In last week’s Training Team (see Slack thread here) meeting we brought up the question of “what content are we obligated to leave on learn and until what version of WordPress do we need to support”.
This question is a critical one as the team is currently working on relaunching Learn WordPress with a fresh new design and streamlined content experience which includes Learning Pathways, Courses, and Lessons. Part of this project includes content deprecation for Tutorials and Lesson Plans, and a push toward presenting content on the site that is new, fresh, and relevant.
Here’s some takeaways from the discussion on Slack:
- Content that is not relevant to current core features of WordPress should be removed (ex. classic editor)
- We could view the WordPress version usage stats to decide what content is most relevant and should be the focus for our team.
- We can use WordPress and PHP usage metrics to guide our content maintenance process
- More than 70% of WordPress installs are using either 6.5 or 6.4.
- Historically the project maintainers have used 5% as the baseline, ie if more than 5% of WordPresses are using that version of PHP, then support it (this currently aligns with the above point).
- The team should review content every 6-12 months for relevancy
Proposed path forward
- Adopt 5% baseline for content, which equates to supporting the last two versions of WordPress
- Create a content maintenance review process that is run twice a year
- Triage GitHub for content issues which can be closed based on the new baseline
Contribute to this conversation
Here’s some questions to help keep the conversation going:
- Do you agree with the proposed 5% baseline for content relevance? Why or why not?
- Should there be exceptions to the 5% rule in certain circumstances? If so, what might those exceptions be?
- What are your thoughts on the proposed bi-annual (twice a year) content review process?
- How can we ensure that the content review process remains thorough and effective?
- What strategies could we adopt to effectively communicate content deprecations to our learners?
- What other metrics or data sources could be beneficial for informing our content maintenance process?
Please share your thoughts on this topic by June 13th, 2024