VIP Real-Time Collaboration

VIP Real-Time Collaboration (VIP RTC) enables multiple users to edit the same WordPress content simultaneously, using the Block Editor. Team members can collaborate on Posts, Pages, and Custom Post Types with near-instant updates, seeing each other's changes as they type and configure content.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Supported content types
• Requirements
• FAQ
• Development
• Credits

Features

• Real-Time Collaboration: Multiple users can edit content simultaneously with instant updates
• Smart Conflict Resolution: Automatically merges changes to help prevent overwriting each other's work
• Visual Collaboration Indicators: See live cursors, user avatars, and editing activity from team members
• Reliable Connection Management: Graceful handling of network interruptions with automatic reconnection

Supported content types

Out of the box, the plugin works with all WordPress posts and pages, including Custom Post Types.

Requirements

• WordPress: 6.7 or newer
• Gutenberg: This plugin requires the Gutenberg plugin (v22.8.1 or newer)
• WebSocket server: A WebSocket server facilitates real-time communication between peers. The code is included in this repo but must be deployed separately.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup instructions.

FAQ

Do I need special permissions to collaborate?

No additional permissions are required. Users can collaborate on any content they already have permission to edit in WordPress.

What happens if my internet connection drops?

The plugin handles brief connection interruptions gracefully. If the connection becomes particularly unstable, your editing session will be paused.

How does conflict resolution work?

The plugin uses a CRDT to automatically merge changes from multiple users and prevent conflicts.

Common Issues

Plugin development has historically been done with the understanding that only one user would be changing the data at a time. With Real Time Collaboration, this paradigm has changed. Some plugins, custom blocks, or other third-party code may have been written in ways that won't fully support data changing from other clients.

We will continue to update our Common Issues doc with examples of problematic code and ways to improve it. The following prompt can be helpful to identify common issues in your codebase.

AI Prompt for Identifying Common Issues in WordPress Plugins

Analyze this codebase to identify any components or code segments that may lead to issues as outlined in the [COMMON_ISSUES.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Automattic/vip-real-time-collaboration/refs/heads/trunk/docs/COMMON_ISSUES.md). Provide suggestions for refactoring to ensure compatibility and optimal performance. Look through all files and identify any file that registers custom post meta or implements client-side custom WordPress blocks.

Stable Release

While we continue to push the latest version of our work to the VIP Real-Time Collaboration integration, we offer a stable version of the plugins necessary to use RTC on WordPress VIP in the 0.2.1 release of this plugin.

To use this stable release, follow these steps:

1. Deactivate the VIP Real-Time Collaboration integration in your environment.
2. Download the gutenberg.zip and vip-real-time-collaboration.zip attachments from v0.2.1.
3. Extract the zip files to your application's /plugins directory.
4. Commit and deploy the code.
5. Activate the Gutenberg and VIP Real-Time Collaboration plugins in wp-admin.
6. Reactivate the VIP Real-Time Collaboration integration. This is necessary for the infrastructure necessary to run RTC on VIP.

NOTE: We are not able to support this release and it will only be updated for critical security fixes.

Development

For development setup, contributing guidelines, and technical information, please see:

• CONTRIBUTING.md: Development setup and contribution guidelines
• SYSTEM_ARCHITECTURE.md: Technical architecture documentation
• SECURITY.md: Reporting security issues

Credits

Parts of this work are derived from contributions made by Kevin Jahns in this PR.