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Contribute to WordPress core

The WordPress.org open source community is comprised of talented individuals around the world. This community is always interested in receiving additional help from new contributors. Developers who support enterprise sites on the VIP Platform can lend a unique voice to WordPress that helps improve the project for all.

Development

The Core Contributor Handbook is a helpful reference for individuals interested in beta testing or contributing code.

The Core Contributor Handbook reviews in detail the Trac workflow, organization of the WordPress project, communication channels, best practices, and more. An FAQ for New Contributors and a guide for setting up the tools needed to start contributing to WordPress core are also available. Once set up, the “good first bugs” Trac tickets are a good place for developers to begin contributing.

Getting started

Committing code is not the only way to contribute to WordPress core. The Make WordPress community site breaks its teams into a wide variety of contributor groups. High-level overview pages that describe how these groups operate and their purposes are linked to the Make WordPress contributor groups listed below.

Make WordPress contributor groups

Communication through Slack

Joining the WordPress Slack community enables individuals to contribute to WordPress by being part of the conversation and staying informed of new WordPress developments. Joining WordPress Slack requires a WordPress.org user account (this is a separate account from WordPress.com).

How an individual can join WordPress Slack:

  1. If a user does not yet have a WordPress.org user account, they can create a new user account.
  2. Log in to the WordPress.org.
  3. To retrieve a Slack invite link navigate to: https://make.wordpress.org/chat/

The Slack channel for each contributor group can be found by viewing each group’s page listed and linked on the Make WordPress home page.

Additional Resource:

Meetings

While work and conversations happen asynchronously in Slack, updated timings for each group’s regularly scheduled meeting can be reviewed on the Make WordPress home page. Group meetings are held in Slack and stopping by to say hello, follow along, and participating is encouraged. Agendas and meeting notes are posted to the respective contributor group blogs on Make WordPress.

Bi-monthly New Core Contributor chats are currently scheduled for every month on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday at UTC-05:00 in the #core channel. All questions are welcome.

Additional Resources:

Last updated: December 28, 2023

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