We were invited to give regular updates about GatherPress.
Here are the significant advancements made by GatherPress since our initial proposal. GatherPress continues to evolve, thanks to the active participation and feedback from community members. Here’s a detailed overview of our progress.
Call for Feedback and status of the Proposal
We are actively seeking feedback from current Meetup organizers. Your insights are invaluable in helping us refine GatherPress to better meet the needs of the WordPress community.
There are several ways to help:
- You can test GatherPress right now using this Playground demo in your browser or test it on your own site installing the plugin available in the plugin repository and provide your feedback in the comments below or in our main GatherPress GitHub repository.
- If you are a Meetup organizer, you can start testing GatherPress by publishing your Meetup events in our Demo site joining the current WordPress Meetup groups that are already using this platform, helping us to test real cases. Read the home page here, fill the form to join the tests and provide your feedback on the same site or on our GitHub repositories: For the plugin features on our main GatherPress repository, and for the Community integration, on the Gatherpress-WP-org-integration repository.
We would like to know if it was easy or not for you to add a venue, an event, and your general feeling about the use of GatherPress. ideally we would like to have feedback from attendees as well, so feel free to share the form with your attendees. - If you are a member of the Community or Meta teams, please add feature requests and reply to questions for what is needed to create the integration between GatherPress and the WordPress.org network (user accounts, user activity in profiles, email sending, group creation and management, etc) here on the Gatherpress-WP-org-integration GitHub repository.
- You can spread the word about the tool, invite event organizers to join the tests, invite people to test the tool and send feedback, etc.
It’s only after GatherPress has proven its viability through your feedback that the Meta team can implement it on the .org network for the pilot program, as we proposed in January. Therefore, your input is crucial to ensure a successful integration. Please test and provide feedback before the end of September 2024.
Improvements
Since introducing GatherPress, we have focused on integrating features that enhance event management within WordPress. Our initial release has been well-received, and community feedback has been instrumental in guiding our development process. Based on user feedback, we have implemented several improvements:
- We added OpenStreetMap to load the maps by default, Google Maps is still available as an option,
- Customizable post type and taxonomy slugs with localized defaults,
- Improvements to accessibility,
- Import and export events, venues and topics using WordPress’ native tools,
- Now using WordPress Playground to:
- Enable the “Live Preview” on .org/plugins
- Instantly preview changes from a commented Playground-link on each PR
- Automatically generate multilingual screenshots for .org/plugins
- Run end-to-end tests
- Curate and maintain a set of demo-data, that is re-used in all of those Playgrounds,
- And more, all our released features can be seen in our main GitHub project.
GatherPress on the WordPress Plugin Repository
GatherPress is now available on the official WordPress Plugin Repository since the end of June. This makes it easier for users to discover, install, and update GatherPress directly from their WordPress dashboards. Additionally, you can test GatherPress using the Playground. We encourage you to try the plugin, and as always, your feedback is invaluable.
Translation Availability
GatherPress is now available for translation. We invite community members to contribute translations, making GatherPress accessible to a broader audience. Please share it with your Polyglots teams to organize translation sprints and to get it translated to as many languages as possible!
Thanks to all the polyglots around the world, who have already translated GatherPress into 8 languages!
WordCamp US Contributor Day
GatherPress will have a dedicated table at the upcoming WordCamp US Contributor Day (September 17, 2024). This is a fantastic opportunity to meet Mike and Mervin, discuss the project, provide feedback, and contribute to the development of GatherPress. We encourage you to join us and get involved. You can even join us remotely via a video call during the Contributor Day if you do not attend the WordCamp.
Involvement can happen in many ways, for example:
- Contribution with tasks we have identified as important for our next version.
- Small backlog tasks to help get your feet wet with the project.
- Testing and identifying issues in the plugin and documenting them in a ticket to be prioritized in a future release of the plugin.
- Helping test our code by contributing to unit tests (JavaScript or PHP) or end-to-end tests (playwright).
- Work with the Meta team for the integration with the WordPress.org network.
Development Roadmap
Looking ahead, we have an exciting roadmap for GatherPress. Upcoming features include:
- Recurring event management,
- Block updates and improvements,
- Email notification when event starts,
- Event federation using ActivityPub,
- New calendar block,
- And more, all our planned features can be seen in our main GitHub project.
Furthermore, we are building addons to easily build integration with other plugins.
We are also working to integrate GatherPress with the WordPress.org network, and are identifying the requirements with the Meta and Community teams before creating a full roadmap with dates for the integration and the start of the pilot program.
We are committed to continuous improvement and look forward to delivering these new capabilities.
Join the Team
We invite community members to join the GatherPress team. Whether you are a developer, designer, translator, community member or simply passionate about improving event management in WordPress, your contributions are welcome. Together, we can shape the future of GatherPress. You can join the GatherPress Slack or GitHub and participate in our weekly huddles on Fridays at 15:00 UTC (16:00 UTC from November to March). The upcoming huddles are always listed on the homepage of our website.
Get to know GatherPress and the Team
You can visit our blog and watch the interviews we gave, they are packed with information about GatherPress. To know more about who we are, you can have a look at the team page.
We are grateful for the community’s support and look forward to your continued involvement as we refine and expand GatherPress. Together, we are shaping the future of event management within the WordPress ecosystem.
For any queries or to provide direct feedback, please reach out to @mauteri or @patriciabt on WordPress Slack.
Thank you for your support!
The GatherPress Team
Written and reviewed by @patricia70, @mauteri, @carstenbach, @malgra from the GatherPress team, and reviewed by @_dorsvenabili, @nao, @peiraisotta.
Many thanks!
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