The document discusses contributing to open source projects. There are both altruistic and selfish reasons to contribute including giving back to communities, improving one's own skills, and boosting one's resume. Contributions are not limited to code and include tasks like documentation, translation, testing, and reporting bugs. Getting started involves working on projects of personal interest, following coding standards, understanding communities, and communicating through mailing lists and forums. The document encourages beginning with small contributions and provides helpful links for getting involved in open source.

1. Contributing to Open Source
Joel Clermont
@jclermont
Sunday, June 3, 12

2. About Me
• Partner at Orion Group
• PHP, JS, .NET, Ruby, iOS, (Lisp?)
• Organizer of Milwaukee PHP User Group mkepug.com
• Organizer of MobileMKE meetup.com/MobileMKE
Sunday, June 3, 12

3. Goals for today
• Why should I contribute to open source?
• What types of help is needed?
• How do I make a meaningful contribution?
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4. Why? What’s in it for me?
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5. The altruistic reason
• Give something back to the community
• How much does a WordPress license cost again?
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6. Commercial CMS licenses
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7. Sunday, June 3, 12

8. The selfish reasons
• Make your own life easier (fix a bug, improve docs, etc)
• Scratch your own itch (build something entirely new)
• Resume/career booster (good for freelancers too)
• Get experience and become a better developer
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9. Selfish reasons > Altruistic reason
• But who cares? Everyone benefits
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10. What? Not just code
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11. Neckbeard and CompSci degrees are optional
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12. Help wanted
• Documentation http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Contributing
• Translation http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress
• Testing http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists#Testers
• Bugs http://core.trac.wordpress.org/
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13. More than just PHP
• Mobile platforms are open source too
• HTML / CSS / JS required for themes and plugins
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14. Help the larger WordPress ecosystem
• Plugins
• Themes
• Utilities
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15. How? Ready to dive in?
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16. How to get started
• Work on something that interests you personally
• Follow the coding standards
• http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Coding_Standards
• Understand the community
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17. Communicate
• Mailing lists
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists
• IRC
• #wordpress and #wordpress-dev on Freenode
• Forums
• http://wordpress.org/support
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18. Get involved with the broader community
• Github
• Attend events Milwaukee PHP
• Volunteer to speak
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19. PHP Code Sniffer for WordPress
• Simple fix, but incredibly useful
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20. Search Replace DB utility
• Didn’t work with my wp-config setup
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21. Removing code feels good
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22. Learning something new
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23. Vulnero (v2)
• Just started architecture/design
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24. Useful Links
• OpenHatch - “training level” for open source
• http://openhatch.org/missions/
• WordPress developer documentation
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Developer_Documentation
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25. What next?
• Start small, but start soon
• Slides posted on joelclermont.com this evening
• Contact me for help / questions
• Twitter @jclermont
• #devmke (freenode)
Sunday, June 3, 12