WordCamps can be a great place to start contributing to the open source WordPress project.
In the first instalment of our contributor stories series, we feature three of the many thousands of individuals who found their home in the WordPress community after contributing at a WordCamp.
They share how they found inspiration and joined others in contributing to a platform used by more than 35 per cent of the online world.
Contributing is fun and makes a difference
Benjamin Zekavica lives in Germany and is graduating from an apprenticeship in Media Design – Digital. He started learning about web languages, including HTML, CSS, JS and PHP as an 11 year old. He later discovered WordPress and began learning about how he could contribute to the project.
“To contribute WordPress in my free time makes me so happy.”
He said: “Some years ago, I joined the WordPress Gutenberg Team and this has been a highlight in my life. It was a really amazing step to help the WordPress Community to become bigger and to make the Gutenberg development faster and better!”
Benjamin shared the importance of the project to him: “To contribute to WordPress in my free time makes me so happy because I know more people will use it, our community will become bigger and WordPress will become better. I want to say thank you very much to all contributors around the world who spend much time for our community and make WordPress bigger and better.”
Germany / benjamin-zekavica.de
Helping improve global access to WordPress
Nidhi Jain, from Udaipur in India, chose WordPress to be her career when she discovered it was open source, that it was a powerful tool to work with, and that it had a thriving and large community.
She said: “I saw that WordPress is available in many languages, so I thought, ‘Why not make it better for Hindi so it would be easier for people to use WordPress?’. That’s when I started WordPress translations in Hindi. It was my first contribution to the WordPress community.”
Nidhi still contributes to the Polyglots team today. She has also organised a local WordPress Translation Day in Udaipur and was one of the WordCamp Asia organisers. Her enthusiasm for the WordPress community has meant she is on a constant journey of discovery on how she can contribute to the numerous teams.
“I love to help people and solve their problems.”
She said: “I love to help people and solve their problems, so I started resolving problems on the WordPress Support Team. Whenever I have free time, I spend it giving support to people and focussing on resolving bugs in Core and Meta. I’ve been involved in the WordPress community in many ways, including theme development, plugin development, organising and speaking at WordCamps, and WordPress translations.”
In 2019, Nidhi attended her first WordCamp Europe thanks to the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. It was the first time she had travelled such a distance. From contributing translations herself, she used the experience to try and help others become active contributors and celebrate the community. She said: “I got a chance to help beginners to translate WordPress and learn from them too. Also, I talked with new contributors and got to know about their contribution experiences for the Marketing team and the WordPress Translation Day initiative.”
She added: “I would like to continue contributing in the future, learning new things, attending Meetups and WordCamps, helping people, and contributing to the WordPress community in any way possible.”
There are so many ways people can contribute to WordPress and lots of different skills that can be of use, both from an individual’s professional and personal interests. WordCamp Europe has been the inspiration or start for many contributing journeys.
India / @jainnidhi03 / iamnidhi.in
Being part of an encouraging community
Lucas Radke found WCEU an ideal place to find inspiration and highlights the open and welcoming atmosphere people will encounter when joining the project.
“The team was super open
and supportive.”
He said: “I started contributing while attending my first WordCamp Europe back in 2018 in Belgrade. I joined the hosting table due to my background and knowledge in this. The team was super open and supportive and it felt like there were a lot of tasks for each skill level. Since then I’ve joined the hosting table as much as possible. I became an active contributor and since January 2020 I’ve been part of the team running the weekly meetings.”
How can you contribute to WordPress?
Want to find out more about contributing? Follow the below links to read about the teams mentioned in this post:
The full list of teams that together ‘make’ WordPress
You can also use the Contributor Orientation Tool to discover a team to join and start your own #ContributorStory.
Read more contributing stories
Estela, Miriam and Matthias are just three of the many individuals across the world who together help to make WordPress better for the entire community.
Read more contributor stories in the following blog posts:
Thank You For Your Answer