Why WPCredits?
I’m Sebastian Méndez, a Computer Systems Engineering student at Universidad Fidélitas in Costa Rica. This semester I’m part of WPCredits, a program that integrates real contributions to the WordPress ecosystem as a formal part of the curriculum. Instead of a traditional project, I’m contributing directly to open source software used by more than 40% of the world’s websites.
Why Polyglots?
Among the available contribution areas — Photos, Core, WordPress.tv, and Polyglots — I chose Polyglots because the impact is immediate and verifiable. Every string I translate into Costa Rican Spanish (es_CR) becomes part of the software that real users in Costa Rica interact with. The es_CR locale has very few active contributors, which means my work has a direct and visible impact.
My specific project
I’ll be translating strings from the Astra theme into es_CR on translate.wordpress.org. Astra is one of the most installed themes in the WordPress repository, with over two million active installations.
What I knew before starting
Before this program, I had used WordPress as a tool but never looked at it as a community. I didn’t know what a locale was, what translate.wordpress.org was, or that thousands of volunteers keep WordPress running in every language. That changes now.
What comes next
In the next post I’ll document the setup process: accessing translate.wordpress.org and finding the Astra strings for es_CR.
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