What Is Make WordPress?

Make.wordpress is the official hub for WordPress contributors — the place where the people who build, test, translate, document, and support WordPress coordinate their work. If WordPress.org is the storefront and showcase for the software, Make WordPress is the workshop where it’s actually built.

What It’s For

WordPress powers a huge portion of the web, but it isn’t maintained by a single company — it’s an open-source project driven by thousands of volunteers and sponsored contributors from agencies, hosting companies, and individual developers around the world. Make WordPress exists to organize that effort. Instead of contribution happening in scattered forums or private Slack channels with no public record, Make WordPress gives each area of the project its own dedicated blog, meeting schedule, and set of open channels.

How It’s Organized: Teams

The site is broken into “Make” teams, each responsible for a slice of the project. Some of the most active include:

• Core – develops the actual WordPress software (the code that ships in every update)
• Design – works on UI/UX for WordPress itself and the admin interface
• Themes – reviews and maintains standards for themes in the official directory
• Plugins – reviews and maintains the plugin directory
• Support – helps run the WordPress.org support forums
• Docs – writes and maintains the official documentation
• Polyglots – translates WordPress into other languages
• Accessibility – ensures WordPress meets accessibility standards
• Marketing and Community – handle outreach, WordCamps, and meetups
• Tide, Meta, Hosting, and several others focused on more specific infrastructure or initiatives

Each team runs its own subdomain (like make.wordpress.org/core or make.wordpress.org/design), publishes regular updates, and holds weekly or biweekly meetings — usually on Slack — that anyone can join.

How Contribution Works

Most teams follow a similar rhythm:

1. Trac or GitHub tickets track bugs, features, and enhancements (Core development has been migrating more workflow to GitHub in recent years).
2. Weekly meetings on the Making WordPress Slack give contributors a synchronous check-in point.
3. Blog posts on each team’s Make site announce decisions, call for testing, or summarize meeting notes — creating a public paper trail for how decisions get made.
4. Release cycles for Core follow a structured schedule with alpha, beta, and RC (release candidate) phases, all coordinated through Make Core.

Why It Matters

Make WordPress is a good example of how a massive open-source project stays organized without centralized corporate control. It’s also the easiest on-ramp for anyone who wants to contribute to WordPress: you don’t need to be a PHP expert to help — there are meaningful ways to contribute through testing, translation, documentation, design feedback, or community organizing.

For developers, joining the Slack and following a team’s Make blog is usually the first real step into contributing to the project that runs a huge share of the internet.

If you are also taking your very first steps with the platform, you can check out this helpful beginners guide to WordPress for additional foundational tips.

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