Collaborative editing outreach program launches for 7.1

A new dedicated outreach effort is underway for WordPress 7.1 to ensure collaborative editing gets the collaborative testing it needs. Please join #collaborative-editing-outreach in WordPress Slack (steps to sign up here) if you:

• Want to use collaborative editing on a regular basis.
• Enjoy being an early adopter.
• Feel comfortable using the latest version of the Gutenberg plugin.
• Have the ability to participate through the 7.1 cycle (at least until 8/18/26).

Thanks in advance for helping shape the future of this feature.

Why now?

Collaborative features require an inherently collaborative way of testing. For the 7.0 cycle, a lot of time and effort was spent with more developer oriented testing, enterprise level testing, and deterministic testing with hosts. While incredibly useful, this effort broadens the scope of testing by bringing in passionate real-world early adopters across a range of hosting environments and backgrounds. For collaborative editing to truly succeed, it’s important to go beyond just getting stability, performance, and reliability right.

In running the FSE Outreach Program, I saw how powerful it was to have a dedicated space for folks to regularly interact with those building the feature for a faster feedback loop in the right direction. After the hard decision was made to remove collaborative editing from WordPress 7.0, the aim is that ahead of 7.1 the outreach program model provides enough structure to create meaningful feedback without being too overbearing or exclusive considering the timeframe. This was first discussed in #feature-realtime-collaboration before being brought to project leadership.

Who can join?

Anyone is welcome to join #collaborative-editing-outreach! Real Time Collaboration is included in the latest versions of Gutenberg, and can be enabled under `Settings > Writing` in the dashboard when the Gutenberg plugin is active.

It’s critical people from across different hosting environments and use cases are a part of this, from nonprofits to small businesses to newsrooms. If you have a large need for collaborative editing, enjoy sharing feedback, and are comfortable with using the latest Gutenberg plugin, this is an awesome way to contribute to the WordPress project. Test team badges will be given out at the end.

More about the effort

The aim is to engage passionate real-world early adopters across a spread of hosting environments in a dedicated slack channel throughout the release process to ensure a tight feedback loop for both bugs and feature requests. This will take a simple form: a dedicated slack channel (#collaborative-editing-outreach) where folks can get set up with collaborative editing, share ongoing feedback, and those working on the feature can open bugs/make fixes/share improvements/etc. Compared to the FSE Outreach Program, there won’t be ongoing themed calls for testing since they would end up being very repetitive. Instead, key updates will be shared in the slack channel to help inform folks as new fixes or features are added to give feedback on them. The latest updates for collaborative editing will be delivered through the Gutenberg plugin which is why using the latest version is a requirement for this channel. As discussed here, a featured plugin isn’t currently feasible.

Tied to this, outreach will be done to hosting companies to attempt to recruit participants for this outreach program. This is being done to help get as many different environments as possible represented.

Currently, @amykamala, @greenshady, and I will be acting as the small crew driving this forward in the slack channel, alongside the developers and designers working on this feature.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Please leave them below. Thanks for engaging.

Thank you to @amykamala @greenshady @maxschmeling for reviewing this post.

#7-1, #collaboration, #feature-real-time-collaboration, #gutenberg, #phase-3