Embracing Matrix for Enhanced Communication: Migrating the
WordPress Community from Slack to Matrix
Alex Kirk
- From Vienna, Austria
- At Automattic (runs WordPress.com & more) since 2014
- Engineer, leading teams around Localization & Matrix
- Sponsored to contribute to WordPress.org in Meta and Polyglots
- Sideprojects in the decentralized web space
- Friends Plugin: Make your blog your own hub for subscribing to and interacting with others via RSS, ActivityPub, ...
- Enable Mastodon Apps: Use Ivory, Tusky, ... with your site
What is WordPress?
- A popular PHP CMS for websites and blogs, started in 2003
- Today it powers over 43% of all websites on the internet
- Features a block editor to edit posts and themes
- Well known for its plugin ecosystem with plugins like
Yoast SEO, Advanced Custom Fields, WooCommerce - Open Source under the GPL
How the WordPress project collaborates
- 22 "Make" teams: Accessibility, Core, Design, Polyglots, ...
- Each team has
- A P2 (=blog) for announcements, proposals, decisions, etc.
- (Bi-)Weekly chat meetings for sharing updates, coordination
- A defined time at which you know you can reach project participants to discuss issues and figure out a path forward
- Meetups & WordCamps: e.g. Asia (March 5-7 in Taipei, Taiwan), EU (June 13-15 in Turino, Italy), US (Sep 17-20 in Portland, OR)
Five for the Future
https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/
- Organizations & individuals pledge to give 5% of time or resources
- A 100-person company: 5 people full time; individuals: 2hrs / week
- → Organizations like the model because they retain control
- Today in room K.4.601 at 15:30, Jesús Amieiro will talk about
Shaping the Future: Investing Wisely in Long-Term Open Source Development with "Five for the Future"
The many pillars of WordPress
About 640 people from 186 identified companies contributed to WordPress 6.3
https://jeanbaptisteaudras.com/2023/08/contribution-stats-for-wordpress-6-3-lionel/
The Plan to migrate
- January 25, 2023
- Announcement: A Meta subproject for evaluating Matrix
- January to April 2023
- Evaluate and create the Matrix infrastructure
- May to September 2023
- Migrate history and integrations, test with teams
- October to December 2023
- Launch, finalize migrations, turn off Slack
Things we anticipated
- People are no fans of change
- We needed to provide a superior solution to convince them
- Complexity
- People are not used to decentralized systems and might struggle
- Lock-In
- Over the years we've built many integrations with Slack that need to be migrated
Slack & an open source community
- Complexity through E-Mail-based signup with invites
- Common issue at WordCamps where we onboard new people
We have a guide for this → disconnected experience - Message retention
- 10,000 / 90 days message history limit for free plans
- Data is siloed behind Slack’s doors
- But: Slack is used in many companies, easy to just add one more workspace for WordPress
Matrix & an open source community
- Federation has been designed so that anyone can join
- Login via existing authentication system (SSO / OIDC)
- No retention limits
- Unite multiple Slack workspaces (e.g. for local communities)
- Open Source chat for an Open Source project
Making it easier to join Matrix 1/2
OpenID Connect Server WordPress plugin
- Makes your WordPress an OIDC provider
- → WordPress.org users can login with their account
Making it easier to join Matrix 2/2
Chatrix: Matrix client in a WordPress block
- Block = part of a WordPress post that can be placed anywhere
- Each Chatrix block can be configured individually
- Predefine a home server, optionally restrict to a single room
- Based on Hydrogen with upstream contributions:
- Webworkers for Sync to allow multiple Hydrogens open in a single browser → multiple Chatrix blocks on the same page
- Multiple bugfixes around SSO and workers
Team Chat Pages
- Provide a WordPress.org Chat URL → No need to know what Matrix is, how to configure your client, or create a new chat account
- Dedicated pages on the teams' blogs, like:
Chatrix FOSDEM Demo
https://alex.kirk.at/fosdem2024/chatrix.html
This will use WordPress Playground to load a WordPress in your browser client-side with the Chatrix plugin installed and a demo
Creating a new post with a Chatrix block
Making it easier to join Matrix
We host a preconfigured Element Web
Making the Migration easier with a bridge
- Created the users on the homeserver with a script
- Slack bridge
- We’re using a forked version of matrix-appservice-slack
- Upstream fixes waiting to be merged :)
- Extended the bridge to puppet users on the Matrix side since we know the users exist
- We’re using a forked version of matrix-appservice-slack
Migrating history seamlessly
We figured out this process to avoid gaps in the Matrix room history
- Create room and bridge it (it won't have history)
- Create a second room and migrate the history there
- Add all users who are in the room in Slack
- Import in sequence, backdating events (appservice)
- If a user is no longer in the room, we re-invite them
- Copy events from the first room to catch up with real-time
- Change room aliases, reattach bridge, delete old room
Matrix Server
- Synapse
- Slack bridge
- OpenID connect configured
- Migration appservice
- We migrated
- ~ 3m messages in ~170 rooms
- ~ 45k users
- ~ 55GB database size
Updating the community
- Weekly meetings in the WordPress meta chat, with published meeting notes afterwards for those who could not attend
- WP Tavern coverage (2023)
The Migration!
- November 30, 2023
- Announcement: Embracing Matrix for Enhanced Communication
- Plan
- Actively ask people to use Matrix instead of Slack
- Before the final migration, post "good bye" messages to all Slack channels and link our guides
- Finally, disable posting to Slack channels
- (turns out, disabling DMs in Slack is not possible)
Feedback we anticipated
- Most people don't want to choose clients, they want to go with the standard provided → Element
- Notification Management in Element
- No dedicated threads and mentions view
- Cannot mark message as unread
- Search in Element: No filters, (global) search discoverability
- Other clients miss important features like threads
- All the troubles that come with providing a homeserver for any community member (e.g. unrestricted room creation)
Community collected issues 1/2
github.com/WordPress/Matrix/issues
- Unable to enforce some things like on Slack
- Slack features considered essential
- Pings/Mentions: no @here equivalent, cannot ping groups
- scheduling of messages, reminders
Community collected issues 2/2
github.com/WordPress/Matrix/issues
- Accessibility Problems (e.g. Macro keyboard navigation, Voiceover)
- Bridge glitches (e.g. duplicates, out of order)
- User Experience (e.g. Notification / Threads management, No refinement of searches, Discovery of old messages)
- Matrix glitches (e.g. Failed to load timeline position)
Addressing Issues 1/2
- We implemented integrations and many fixes via bots (Maubot)
- Existing: RSS, Github
- Easier migration of our Slack integrations (with a similar API)
- Post to room: post messages via webhook
- Relay: an integration can react to room messages via webhook
- Other newly developed
- Group mentions: upon command a bot mentions many people
- Watchdog: alert about community created rooms
Addressing Issues 2/2
- Shipped our own fixes to Element (for example accessibility)
in our own installation while they are waiting to be merged - Provided a channel/room on both sides: #matrixhelp
- Created Documentation & Guides
We had to stop the migration
- December 11/12, 2023
- Matt Mullenweg called off the transition at SotW
- Update on Matrix Migration: Pausing the Transition
- Accessibility Problems were too big, pushback from our community. We submitted patches #12189 #12190
- Uncertainty around
- Where our UI needs are on element-web's roadmap
- Effect of the license changes of Synapse et al to AGPL
- Alignment of Element's goals with WordPress's ethos
Current Status
- Making WordPress remains a Slack community...
- ...but now with a Matrix bridge and all Slack history
- New contributors don't need a Slack account
to join chat conversations - Turning off Slack is currently not planned
- WordPress keeps observing how the Matrix project develops
Summary
- The WordPress community didn't fully migrate in the end
- Maybe things that didn't work for us are not relevant for you
- Hopefully this talk could help you identify & decide
- Open Source contributions along the way
- WordPress: wp-oidc-server, Chatrix
- Matrix: bots, migration appservice, patches
Thank You!
Questions?
https://alex.kirk.at/fosdem2024/
(Lots of links in the slides)