# Lessons for Hubs from Wordpress

> After attending Wordpress Asia 2024, I look at some takeaways that can help Hubs

URL: [Original article](https://mattcool.tech/posts/lessons-for-hubs-from-wordpress)

Published: 2024-03-09T09:26:00.000Z

Tags: notes, community

## The Future of WordPress

**[Noel Tock](https://profiles.wordpress.org/flavor/) - [Human Made](https://humanmade.com/)**

- Search interest is trending down, but market share has stabilized
- "Mature services" are on an upward trend (number of freelancers and agencies offering WordPress services)
- **Where is Hubs on the S-Curve?** Early adoption → Growth → Maturity
- WordPress brand has some challenging narratives to overcome—competition labels it as a monolith, and it's seen as obsolete tech, although over 40% of the web uses WordPress
- "Market doesn't understand WordPress" — WordPress needs to transform itself; closing the distance from core to market is the answer
- WordPress has over 60,000 plugins
- Noel sees an opportunity to create first-party plugins that WordPress can ship and support for common third-party integrations
- Human Made has to sell clients not only on their services but also fight against negative branding around WordPress (being outdated, insecure, "just a blogging platform," etc.)

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## Recognizing Contributors in WordPress

**[Jonathan Desrosiers](https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/)**
*March 8, 2024 • 1:00 PM CST • Track 3 / Room 101B*

- WordPress has sponsored contributors through the **[Five for the Future](https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/)** program (companies making money on WordPress are encouraged to contribute 5% back to WordPress)
- Aretha Franklin "give me my propers" — WordPress uses **props** as kudos
- Props are built into WordPress PRs with a required line to give people credit
- They have different distinction levels within the props system
- **Challenge:** What about contributions that don't get tracked?
- There's an independent website called **[WordPress.org Profiles](https://profiles.wordpress.org/)** that allows contributors to register profiles
- They have a **props bot** that collects all activity connected to a PR using GitHub Actions
- The **[Faces of WordPress](https://wordpress.org/news/category/heropress/)** series takes a more qualitative approach to recognizing contributions

### Key Takeaways on Recognition:
- Look to more qualitative approaches to recognizing contributions
- Non-privileged contributions need to be celebrated more
- Understand motivations and expectations and factor them into recognition
- Do people know how they want to be recognized?
- **[Drupal](https://www.drupal.org/)** has interesting gamification of contributions worth exploring

> Ensuring contributors feel appreciated is essential to the success of any open source project. In its 20+ year history, there have been over 5,400 unique contributors listed on the Credits pages for each version released. But even as one of the largest current FOSS projects powering 43%+ of the Internet, this number is inaccurate and low.

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## The Art of Impactful WordPress Collaboration

**[Naoko Takano](https://profiles.wordpress.org/nao/)**
*March 9, 2024 • 9:00 AM CST • Track 2 / Room 102*

> "You should do a WordCamp" — small encouragement to a contributor can result in big outcomes. Naoko says she wouldn't have hosted WordCamps without that one suggestion from [Matt Mullenweg](https://ma.tt/), WordPress co-founder.

### Contributor Statistics:
- 20 self-sponsored contributors
- 60 company-sponsored contributors
- 21 "impactful" contributors

### Resources:
- **[make.wordpress.org](https://make.wordpress.org/)** — "Year in Core" reports
- Companies set aside time specifically to work on WordPress core
- **[Learn WordPress](https://learn.wordpress.org/)** — about 4 years old
- One-stop shop for tutorials, lesson plans for teachers, self-guided courses, and online workshops
- As a non-profit, they can host videos on YouTube without ads while still getting analytics and discoverability
- WordPress has a **consortium of top agencies** working to improve the profile and reputation of WordPress among enterprise clients

### Book Recommendation:
- **[The Art of Community](https://www.jonobacon.com/books/artofcommunity/)** by [Jono Bacon](https://www.jonobacon.com/)

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