This document talks about DynamicPress — what it is, and what are its purposes — and also provides some guidelines on what you can do as a member of this community.

Table of Contents

About DynamicPress

DynamicPress is a community-led platform for crowdsourcing information about building Dynamic Websites with WordPress. Powered by Discourse forum software, it consists of a Knowledge Base and Support Forum.

DynamicPress has two main purposes:

  1. To maintain an open, organized, and searchable Community Support Forum

    There are many other venues online where people can ask and answer questions about WordPress development, but they are generally insufficient.

    Stack Overflow has a high barrier to entry, largely preventing newcomers from participating.

    Tool-specific support sites and Facebook Groups tend to have poor organization and formatting, and are difficult to search. Consequently, useful pieces of information are buried quickly, and the same questions are asked repeatedly. Moreover, these support sites and groups are isolated from each other, so that there isn’t any sharing or cross-pollination of ideas.

    DynamicPress aims to be different. Its Community Support is organized, highly searchable, and open to all — from Newbies seeking to become more knowledgeable and skilled, to advanced Webmasters and Application Developers wanting to discuss their projects.

  2. To produce a crowdsourced and curated WordPress Knowledge Base

    The ultimate goal of this platform is to publish definitive and lasting articles that concisely share technical information and best practices about WordPress development. These articles contain both original content written by our members, as well as curated resources gathered from around the web.

    Any member, even new ones, can submit articles to the Knowledge Base, which are subject to moderator approval upon first publication. This is important: We do this moderation to ensure the high quality of our content. We are proud to say that we’re doing our best to make sure that our Knowledge Base articles — which could make or break websites and businesses — are vetted by experts. (This quality control is another thing that makes us different from other platforms and communities.)

    Also, because the KB articles are wiki posts, trusted members of the community (those who have achieved at least Trust Level 2) can continually edit and improve them, for the benefit of all. For instance, as a member you can write your own WordPress tutorials — complete with code examples — or you can share links to other articles that you think will be helpful to others. Then other members who have something to add to your tutorials or curated resources can edit and make them better.

    Furthermore, because the platform is powered by Discourse, each KB article is also a forum topic by itself, which allows members to have discussions about it.

    Finally, support topics that have been solved can be converted to KB articles.

DynamicPress covers all aspects of WordPress development, and you can engage in the discussions and contribute to the Knowledge Base with that in mind. You can talk about WP Core or about any plugins or themes. You can even share your own custom code, if you want. However, we do place a special emphasis on WordPress plugins that provide dynamic capabilities, such as Toolset, Meta Box, JetEngine and PODS.

With this combination of Community, Experts, and Documentation — all organized, searchable, and accessible — DynamicPress is your “one-stop shop” for all your WordPress needs.

However, as a community-led platform, the success of DynamicPress stands and falls with its members’ interactions and contributions. So, please, don’t be a stranger — come and share any questions or resources that you might have about building Dynamic WordPress Websites!

How can you contribute?

You can contribute to DynamicPress in many ways. Here are some things you can do:

  1. Ask questions.
  2. Answer questions.
  3. Write Knowledge Base articles.
  4. Edit and improve existing KB articles:
    • edit them directly
    • discuss how to improve them
  5. Promote DynamicPress among your friends and other communities.

How to create and edit a Knowledge Base article

Any topic posted in the Knowledge and Tools & Resources categories (i.e., the original post in the topic) is automatically added in the Knowledge Base as an article. It is also a wiki post by default. Then the entire thread is the discussion topic for that article.

To create a new KB article, start a New Topic. Enter the topic title, choose the appropriate category, choose or create topic tags, then write your content. When you’re done, click Create Topic. Your article will be published and appear in the Knowledge Base upon the approval of a moderator.

If you want to edit an existing KB article, there are two ways to do it. First, if you are already reading the discussion topic for that article, simply go to the first/original post and click Edit at the bottom of the post. Second, if you are reading the article in the Knowledge Base, you will first have to click “View the discussion on this topic” at the bottom of the article. Then you can edit the first/original post.

Remember that, to edit Knowledge Base articles, you must have achieved at least Trust Level 2.

How to provide feedback and suggestions

You can share your thoughts about DynamicPress (and suggest improvements to the platform) by creating new topics in the Feedback category. You can also vote there on suggestions already made by others.

About DynamicPress’ Trust Levels

This platform is powered by Discourse, which uses Trust Levels to grant access and capabilities to users. This is mostly an automated process, but we have changed slightly the Trust Levels’ default settings to fit our needs. Here are the “Trust Rules” that DynamicPress follows:

Level 0 – New User

Granted to anyone who has just joined the community (not an invited user).

A user of Trust Level 0 cannot do the following:

  • Send personal messages to other users
  • “Reply as new topic” via Link button (UI removed)
  • Flag posts
  • Post more than 1 image
  • Post any attachments
  • Post more than 2 hyperlinks in a post
  • Have actual links in the ‘about me’ field of their profile (will be silently and temporarily converted to plain text)
  • Mention more than 2 users in a post
  • Post more than 3 topics
  • Post more than 10 replies
  • Edit their own posts after more than 24 hours
  • Vote more than 10 times on open topics

Level 1 – Basic User

Granted to anyone who has joined the community by invitation, or to a new user who has:

  • Entered at least 5 topics
  • Read at least 15 posts
  • Spent a total of 60 minutes reading posts

A user of Trust Level 1 can do the following:

  • Use all core Discourse functions; all new user restrictions are removed
  • Send PMs
  • Upload images and attachments if enabled
  • Flag posts
  • Mute other users
  • Vote up to 20 times on open topics

Level 2 – Member

Granted to members who have:

  • Visited at least 15 days, not sequentially
  • Casted at least 1 like
  • Received at least 1 like
  • Replied to at least 3 different topics
  • Entered at least 20 topics
  • Read at least 30 posts
  • Spent a total of 120 minutes reading posts

A user of Trust Level 2 can do the following:

  • Use the “Invite others to this topic” button for one-click onboarding of new users to participate in topics
  • Invite outside users to PMs making a group PM
  • Daily like, edit, and flag limits increased by 1.5×
  • Ignore other users
  • Edit their own posts for up to 30 days after posting
  • Edit wiki posts (Knowledge Base articles)
  • Create polls
  • Vote up to 30 times on open topics

Level 3 – Regular

Granted to members who, during the past 100 days:

  • Must have visited at least 50% of days
  • Must have replied to at least 10 different non-PM topics
  • Of topics created in the last 100 days, must have viewed 25%(capped at 500)
  • Of posts created in the last 100 days, must have read 25% (capped at 20k)
  • Must have received 20 likes, and given 30 likes.
  • Must not have received more than 5 spam or offensive flags (with unique posts and unique users for each, confirmed by a moderator)
  • Must not have been suspended or silenced in the last 6 months

Note: Unlike other trust levels, you can lose trust level 3 status. If you dip below these requirements in the last 100 days, you will be demoted back to Member.

A user of Trust Level 3 can do the following:

  • Recategorize and rename topics
  • Have all their links followed (we remove automatic nofollow)
  • TL3 spam flags cast on TL0 user posts immediately hide the post
  • TL3 flags cast on TL0 user posts in sufficient diversity will auto-silence the user and hide all their posts
  • Make their own posts wiki (that is, editable by any TL2+ users)
  • Daily like, edit, and flag limits increased by 2×
  • Vote up to 40 times on open topics

Level 4 (Leader) and Staff

Granted to members by Admins only (manual promotion).

Users of these Trust Levels can do the following:

  • Edit all posts
  • Pin/unpin topic
  • Close topics
  • Archive topics
  • Make topics unlisted
  • Split and merge topics
  • Reset topic bump date
  • Daily like, edit, and flag limits increased by 3×
  • Any TL4 flag cast on any post immediately takes effect and hides the target post
  • Send personal messages to an email address
  • Vote up to 50 times on open topics

Note: Staff consists of Admins and Moderators. They have been carefully selected, and are highly trusted members of the community.

Chats on DynamicPress

On DynamicPress, in addition to the Support Forums, Knowledge Base, and Direct Messaging, you can also initiate Private Chat Rooms with other members. These can be useful in communicating with them in a faster and more dynamic way.

  1. Private Chats (between 2 members) are allowed for anyone, except for New Users (Trust Level 0).
  2. Mixed/Public Chat messages are retained for 90 days.
  3. Private Chat messages are retained forever.
  4. Only administrators can create chat channels, which can be joined by more than two members.

Donate to support DynamicPress

Running and maintaining this community cost money. Please help our endeavors by donating. DynamicPress is on OpenCollective, a fundraising platform, and you can find there our expenses and current budget.