Creating a WordPress.org Account
Having a WordPress.org profile is essential to participating on teams, joining the Making WordPress Slack, reviewing plugins or themes, submitting bug tickets, and more.
Completing your profile will help others more clearly connect with you.
Objectives
After completing this lesson, participants will be able to:
- Locate their WordPress.org profile
- Log in to WordPress.org
- Complete the profile information, including a photo or avatar
- Describe how their activity in WordPress will be reflected on their profiles
Prerequisite Skills
Participants will get the most from this lesson if they have familiarity with:
- WordPress.org Get Involved team sites and support forums
- Have an email address
- Have a profile photo or custom avatar available to upload
Readiness Questions
- Do you have an email address?
- Do you already have a WordPress.org profile?
- Can you locate your profile link?
- How complete is your profile?
Materials Needed
- Internet access
- Profile photo or avatar
Notes for the Presenter
- Participants will need to check email during this process
Lesson Outline
- Preview the support forums and recent reviews.
- Tour a Get Involved team on Make. View a team post and connect comments to WordPress profiles. Describe that to write on one of the team posts, users would be invited with their WordPress.org profile.
- If there is an upcoming WordCamp, view the site. Discover these on WordCamp Central. Visit the speakers page and attendees page if possible to show images of participants. Relate this to users WordPress.org profile.
- If you log a feature request or bug report, Core and Meta Trac require a login.
- View Matt’s profile. Tour the Contribution History (giving an overview to earning badges), Activity, Plugins, Themes, and Favorites, explaining how our activity within WordPress.org is tied to our profiles and visible for others to follow. Relate this to support responders reviewing profiles for comments and reviews left on plugins. Notice on Tor-Björn’s profile that translations are also visible.
To associate a profile photo or avatar, users will need to create an account with Gravatar.
Exercises
Exercise name
Use the slides to walk participants through creating an account.
- Go to https://login.wordpress.org/register. (Top right corner of most pages within WordPress.org)
- Demonstrate editing your profile
Assessment
WordPress Profiles are optional to use plugins and themes
- True
- False
Answer: 1. True
WordPress Profiles are required to review plugins
- True
- False
Answer: 1. True
To upload a photo to your WordPress Profile:
- Upload it on WordPress.org
- Create an account on Gravatar
Answer: 2. Create an account on Gravatar
Your activity on WordPress.org is visible on your WordPress Profile
- True
- False
Answer: 1. True
Additional Resources
Example Lesson
A WordPress.org profile is essential for many functions within the WordPress system. Your profile has the following information:
- Shares your photo and Slack username
- Can include a bio
- Interests
- General and employer information
- If your contributions are sponsored
Your profile shows:
- Contribution History (Badges)
- Activity
- Posts or Comments on team blogs (P2)
- Comments on Support Forums
- Core and Meta Trac activity
- More
It also reveals your plugins contributions:
- Plugin Developer
- Plugin Contributor
As well as Theme contributions:
With it, you can also favorite plugins and view them later on your profile:
If you participate in Translations, your contributions will be visible:
When you navigate the Support forums, you’ll be prompted to login in when creating reviews and support requests.
Clicking on the user names in these locations lead to viewing profiles. Remember your activity is visible on your profile.
When viewing Themes and Plugins, authors will be attributed. These links return to the author’s profile page.
Make Team posts use profiles in a few places:
- From the Get Involved tab, navigate to Make team sites
- Author profile visible
- Posts or Comments on team blogs (P2)
- Comments to each post
- Linked to within posts when referring to meeting participants
Core, Meta, Plugin, and Theme Trac will use the profile:
Attendees and speakers at WordCamps are often featured on the event’s website using the same email associated with the participant’s WordPress.org profile or Gravatar account.
Creating Your Account
Go to https://login.wordpress.org/register to sign up. You could get there from any number of places within the support forums as well.
After filling in your information, select Create Account. Then check your email inbox for a link to confirm.
This link will prompt you to create a secure password and enter some preliminary details.
After you have completed this, you will see that you are logged in in the top-right corner of the website. You may also be viewing WordPress Support. You can select the drop down menu to navigate to your profile.
If you do not have a profile photo or unique avatar, you will want to create one. This will involve also creating an account on Gravatar. Gravatar is owned by Automattic / WordPress.com. It is intended to aggregate several of your email addresses and profile photos. This is how your WordPress.org profile, Slack, and other systems will have your likeness displayed. Details on creating an account here can be found on Gravatar’s website.
Once your Gravatar has been created, continue by editing and completing your WordPress.org profile. Select Edit Profile.
The General tab will display your username, email, and allow you to reset your password. You can choose to connect your GitHub account here as well. Complete your preferred name and About Me details.
When you select the Extras tab, you can indicate your employment information, along with several interests.
On the Contributions tab, you can specify if you are sponsored and how many hours a week you give to various teams.
Your Forum profile is similar and connected, but shows different details. It’s worth a quick peak there to edit any additional information.
Notice that you can include more Biographical Info here as well.
Lastly, from your primary WP.org profile, you can configure notifications that search for your name or any other keyword you’d like. These can be received in email and Slack. This can be a great way to monitor brand mentions.