One of the core hallmarks of WordPress is the wide variety of ways that members of the community give back to the project. As we head into the inaugural WordCamp US, taking place next week in Philadelphia, we wanted to highlight a number of ways that individuals and organizations can contribute to the broader success of the WordPress ecosystem.
Make, a difference
There are more than a dozen different channels listed on make.wordpress.org, one of the key hubs of the WordPress community. If you're a developer, the place to start is https://make.wordpress.org/core/, where you can help fix bugs, test patches, and contribute to the vibrant heart of WordPress code.
Core coding is a natural and top-of-mind way to contribute to the project, but code is only one piece of the community puzzle.
Design the future
Design and user experience (UX) are critical components of the WordPress project. Design is where the visible aspects of the platform and users literally connect. If you want to contribute your design or UX expertise to the project, the right place to start is at https://make.wordpress.org/design/.
Contribute all the things
Contributing to the WordPress core and design are visible ways to contribute to the community. There are many others, including:
- Sponsoring events
- Translations
- Mobile
- Developing plugins and themes
- Training
- Support
- Accessibility
- And more
What's your passion? What are you great at? It is certain that your contribution will be welcomed by the community, whether it's helping out online, volunteering at one of the hundreds of WordPress Meetups that take place annually around the world, or even lending a hand with logistics like room setup at a WordPress event in your area.
Many hands make light work.
Walking the talk
In pulling together this article, we did a quick wrap-up of the different ways that GoDaddy has contributed to WordPress over the past year. We love to do it! Here are some of the ways we gave back to the WordPress project in 2015:
- Sponsored WordCamp US
- Sponsored WordCamp EU
- Sponsored WordCamp events throughout the year as a "Superb" sponsor in Asia/Pacific, Canada, Europe, Africa, Latin and South America and the United States
- Sponsored related industry events including PrestigeConf, PressNomics and others
- Contributed in-person time at 40+ WordCamp and other open source events, totaling hundreds of person-hours in 2015
- Gave presentations on Creating Clear CTAs, Content Marketing and Personal Productivity at WordCamp NYC, WordCamp Switzerland, WordCamp DFW and other events
- Created over 200 WordPress-oriented educational articles to date on the GoDaddy Garage
- Supported industry podcasts including the DradCast (Ep 71, Ep 76), WPWatercooler (Ep 51), WPWeekly (Ep 177) and others
- Contributed to industry publications including WPTavern and WPMayor
- Continued development and support of open source WordPress plugins including the Plugin Performance Profiler (P3), which has been downloaded for free over 100,000 times and is available in the WordPress.org repository
- Provided transparency into WordPress plugin and theme usage statistics via the GoDaddy Hot 100
- Contributed to WordPress Japanese and Hindi internationalization and translation efforts
Contributing is fundamental for the success, growth and further adoption of the WordPress project — and, as you can see, there are plenty of ways to offer support. How did you do it in 2015? And what will you do next year?
