The organizing team of WordCamp Kerala 2023 is proud to announce an informal contributor day on March 11, 2023 (Saturday) from 10.00 AM to 1:00 PM India Standard Time. The event will be held both online (virtually on the #contributor-day channel of the Make/WordPress Slack) and in-person, at Trivandrum, Kochi, Kozhikode, and Palakkad. Sign up now!

Please note that our contributor day is not an official event associated with the WordCamp, but is an informal event, organized online and at local meetups , and is open to all! In other words, you do not need to purchase a WordCamp Kerala ticket to attend contributor day – either online or in-person!

What is a contributor day?

Contributor days are dedicated day-long sub-events associated with a WordCamp. It is an event where people come together to contribute to the development of WordPress. WordCamps are community-organized events that bring together WordPress users, developers, designers, and enthusiasts.

During a Contributor Day, attendees work on various tasks related to the development of WordPress. These tasks could include:

1. Testing and bug fixing: Participants can test WordPress software, themes, and plugins and report any issues or bugs they encounter.
2. Documentation: Participants can contribute to the WordPress documentation by writing, editing, and improving articles and tutorials.
3. Translations: Participants can help translate WordPress into their native language.
4. Core development: Participants can work on the core code of WordPress, developing new features or improving existing ones.
5. Support: Participants can help answer support questions on the WordPress forums or in person.

The goal of a Contributor Day is to give back to the WordPress community and contribute to the open-source project. It’s also an opportunity to learn from other contributors, meet new people, and network with other WordPress enthusiasts.

For WordCamp Kerala, we are organizing an informal contributor day that anyone can join in-person and online on March 25, 2023!

Do I need to be a developer to join the contributor day?

Short answer: No.

There are so many ways to contribute to WordPress, and there is something for anyone and everyone! You can contribute to Photos, Patterns, Documentation, Support, Training, and Polyglots. You can also contribute to Core, Meta, Themes, and Training in the non-coding part. You can help to create content, update documentation, test features, report issues, and can also provide feedback.

Now, if you are a developer, there are multiple ways for you to contribute as well. With your technical skills, you can contribute to Core, Meta, Themes, and Training. You can also check out other teams too if you are interested and learn from them while contributing.

Visit make.wordpress.org for all the ways you can contribute to the global WordPress project. From Community to Testing, from Marketing to Training, there is a task for everyone!

Sounds great! How do I participate?

First, may we ask you to fill out the following Google Form to express your interest in participation? This will help us identify the list of teams for the event and make the necessary preparations.

In-Person Participation

If you plan to participate in Contributor Day in person, we’re glad to have you! The event is being held on March 11th 2023, from 10 AM to 1 PM. We will have in-person events in Trivandrum, Kochi, Kozhikode, and Palakkad, in the state of Kerala. Please follow the links below to sign up for the event closest to you!

Virtual Participation

We also welcome folks from all over the world to join our contributor day. Once you have filled out our form, we warmly welcome you via the #contributor-day channel in Make WordPress Slack is a great place to start on our event day!

From there, you can join the channel for the Team(s) you plan to participate with, and someone can help you to get started contributing.

WordCamp Kerala is scheduled on March 25, 2023 and we have the perfect opportunity for you to contribute to WordPress and make the open-source software that powers over 43% of the internet all the more awesome. 

Schedule

Time	Event Details
10:00 AM	Welcome
10:15 AM	Opening and welcoming leads to introducing their team
10:30 AM	Contributing to WordPress
12:45 PM	Closing Remarks and wrap-up

Some tips for new contributors

• Sign up on WordPress.org and Slack channel
  Your first step should be to create a profile on WordPress.org (if you don’t have an account already). All real-time communications related to WordPress happen on Slack. So don’t forget to signup there too.
• If you are joining one of the in-person events, bring your laptop!
• Install the required software
  It will be great if you can install a local development environment before the event. And to contribute to plugins/themes or Core, you’ll need some of the software listed below. Check out this excellent article on how you can come prepared for a contributor day.
  • Clean WordPress Install on a local environment (Eg: XAMPP, WAMP, Local by Flywheel, etc.)
  • An editor (Eg: VSCode, Sublime, PHPStorm, etc.)
  • Also please ensure before the event that your dev environment works. 

Helpful Resources

These are some good resources you can go through before the Contributor Day to get a better understanding of the process. These are mostly aimed at developer contributors, but we will be updating the list to include more resources.

• Preparing for a WordCamp Contributor Day
• New User Quick Start Guide
• FAQ for New Contributors
• Core Contributor Handbook
• WordPress Core Components
• Everything You Need to Know About the Community Summit! (Podcast)

If you have any questions, you can contact us. 

Let’s build a better WordPress. See you in Kochi.