Hello GCI Students,
You’ve probably reached this post from a GCI Task linking you here, if so – welcome to the WordPress UI Group blog. This is where we work on designing and developing the front-end of the WordPress administrative system.
We have three main mentors for UI based tasks:
- Jane Wells – The UI and UX lead for WordPress.
- John O’Nolan (that’s me) – I’m Jane’s deputy and I head up the UI Group.
- Sara Cannon – One of the UI Group’s main contributors
Most of these mentors are available for your questions in the #wordpress-gsoc channel on irc.freenode.net depending on the time of day.
When we complete WordPress UI based tasks, we have meetings here each week to discuss the work that’s going to be completed. Once the tasks are decided and assigned to different people, mockups are produced which are then reviewed here. After a couple of rounds of revisions (sometimes more), the work is signed off, and we move over to WordPress Trac – which is where the development happens.
For your GCI tasks which are focused mockups, here are some resources which you can use:
- We have an early working version of a styleguide for WordPress
- We have a PSD which contains assets for the main WordPress admin layout (link tbc)
- We have a PSD which contains assets for the assorted WordPress UI elements (link tbc)
Also, when creating mockups – here are some very important things to keep in mind.
- Remember that WordPress is designed to be used by millions of people
- Everything we design needs to be translated into over 60 different languages
- These languages include really long words and special charcters (eg. Chinese and Korean)
- Some of these languages are written from right to left (commonly referred to as RTL)
- For these reasons all WordPress UI elements need to “work” with double the width, a flexible height, and backwards.
- Want to know why the WordPress UI is the way it is right now? Read the user testing report which took place for WordPress 2.7, which is what the current UI is based on.
- Design for a consistent user experience and to be flexible – above all other things.