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Summer Is Sizzling with Five for the Future Contributions

Laura Coronado

In 2014, the WordPress initiative Five for the Future (5FTF) was launched to encourage organizations to dedicate 5% of their resources to WordPress’ development and growth. This goal, envisioned by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, is designed to create a balanced ratio of contributors to users, ensuring the open-source platform’s sustainability and continuous improvement.

Let’s face it. WordPress wouldn’t be what it is today without the support of its community. This makes 5FTF imperative. After all, its primary purpose is to bolster the success and growth of WordPress by increasing the number of community contributors actively involved in its development.

This is why WebDevStudios dedicates every last Friday of the month to giving back to WordPress by sponsoring our team’s contributions to 5FTF. More contributors mean a stronger, more resilient platform where issues such as bugs and security vulnerabilities can be addressed more efficiently. This benefits everyone—WordPress users, designers, developers, and companies selling WordPress services. The Five for the Future initiative also fosters a community where innovation thrives as diverse groups of individuals collaborate to enhance the platform. That’s the best part!

5FTF Benefits

Participation in Five for the Future offers numerous benefits. For example, it ensures regular updates and improvements, keeping the platform competitive and relevant in the fast-evolving web landscape. That’s because contributors’ collective effort leads to new features, enhanced security, and overall better performance of the WordPress core, plugins, and themes.

In fact, more than 630 contributors (150 first-timers) in at least 51 countries are responsible for WordPress 6.6, aka “Dorsey.” This includes two of our very own team members: Frontend Engineer Aslam Doctor and Principal Engineer Sal Ferrarello.

Sal discovered a bug that prevented the global Javascript code from loading on the login page using the (wp_localize_script) method. He submitted a ticket for it. Aslam then created a fix and pushed the patch to the WordPress repository for review, which was approved after a few tests and updates. Sal and Aslam collaborated to create PHP test cases for the fix.

Voila! That’s the power of 5FTF—discovery, investigation, collaboration, and contribution. How can you not participate in such an amazing opportunity?

5FTF Requires Support from WordPress Companies

For organizations, the initiative presents a unique opportunity to give back to the community that supports their business. By contributing to WordPress, companies can gain recognition, build stronger relationships within the community, and stay ahead of industry trends. Additionally, it provides a platform for employees to develop their skills, share knowledge, and gain recognition for their individual contributions.

Getting involved in 5FTF is straightforward. Organizations and individuals can pledge 5% of their resources—whether time, personnel, or financial support—to various areas of WordPress development. This can include core development, plugin and theme development, documentation, security, support forums, translation, and organizing or volunteering at WordCamps. Interested parties can visit the Five for the Future website to sign up and start contributing.

At WebDevStudios, our commitment to Five for the Future is a testament to our dedication to the WordPress community. Since the initiative’s inception, we have proudly dedicated 5% of our resources to contributing to WordPress. Our team members engage in numerous activities to support the growth and sustainability of open-source software.

We encourage all WordPress companies to sponsor their employees’ involvement in Five for the Future. It’s an easy and rewarding way to contribute to the platform’s longevity and success. Your contributions, no matter how small, can make a significant difference in the continuous improvement and innovation of WordPress.

Tomorrow, July 26, 2024, is Five for the Future Friday at WebDevStudios. Below, take a look at some of the ways our team participated in 5FTF last month. We appreciate everything they do to contribute.

From Our Internal 5FTF Slack Channel

I spent some time on client work, and I am now going to spend some time on my plugin. I will also spend 1-2 hours of time researching auto-repeater fields and form structure. –Awais Altaf, Backend Engineer

To start, I want to submit https://github.com/salcode/require-auth-users-rest-endpoint to the WordPress.org plugin repository. -Sal Ferrarello, Principal Engineer

I’m browsing Core Trac for the oldest tickets alive. –Michael Beckwith, Backend Engineer

When I was working with the BT theme, I noticed a funny issue when using non-native blocks (aka ACF). That’s my task for today. –Alfredo Navas, Senior Frontend Engineer

I’m going to ride along with Sal while he submits his plugin to the WordPress plugin repo. Helping to create some of the assets and whatever I can do to help. –Marty O’Connor, Senior Frontend Engineer

I’m going to finish my WP_HTML_Tag_Processor article. I added some performance sections, comparing it with other tools. –Ramsés Del Rosario, Backend Engineer

I’ll be working on a migration tool to hopefully make migrations easier in the future. –Keith Frey, Technical Strategist

Gonna do some experimenting with the Interactivity API. –Garrett Baldwin, Backend Engineer

I will be contributing to the Polyglots Team with more Spanish translations for some plugins. Then I will try to start some new article for the WDS blog. –Jairo Perez, Senior Backend Engineer

From X (Formerly Twitter)

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