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Hackathon Project: WordPress Tools for Hosting Providers

Javier Casares (@javiercasares) one of the team reps of the WordPress hosting team, introduced us to his project “WordPress Tools for Hosting Providers” at the CloudFest Hackathon.

Simon:[0:00] What is your project called, and what is it all about?Javier:[0:04] I don’t remember the name. Yeah, no, no, no.No, it’s a WordPress hosting tool for hosting providers because the main thing is almost half of the internet uses WordPress, so we need to test the future versions of WordPress.So the hosting team has some tools that checks every commit, So every change that is made in the future code is going to be tested in the most possible hosting companies can reach.So we have a tool that hosting companies uses to run those tests.And we can check if all the changes in the code works on all the hosting companies as possible.Simon:[0:56] But that’s a tool that’s already existing, right?Javier:[0:59] Yeah, that was a tool that existed for six years, but has been there for a long time.And nobody paid a lot of attention.So in the last six months, I’ve been trying to understand the tool because it wasn’t paid by me.And then we detected some things that we can improve. For example, a lot of hosting companies offer different PHP versions.So we need to check the same WordPress code in different PHP versions.And that was something that it wasn’t in the tool. So that’s something we just added.And then for example, another thing is hosting companies offer different types of services.For example, the shared hosting, the VPS, the cloud.Whatever they are using. So another thing we are going to try, this is what we are doing now, is to have like a multi-environment reporting.So the idea is to go from one test, one report to a multi-exponential reporting.Simon:[2:16] So more like a matrix of different tests to run at a hosting company.Javier:[2:20] Yeah. So for example, the developers, developers, will see how the WordPress software works in a lot of combinations and in a lot of possible versions and everything.So that’s the main goal we are working on right now.We have some ideas in mind to improve in the future, but that’s something the hosting companies and the developers mainly, were asking us for four years, maybe.And we didn’t have the time or the resources to do it.And that’s when CloudFest, like six months ago, when they asked me, OK, you have a project in mind?It was like, OK, I think we can have a lot of hackers working on this because that’s something they asked to do and to improve.Proof, and right now, we have half of the code, and I think we are going to have everything that we have in mind at the end, so yeah, it’s very, very cool.Simon:[3:31] Cool. One final question.What’s in it for me as a hosting company to run these tests?Because it’s nice for WordPress, I get that. But what’s in it for the hosting companies?Javier:[3:41] For the hosting companies, you will get a report with its pass.So everything is fine. But you can get a report that something is not working.So you will get some information about what’s happening, that your configuration fails or has any problem.And you can ask the host WordPress community that, okay, we have this error.Maybe we detected that, okay, it’s something that we need to improve or some version or whatever.Or maybe it’s something that our system is not compatible with WordPress.So maybe we need to improve WordPress to be compatible with this error.So it’s like a win-win for everybody because it’s a win for developers.So they can see that WordPress works in all the environments.And for hosting companies, it’s a win because you can check months before a new release that that release will work in your hosting company.So you can offer the best service to your clients.Simon:[4:54] Thank you.Javier:[4:54] Okay, you’re welcome.

#CFhack2024 #CloudFest

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