There are a lot of posts and articles that talk about the many ways in which you can contribute to WordPress; I thought I’d add to that count!
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of listening to Jenny Wong give a talk on this very subject at WPLDN. The talk generated a lot of discussion and inspired me to write this.
I started using WordPress through laziness if I’m honest. I wanted to get a website online but didn’t want to build the thing from scratch. After not too much research I came across Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. It then didn’t take too much longer to realise that WordPress was the one for me. The tipping point for me was the community.
WordPress has such a strong community behind it that I was able to get myself up to speed in no time at all.
I very quickly realised that I wanted to give back to the community as I was fast evolving a business that was earning me a wage from a piece of software that I’d not pad for. As a non-coder at the time and new to it all I thought the only way was to submit these complicated things called patches, I couldn’t have been more wrong!
Whilst booking a ticket for my first WordCamp I discovered contributor days. I had no idea what to expect, and nervously confirmed my place. I say nervously because in my mind I saw top notch developers all hanging around writing super code and building WordPress and me sitting there not knowing the first thing about PHP making a fool of myself.
When I arrived I realised that is exactly what was happening! I was watching people like Andrew Nacin, Mark Jaquith, Tom Willmot and many other very talented people contribute but also there were so many other non-coding ways that I was able to get involved and feel anything but foolish! This got me hooked.
I started attending more WordPress events and when the organizer of WPLDN asked for help I quickly put myself forward. I’m now involved in so many WordPress events including organizing WPLDN, the upcoming WordCamp London 2015 and I’m happy to announce the first WPLDN All Dayer; Contributing back to WordPress a contributors days for people just like you to get involved! More details to follow on that one.
Whatever your abilities there are ways you can contribute back to WordPress whether that be submitting a patch to core or speaking at an event. Without the continued support of you as a community member WordPress wouldn’t be the platform that so many of us are able to generate a living from today.
Here are some helpful links to get you started. Tip; if you can teach then get yourself involved in the new WordPress Training team!
Non-coding:
• Community
• Support
• Documentation
• Polyglots
• Training
Coding:
• Themes
• Accessibility
• UI
• Mobile
• Core
• Meta
• BuddyPress
• Pluigns
• GlotPress (Edit: Thank you Taco Verdo for picking up on the omission of GlotPress)
Events:
• WordCamps
• Contributor Days
• Meetups
Everything you need to know can be found at make.wordpress.org contributing to WordPress is easier than you may think.