Owning one’s expertise, especially in the developer space, can seem daunting. Open source software provides almost everyone the chance to share your knowledge and feel the accomplishments of contributing.
As a designer first and a WordPress developer secondly, I’ve shied from helping to work on WordPress’ uber-organized core. There are opportunities to get in on team calls and at Wordcamps, but it always seemed a bit “beyond” me.
At WSC2015, I was happy to find open source an interesting and challenging way even for non-devs to contribute.
One of the easiest ways to get started is to create an account on Github. The great thing about Github is it gives a quick bootcamp on how Git works, how projects are organized, and finding projects and friends. For developers this is old hat, but it’s still useful to get the basics down. Beyond this there are guides to CSS, JavaScript and much more for best practices.
You can search out projects depending on your interest, but often well-organized repositories label different issues and programming languages, making it easier to find what you want. Offering fixes and ideas is a great way to pitch in, but design and copywriting are areas requiring an expert hand too.
Some other open source project resources include:
Down the road, WSC2015 had attendees put together a three-month plan of what we planned to contribute, on speaking, writing and coding. I know I’ll be more confidently checking out WordPress’ core, to see where I can add my touch.
Leave a Reply