Rolly Bueno

I’m excited to announce that Contributor Highlights has been updated to version 1.1.0. This release introduces new badges, resolves dependency issues, and improves layout alignment for a smoother and more consistent experience.

✨ What’s New

• New: Added Core AI, Playground, and Credits Mentor badges to recognize broader areas of WordPress contribution.
• Fix: Resolved broken dependencies that prevented icons from rendering correctly.
• Fix: Corrected container alignment issues when using badges inside column layouts.

Why This Update Matters

My goal for Contributor Highlights is to continuously evolve alongside the WordPress community. The new badges highlight contributors working in AI projects, Playground experimentation, and mentorship — expanding recognition beyond traditional contribution areas.

The fixes also ensure the plugin remains stable and visually consistent across themes, keeping badges sharp and well-aligned in all layouts.

How to Update

1. Back up your site (recommended).
2. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
3. Locate Contributor Highlights and click Update now, or upload the latest .zip manually.
4. After updating, check your contributor sections to confirm icons and layout display correctly.

Get Involved

You can download the latest version from the WordPress Plugin Directory:
👉 https://wordpress.org/plugins/contributor-highlights/

If you’d like to contribute, suggest improvements, or report issues, visit the GitHub repository:
👉 https://github.com/rollybueno/Contributor-Highlights

Looking Ahead

For version 1.2.0, I plan to introduce:

• Categorized and color-coded badges
• A friendlier admin UI for badge management
• Accessibility refinements for screen readers and keyboard navigation

Thank you for your continued feedback and support — it truly helps me improve the plugin and celebrate every WordPress contributor’s impact.

This year I got the chance to join WordCamp US 2025 Contributor Day remotely, and I’m really happy to share that I was able to contribute to the Hosting Team. Even though I wasn’t there in person, it honestly felt like being part of the action. The collaboration, support, and energy from everyone made it a great experience.

What I Worked On

I focused on improving documentation for the Hosting Handbook and the Advanced Administration Handbook. These updates may look small on the surface, but they help make the docs easier to follow and more reliable for anyone who depends on them. And the best part — all of the pull requests I worked on got merged during Contributor Day itself!

Here’s what went through:

• Hosting Handbook
  • Fix: Correct “as risk” to “at risk” in security.md
  • Fix: Update URL to use https instead of http
  • Fix: Standardize short-term capitalization in server-environment.md
• Advanced Administration Handbook
  • Fix: Wrong redirect in Network Admin Sites Screen
  • Fix typos in creating-database.md
  • Add critical error troubleshooting section to common-errors.md

Thoughts After the Day

Contributing like this reminded me why I love being part of the WordPress community. It’s not just about code — it’s about people helping each other and building something bigger together. Seeing my contributions merged right away gave me that extra motivation boost. And it’s proof that no matter where you are in the world, you can still make an impact on WordPress.

I’m really happy to share that my name showed up in the official A Month in Core report for August 2025 on:

It’s a monthly update that highlights everyone who helped push WordPress Core forward, and it feels good to be included again.

Most of my work in August was about testing, reviewing, and sending patches to make WordPress a little more stable and easier to use. I spent time writing test reports so bugs could be reproduced and fixed properly, digging into tickets around performance, editor stability, and form handling, and even helping clean up documentation to make things clearer for new contributors. I also joined a few discussions about improving the developer experience — things like better error handling and stronger test coverage.

All in all, I picked up 8 props for my contributions to WordPress 6.9 so far. Each prop might look small on paper, but behind it are hours of troubleshooting, testing, and collaborating with other contributors.

Representing the Philippines 🇵🇭

Something I’m especially proud of is that I was the lone Core contributor from the Philippines in this report. While it’s great to represent, I really hope more kababayan jump in and get involved with Core in the future.

That said, I want to acknowledge that many Filipinos are already contributing in other meaningful ways within the WordPress community, whether as meetup organizers, WordCamp organizers, volunteers, or speakers. The WordPress project grows stronger when more voices are part of the conversation, and I’d love to see more Filipinos on that list.

This keeps me motivated to keep contributing, learning, and sharing. With WordPress 6.9 on the way, I’m looking forward to being part of the work that shapes its release.

After months of dedication, I’m thrilled to announce that my new WordPress block theme, MonoFrame, is officially live on WordPress.org!

MonoFrame is a sleek, clean, and modern block theme built specifically for Full Site Editing (FSE). It offers a minimalistic canvas designed for creators, bloggers, and professionals who appreciate flexibility, simplicity, and performance.

With carefully crafted global styles, responsive layouts, and accessibility-ready features, MonoFrame provides an intuitive editing experience, allowing you to easily build and customize every part of your WordPress site.

This launch marks a significant milestone, and I’m excited to see how the WordPress community embraces MonoFrame. Your feedback and suggestions are always welcome and greatly appreciated.

Check it out and give it a spin:

Happy building!

On June 6, 2025, during our weekly Training Team meeting, I was awarded the Training Contributor badge in recognition of my contributions to Learn.WordPress.org. This badge honors members who help create, review, or translate lessons, and I’m proud to be among the recipients.

Highlights from the 3rd June 2025 Meeting

In the meeting recap on Make WordPress Training, we covered:

• Reviewing Q2 goals: we gathered feedback on our 2025 milestones as we wrapped up the second quarter.
• Volunteer opportunities: we invited contributors to host online workshops, coffee hours, study jams, or lesson walkthroughs.
• Triage squad updates: we prepared for upcoming biweekly issue triage sessions.
• Contributor Day planning: we coordinated an online Training Team Contributor Day alongside WordCamp Europe 2025 Contributor Day.

Amid all these items, I was honored when my badge was announced.

My Translation Contributions

Localization makes WordPress accessible worldwide. Over the past months, I’ve reviewed and pushed forward key Tagalog translations for lessons and documentation, including:

1. Issue #3183 – translating new lesson content into Tagalog
2. Issue #3144 – updating terminology for consistency
3. Issue #3143 – refining translation style guidelines
4. Issue #3139 – reviewing community-submitted translations
5. Issue #3138 – testing translated pages for accuracy

My attention to detail and clear feedback have helped the Training Team deliver high-quality, localized learning materials for Tagalog speakers.

Feedback Validation Efforts

Beyond translations, I’ve validated and acted on learner feedback to keep our lessons relevant and error-free. Recent issues I tackled include:

1. Issue #3137 – consolidating user feedback on workshop formatting
2. Issue #3159 – verifying reported typos and code snippet errors
3. Issue #3181 – confirming accessibility improvements across lesson pages

By stepping in to validate and apply this feedback, I help keep our content polished and learner-focused.

How You Can Get Involved

If you’re inspired by my work, here are a few ways to jump in:

• Join a Meeting: we meet every Tuesday at 07:00 UTC in #training on Slack. Peek at the agenda before you hop on.
• Help with Translations: pick an open issue from the “Content ready for review” board and lend your language skills.
• Validate Feedback: spot a typo or bug? Check out “Feedback awaiting validation”, confirm it, then help fix it.
• Host a Workshop: run a coffee hour or study session using lessons on Learn.WordPress.org, teaching is a great way to learn!

About the WordPress Training Team

We’re a global bunch of volunteers who love teaching and learning all things WordPress. Our playground is Learn.WordPress.org, where we create, polish, and translate bite-sized lessons on using, extending, and contributing to WordPress.

What we’re aiming for in 2025:

• Reach more folks by spreading the word about our free lessons
• Make every lesson as clear and accessible as possible (think captions, screen-reader friendliness, simple language)
• Grow our community so everyone, from total newbies to seasoned devs, can share knowledge and skills

How we keep it rolling: weekly Zoom hangouts, biweekly GitHub triage sessions, tons of hands-on workshops, and a friendly Slack channel where no question is too small. Whether you write a line of lesson content, review a translation, or flag a typo, every bit of help counts.

Come join us!