Getting started contributing

People who are getting started contributing to the Drupal project (or any open-source software project) often find it difficult to figure out what to do. Here are some suggestions.

Contributor Guide entry points

The Drupal Contributor Guide has three great entry points for new contributors:

• Browse skills: Look through the list of Skills for a skill that you have that you'd like to contribute to the Drupal project. Click through to the skill page, where you'll find links to Tasks that use your skill, as well as resources for improving your skill level.
• Browse tasks: Task pages are step-by-step guides to performing tasks that contribute to the Drupal software and community, with links to the background knowledge and skills that are required to perform the task (see also the task sequences listed on this page, below).
• Browse areas: Area pages describe overlapping parts of the Drupal project community that you can contribute to, such as Documentation, Drupal Core, and Event planning. Each area page links to related tasks.

Task sequences

Here are some suggested sequences of Contributor Tasks that will gradually build your familiarity with the processes and procedures in several contribution areas.

Documentation

1. Triage a Documentation issue report
2. Edit or review a documentation page
3. Resolve a Documentation issue report

Support

1. Handle or refer a support request in an issue
2. Provide support via text forums
3. Provide support via text chat
    

Non-code Contribution to a Project

You can follow this sequence to contribute to a particular contributed module, theme, or distribution that interests you, or to the Drupal core software project.

1. Triage an issue report
2. Document steps to reproduce an issue
3. Write an issue summary for an existing issue
4. Add screenshots to an issue
5. Manually test a proposed fix for an issue

PHP or JavaScript Programming

You can follow this sequence to contribute to a particular contributed module, theme, or distribution that interests you, or to the Drupal core software project.

1. Start with the Non-code Contribution sequence (above).
2. Solve a conflict in a merge request
3. Review a patch or merge request
4. Write a change record for a Drupal core issue
5. Create a patch for an issue
6. Create a merge request for an issue
7. Write an automated test for an issue