Location: #playground Slack Channel
The WordPress Playground team held its weekly meeting on October 10, 2024. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.
Announcements
AI-Powered Documentation Search
The team added a new feature to the WordPress Playground documentation that uses AI to answer user questions. The implementation uses kapa.ai and is currently in testing. The team is collecting community feedback. Thanks to @zaerl for implementing this feature.
PHP Playground Beta
A new PHP Playground beta was released, featuring an IDE-like interface with:
- File Explorer.
- Terminal with support for PHP, WP, and Composer commands.
- Browser-based development capabilities.
This enhancement builds on the previous version created by @zieladam and incorporates community feedback. The new version enables users to use Composer and compile PHP directly from the browser.
Playground Importer Improvements
Thanks to issue reports from @bph, the Playground importer now auto-rewrites URLs from the original site to Playground paths using wordpress-importer 0.9.1+.
CLI Performance Updates
The Playground CLI received performance improvements, now using multi-worker startup by sharing WordPress files via the local filesystem instead of zip copying.
Landing Page Improvements
@zieladam refactored the landing page, improving performance and fixing issues some users experienced due to customizations on the web version of Playground. The team also added a new favicon that is visible in both light and dark modes, addressing feedback from @Krupa.
Merge Activity
Since the last meeting, the team has merged 30 pull requests.
Documentation Updates
The team celebrated translation contributions from @Dilip Modhavadiya, @Béryl, @shimomura Tomoki, and @Shail Mehta, who submitted new translations for French, Japanese, Gujarati, and Tagalog.
@fellyph created a base for Bengali translations and is working with @Muhibul Haque to expand Bengali language support.
Community Highlights
Contributor Badges
Two more community members earned the contributor badge this week, bringing the total to 37 members with contributor badges.
WordCamp Presentations
Several community members presented about WordPress Playground at recent WordCamps:
- @bph presented at WordCamp Gdynia with the talk Streamlined Block Theme Development: Using WordPress Playground and GitHub for No-Code Version Control of Site Editor Changes
- @nilovelez presented at WordCamp Galicia (in Spanish) about Playground, la mejor herramienta jamás inventada para enseñar WordPress
- @danieldudzic presented “Testing Faster Than a Red Bull Pit Stop: WordPress Playground and WooCommerce Blueprints” at WordCamp Gdynia.
The team encourages anyone who has given a talk about Playground or created related content to share it so the Resources page can be updated.
Updates from Contributors
@fellyph attended WordCamp Galicia, where he collected community feedback, ran the Playground table at contributor day, reviewed translations in the repository, and prepared the base structure for Bengali translations. He plans to prepare a page for WP Credits in the documentation and update the Playground documentation.
@bpayton worked on updates to make it easier for teams to build and self-host the Playground web app, giving teams control over their deployed version while still being able to use playground.wordpress.net.
@zieladam has been:
- Testing the new XDebug feature.
- Exploring full-fledged block development in the browser by running Node.js and webpack, which could complement the recently shipped PHP Playground beta.
- Helping Birgit import navigation menus via WXR and troubleshooting a bug in the process.
@janjakes has been improving the SQLite plugin, intending to support PHPMyAdmin in the near future.
Open Floor
Translating the Admin Panel UI
@fellyph raised a question about whether the admin panel UI at playground.wordpress.net should be translated. After watching @nilovelez‘s talk about WordPress Playground, he noted it would be helpful if the UI could be explained in the presenter’s native language.
Community feedback:
- @Moses Cursor noted that people from non-English speaking regions would be encouraged to use Playground more if the interface were available in their language.
- @bph emphasized that translating the interface would help non-English speakers embrace Playground and broaden its reach into non-developer spaces, such as teaching writing. Without translation, non-English speakers have difficulty using Playground for various purposes.
@fellyph will create an issue to track this feature request.
Next Steps
For more information, join our #playground Slack Channel, and see you in our next chat, which is scheduled for October 24th.