, and they are worth knowing — they are a year or two ahead of you in the same transition.

Answer the mentoring question. Would you be willing to mentor a WP Credits student next year? You would be paired with one Level 1 participant and support them through their first contribution — roughly an hour a week for a term.

It is the single most useful thing an alum can do for this program, and it is not a favor we are asking lightly: the people best placed to help someone through a first contribution are the ones who did it themselves a year earlier. You will remember what was confusing, because it was recently confusing for you.

Definition of done

• You have named the team you intend to keep contributing to
• You have attended at least one of that team’s meetings
• You have posted an introduction in the team’s channel, and can link to it
• Your contribution record is assembled and published on your personal website
• You have joined the alumni channel, recorded your three contact details, and answered the mentoring question

Submit your work

1. Open your individual tracking link and select this lesson.
2. Name your ongoing team, and paste the link to your introduction message.
3. Paste the link to your published contribution record.
4. Complete the alumni program fields: personal email, WordPress.org username, Slack handle, and the mentoring opt-in.
5. Submit, then tell your mentor which team you chose — they may be able to introduce you to people in it directly, which is worth more than an introduction you make yourself.

Key Terms

✅ Check Your Understanding

• Which team’s work would you still find interesting if nobody were tracking whether you did it?
• Why does introducing yourself now work better than reaching out in six months?
• Describe one contribution of yours in three sentences, as you would to an interviewer who knows nothing about WordPress.