As I have mentioned in the past, many people and companies have communicated to me in the past their willingness to know how they could make their contribution more impactful to Drupal and the Drupal association. The Bounty program has proved success, and we are exploring and getting new ideas to extend it. However we don't want to stop here.
That’s why we are publishing today this list of strategic initiatives, and list of issues and modules where your contribution should be more impactful.
Additionally we may want at some point to grant extra credits to some those issues. For now, if you are not sure where to contribute but you want to make sure that your contribution makes a difference, have a look at this list and take your pick.
And have in mind that this is a work in progress or a living document. Some sections will need proposals that we will start populating after internal review, and depending on the feedback received on the usefulness of this document.
Strategic Initiatives
Strategic initiatives are where some of the most important innovations in Drupal happen. These are often big picture ideas to add major new features to Drupal that range from improving major apis, to adding better page building, to improving the total cost of ownership by adding quality of life features, and much more.
Participating in a strategic initiative can be challenging but also rewarding. It is not a place for a drive-by contribution - it's a place to join if you have dedicated time to devote, are willing to listen and learn from the existing contributors and initiative leads before you jump in, and have a strong background in related areas.
- Automatic Updates
- Easy out of the box
- Gitlab Acceleration
- Next Generation Page Builder
- Project Browser
- Recipes, Starter Kits and Distributions
Find here more information about the current Strategic Initiatives.
Issues
Contributing to individual issues can be less of a long-term commitment than participating in Strategic Initiatives, but it can also be overwhelming because of the sheer number of issues on Drupal.org. It's also very important to follow the issue etiquette guidelines when contributing to issues. Most of all - listen to and respect the project maintainer and their guidance when contributing to issues on their project. It's better to help solve existing issues to show your willingness to help before opening any new ones.
- Make dmu-upgrade itself run without errors on Drupal 10 https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalmoduleupgrader/issues/3287082
- Any Drupal 11.x compatibility issues (see https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3284879)
- Everything related to UX https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?&issue_tags=ux
Modules and projects
Drupal is built on the back of a powerful ecosystem of extensions, modules, themes, distributions, etc. These extensions are crucial for supporting the vast variety of industry use cases that Drupal is used for, and oftentimes some of the most important innovations in Drupal begin as contributed extensions.
These are just a few projects that could use contribution support to help advance Drupal.
- Layout Builder + Extras
- Automatic updates
- Inline entity form (contact maintainer): https://www.drupal.org/project/inline_entity_form
- Project browser
- Gin
- Symfony messenger: https://www.drupal.org/project/sm
- Would you like to propose one? Send me your suggestions: alex.moreno@association.drupal.org
Top used patches
- Would it be amazing to have a list of most used patches, and propose those as priorities to get fixed? We are working on extracting that list. COMING SOON
- Would you like to propose a patch or patches on this section? Send me your suggestions and why it would make a difference to: alex.moreno@association.drupal.org
Easy picks
Issues that are easy to fix or just need a little push
- COMING SOON
- Would you like to propose an easy pick? Send me your suggestions: alex.moreno@association.drupal.org
Ideas/others?
Contact me: alex.moreno@association.drupal.org
Educational resources for contribution
We offer some detailed resources that we recommend everyone review when learning to first contribute:
Resource #1: A video introduction to contribution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu7ND0JT-8A
Resource #2: A slide deck which goes into greater depth about contribution:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jvU0-9Fd4p1Bla67x9rGALyE7anmzjhQ4vPUbf4SGhk/edit
Resource #3: The First Time Contributors Workshop from DrupalCon Global:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K0uIgKaVNQ
Avoid contribution behavior that seems motivated just to 'game the system'
It's unfortunate, but we do sometimes see contributors who appear and disappear on single issues on small, repetitive tasks that could just as easily be handled by automated tools. These issues are generally not eligible for credit anyway, and often cause frustration for Project Maintainers. It's not good for you or your company's reputation to contribute in this way.
Resource #4: Abuse of the credit system
These guidelines help clarify what kinds of contributions are not considered acceptable for marketplace credit.
https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/docs/marketplace/abuse-of-the-contribution-credit-system
We did see some recent examples of issues being opened for individual phpcs issues, when we prefer to see all phpcs issues fixed in a single issue, for example.