Category: WP Contribution

Wordpress Credits Contribution posts.

  • 6. Wrap-up Presentation

    Hello! My name is Jorge Rodríguez Rodríguez, and I’m happy to share the latest report on my participation in WordPress Credits. This report will summarize my contributions to the Polyglots program, the challenges I’ve faced, and the things I’ve learned. I hope my experience will be helpful to others participating in this type of program.

    Selected Contributor Team

    I have been contributing to the Polyglots team, specifically by translating plugins into Spanish (Spain). I have focused on translating plugins, translating over 800 strings across the Post Views Counter and Chaty plugins.

    Throughout my time translating, I’ve encountered several challenges, such as dealing with variables in strings. Since some strings aren’t immediately visible to the user, some translations have been somewhat complicated because I had to dig into the code to see their context.

    Another challenge I faced was that I didn’t really know where to start with the translations, but after a brief meeting with my mentor, Ángel Zinsel, on Slack, he explained where I needed to go to begin translating and helped me join the Slack group where I could request that my translations be reviewed.

    Resources I’ve used

    The resources I used for the translation are as follows:

    I started by reading the handbook in Spanish to learn the translation guidelines I should follow when beginning to translate. I also watched the video (quite old, to be honest) by Nilo Vélez.

    Challenges and Solutions

    As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, one of the biggest challenges when translating is the lack of knowledge about WordPress plugins, which led me to make a few mistakes early on in the translation process. There’s also the lack of context regarding variables in strings; to figure out what they refer to, you have to look at the plugin’s code to determine the meaning of the variables in certain strings.

    My contributions

    Table displaying contributor details and translation statistics for Jorge Rodríguez Rodríguez, including total translations, translated, suggested, and fuzzy counts.
    A screenshot displaying translation statistics for a contributor named Jorge Rodríguez Rodríguez, including total translations, latest activity timestamp, and categorized translation counts.

    Key Learnings

    The WordPress Credits course has helped me, above all, to understand how to use the native editor and work more efficiently. What I’ve taken away most is learning how to:

    • Use Blocks effectively: Design complete pages visually and cleanly, without having to install plugins to build the website.
    • Create Patterns: Design sections that I can save and reuse anywhere on the website in a super-simple way to save time.
    • Edit Templates: Modify the website’s overall structure (such as headers or footers) in an organized manner.

    New Skills Gained

    Thanks to the entire course and the internship, I’ve gained a solid set of skills:

    • Technical: Advanced layout design using native WordPress blocks, creating layouts and templates, and basic code reading (PHP/HTML) to locate variables during translation.
    • Soft Skills: Independently solving technical problems, communicating with mentors during work meetings, and the ability to adapt when working with new tools.

    Personal reflection

    Taking this course and submitting my first contribution has been a great experience. What surprised me most is how welcoming the WordPress community is to newcomers and how quickly you can overcome a problem if you ask a mentor for help.

    Looking ahead, my plan is to keep messing around with the block editor to fully master it and, why not, keep doing translations from time to time on Polyglots now that I know how to navigate the platform and understand its code.

  • 5. Contribution Experience

    My experience while translating has been pretty good, although I’ve run into a few issues. For example, since I wasn’t very familiar with some of the plugins I was translating, I made several mistakes in my initial translations and had to correct them later. Another common problem is that you don’t always have the context of the phrase you’re translating, and sometimes it doesn’t even help much to have the plugin installed on your website to understand what it’s referring to.

    To solve these issues, I had to click on the reference links provided by the translation platform itself.

    Screenshot of a settings interface displaying instructions for inserting a counter automatically, with a highlighted link to the reference file.

    Here you can see where the reference link appears within the translation platform so you can investigate the phrase.

    From there, I had to directly review the plugin’s code to figure out what the variables in certain phrases (strings) meant and so understand exactly which word fit best.

    Code snippet showing options for inserting a post views counter in a programming context.

    A look at the code: searching for the variable to understand what information that phrase will display on the website.

    In the end, it was a slightly more laborious process, but it really helps ensure that the translation makes sense and, at the same time, gives you a much better understanding of how everything works behind the scenes.

    In the end, I ended up translating over 800 strings across the Post Views Counter and Chaty plugins.

    Post Views Counter: https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/es/default/wp-plugins/post-views-counter/#contributor-jorgerod22

    Table displaying translation contributions by Jorge Rodríguez Rodríguez, including total translations, translations completed, suggested, and fuzzy translations.

    Chaty: https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/es/default/wp-plugins/chaty/#contributor-jorgerod22

    Table showing contributor information with name, latest translation time, and total translations.

  • 4. Selecting the contribution

    One part of the WordPress Credits course involves choosing a way to contribute to the WordPress community. When it came time to decide what to do, I considered several options.

    At first, I thought about creating design patterns and submitting them, but in the end I decided that translating was the better option, since the Polyglots team seemed like the quickest way to start contributing.

    The problem was that at first I didn’t really know how it worked or where to start. So I asked my mentor, Ángel Zinsel, and we had a quick meeting on Slack. That meeting was really helpful because he explained how the platform worked and helped me join the Slack channel where I needed to request reviews of the translations I was doing. It’s been a great experience to see that, in a fairly simple way, you can contribute something useful to the WordPress community.

  • 3. Website Creation

    When creating the course website, I decided to build a portfolio, since, interestingly enough, it’s one of the few types of websites I had never designed before.

    Thanks to the opportunity to use WordPress’s native blocks, the entire portfolio development process was much easier and more intuitive than expected, since this modular system allows you to shape the website and structure the content in a purely visual way, without needing to touch a single line of code or know how to code.

    Even so, it wasn’t all smooth riding; due to my lack of prior experience with this block editor, I ran into several problems and challenges along the way. For example, managing the navigation within the editor didn’t feel very intuitive to me, which made structuring the website’s flow more difficult than I’d anticipated.

    Added to this was a fairly common headache: the menu on the mobile version. Getting the navigation menu to adapt correctly to mobile screens, ensuring it was user-friendly, and preventing the design from breaking was quite a battle.

    In the end, these obstacles are what really teach you to master the tool and understand how to solve real-world web design problems.

  • 2. Onboarding Courses

    In the onboarding practical training, the course is divided into three structured levels that increase in difficulty (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced).

    Graphic for Beginner WordPress User course, featuring a man working on a laptop.

    I started with the Beginner level, where the course covers the most basic things you need to learn about WordPress, which helped me get familiar with the interface and overcome some of my fear of the unknown.

    Then I moved on to the Intermediate level, where there’s a significant leap forward and you start delving deeply into WordPress’s features and how to use them correctly. While the beginner level teaches you how to navigate the dashboard, here the focus is much more practical and technical, teaching you how to make the most of the native tools the platform offers to shape and bring a real website to life.

    Within this level, one of the key parts is that they explain in detail how to use Blocks (the native editor blocks). They teach you the logic behind this modular system, showing how to combine text, images, columns, and interactive elements to structure any type of page or article.

    Upon finishing, I moved on to the Advanced level, a much more technical stage where the course focuses on optimization, security, and professional WordPress management. This is the level that truly teaches you to work “under the hood” and gives you the tools needed to manage large-scale projects with complete confidence and competence.

    Additionally, I took the optional Developer and Designer courses. I liked the Developer courses best, since they explain how to create your own plugins, themes, etc., using programming.

    Image showing two educational course cards for WordPress development: one for 'Beginner WordPress Developer' and one for 'Intermediate Theme Developer', each with hours, lessons, and completion status.

    I didn’t like the optional Designer course very much, since it was a sort of combination of what they cover in the intermediate course with a little more information.

    Course information card for 'Beginner WordPress Designer' featuring a colorful interface design and instructional elements, indicating 4 hours duration and 24 lessons completed.

  • 1. Onboarding Experience

    I just started the WordPress Credits course and wanted to kick off this series of posts by telling you how my first experience went: the onboarding process. Although introductory phases can sometimes feel tedious, in this case it was essential for laying the groundwork before we dive into real projects.

    This initial phase focused on learning the fundamentals, principles, and rules that govern WordPress. Understanding the philosophy behind the platform is vital to knowing why it works the way it does and avoiding rookie mistakes. Within this theoretical foundation, one of the key points was to clarify once and for all the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, a classic dilemma that often confuses many people but is explained here in a very clear and straightforward way so you know which option to choose depending on the project.