Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, recently mentioned that it would be awesome if everyone profiting from WordPress could give back 5% of their time to the free and open source blogging platform. There are many ways to contribute to WordPress, and not all of them require coding skills. Sure, the WordPress community is always looking for more developers to bring their ideas to WordPress, WordPress 4.0 was brought to us by 275 volunteers after all, but the community is also looking for more folks to help in support and documentation too.
The documentation is editable by anyone with an account, so please feel free to edit or add information wherever you feel it’s necessary. There’s even a handbook if you’re just getting started. The support forums are also open to anyone with an account. Topics without replies are easy to find, and no matter your experience level, you’ll find that there’s always someone you can help. Ten years ago, I got involved in the WordPress Support Forums while waiting for a reply to my own support thread. I figured that I might as well see if I could help out in the Installation section since I had just successfully installed WordPress a few hours earlier, and after helping a few people, I was hooked.
We recently completed the first phase of a Support Handbook for anyone eager to dive into WordPress support. Within the handbook, you’ll find some recommendations on how to support WordPress users, ways to troubleshoot common problems, philosophical bits, code examples, and even some replies to frequent issues which you are more than welcome to copy and paste as your own. Though the content is mostly complete, the Support Handbook is still a work in progress and we have some great things planned for it in the future. If you see any problems there, please do let us know in the comments on the specific page with the problem.
WordPress is open source, which means that it’s grown by the strength of its community, not the power and wealth of a single company. If you rely on WordPress, you can give back by joining the community. Whether it’s in a development role or helping out in support and documentation, every contribution will help WordPress grow into a better platform for us all.