Ways to contribute
Pick by what you are good at and how much time you have. A small contribution finished is worth more than a large one abandoned.
Contents
The table
| Way | Skills | Typical time | What it changes | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Confirm an existing bug report | Running a site | 15 minutes | Maintainers know the bug is real and widespread | Reproducing and confirming issues |
| Report a bug well | Running a site | 30 minutes | A fix for everyone | Filing a bug |
| Answer a question | Experience | 15 minutes | One person unblocked, and a findable answer | Answering questions |
| Fix a help page | Writing | 10 minutes | Everyone who reads the page | Contributing documentation and help pages |
| Translate messages | A second language | 1 hour and up | Every user of that language | Contributing translations |
| Test the development line | Running a test site | 1 hour per release | Fewer surprises after a release | Testing releases |
| Write a tutorial | Experience, writing | An afternoon | Newcomers learn faster | Writing tutorials and posts |
| Fix a bug in code | PHP, templates | An afternoon and review rounds | A fix for everyone | Contributing code |
| Publish an extension or theme | PHP, templates, design | Days | New capabilities for others | Sharing extensions and themes |
| Contribute a site package | Building sites | Days | A starting point for new sites | Contribute your site package |
| Mentor a newcomer | Experience, patience | An hour a week | A new contributor | Mentoring |
| Fund the work | A budget | Minutes | Paid time for maintenance and features | Funding the community |
By role
| You are | Good first contributions |
|---|---|
| An editor | Report confusing screens, fix help pages for editors, translate |
| An administrator | Confirm bugs, test releases, document installation tricks |
| A developer | Fix a bug, add a test, review a pull request, publish an extension |
| A designer | Report accessibility problems, contribute to a theme, improve the administration's styling (Contributing for designers and themers) |
| A host or agency | Test releases on many servers, document hosting setups, become a partner |
| A student | Answer questions you have just solved yourself, translate, fix help pages |
Choosing your first one
If you do not know where to begin, do this: use the software for a week, note every place where you got stuck, and turn the most annoying one into a bug report or a help page fix. Your first contribution shows how. Where you got stuck on behavior that may be deliberate or open to interpretation, read Negative features first: other sites may depend on it, so a change needs a clear justification and is best proposed as an option.
Related pages
- Contributing as a community member
- Ways to support Exponential
- The advocacy ladder
- Paths
- Free documentation: this page is free to copy, translate and improve under the GNU FDL 1.3.
Become an Exponential Partner
Partners share their information, provide funding, contribute back and develop the products with us, and that is how Exponential grows. A partner website and dashboard are planned for mid-2027: please become a partner today to speed up our growth rate and land new features faster.