Drupal is an open source project and really depends on its community to move forward. It is all about getting to know the CMS, spreading the knowledge and contribute to projects.
I will give you some ways to get involved, even if you are not a developer there is a task for you!
Drupal Mentors – DrupalCon Dublin 2016 by Michael Cannon is licenced under CC BY-SA 2.0
Participating in user support
Sharing your knowledge with others is very important to the community: it is a nice thing to do and you might also learn some things by doing so. Whatever your skill level, you can give back to the community with online support. There are many places where you can give support starting with the Support Forums. You can also go to Drupal Answers which is more active than the forums or subscribe to the Support Mailing list. If you prefer real-time chat, you can also join #drupal-support channel on IRC or the Slack channels.
Helping out on documentation
Community members can write, review and improve different sorts of documentation for the project: community documentation on drupal.org, programming API reference, help pages inside the core software, documentation embedded in contributed modules and themes etc.
Contributing is a good way to learn more about Drupal and share your knowledge with others. Beginners are particularly encouraged to participate as they are more likely to know where documentation is lacking.
If you are interested, check out the new contributor tasks for anyone and writers.
Translating Drupal interface in your own language
The default language for the administration interface is English but there are about 100 available languages for translations. There is always a need for translations as many of these translation sets are incomplete or can be improved for core and contributed modules.
All translations are now managed by the translation server. If you are willing to help, all you have to do is logging into drupal.org and join a language team. There is even a video to learn how the translation system works and a documentation.
You can also help to translate documentation into your language. Most language-specific communities have their own documentation so you should get in touch with them directly. To learn more, see the dedicated page.
Improving design and usability
The idea is to improve the usability especially in Drupal 8 regarding the administration interface. The focus is mainly on content creation and site building. The community has done many research to understand the problems that users run into and how the new improvements performs. The purpose is also to educate developers and engage designers in order to grow the UX-team. You can visit the Drupal 8 UX page for more details and join the usability group.
Writing a blog post about Drupal
Writing a blog post about Drupal is a good way to share your knowledge and expertise. There are many subjects to explore, technical or not: talking about a former project you developed or writing a tutorial, telling about the state of a version or sharing about an event you attended… And if you are lucky enough your post can be published on the Weekly Drop, the official Drupal newsletter!
Don't forget to reference your blog post on Planet Drupal, this platform is an aggregated list of feeds from around the web which shares relevant Drupal-related knowledge and information.
You can also find our Drupal related blog posts on the Liip blog.
Testing core and modules
Testing Drupal projects is necessary to make the platform stable and there are many things to test! If you have a technical background, you can help to review patches or to write unit tests.
For non-technical people, you can provide some feedback about usability of the administration interface that will help to improve the user experience. Follow the process to give a proper feedback.
Contributing to development
There are many ways to contribute code in core and “contrib” projects such as modules or themes.
You can first help to improve existing projects by submitted patches. This would be the natural thing to do when you work with a module and you notice a bug or a missing feature: search in the corresponding issue queue if the problem have been noticed before. If not, post a message explaining the issue and add a snippet of code if you found a potential fix. Then you can create a patch and submit it into the issue queue.
You can also contribute to new projects by creating your very own module or theme or create a sandbox for more experimental projects.
Attending events
The Drupal association organizes many events all around the world to promote the CMS and gather the community.
One of the biggest events are the Drupalcons. A Drupalcon gathers thousands of people and lasts about one week including 3 full days of conferences. These conferences cover many topics: site building, user experience, security, content authoring etc. You can also join sprints to contribute to Drupal projects and social events to meet the members of the community. Check out our report about DrupalCon Barcelona 2015!
“Drupal Dev Days” conferences occur once a year and gather developers to discuss and present topics technically relevant to the community. You can join sprints, intensive coding sessions and technical conferences.
You can also join DrupalCamps to meet your local community. These events last one or two days and focus on sharing knowledge amongst the community. You can attend conferences and sprints.
There are also many Drupal meetups which are free events happening in many cities in the world. Presentations and discussions finish around nice drinks and appetizers.
Sponsoring events
The community holds conventions and meetups in many countries and being a sponsor will not only help Drupal development but it will also enable you to be noticeable within the community. There are different levels of sponsorings that will offer from mentions on social media to advertising online and at the exhibition space of the event. All you have to do is getting in touch with the event organizers. By the way, Liip will sponsor the Drupal Mountain Camp in Davos this year!
Offering a donation
You can give donations to the Drupal association through the website in order to support drupal.org infrastructure and maintenance, worldwide events such as Drupalcons. The donations are either in Euros or Dollars.
You can also become a member of the Drupal Association for the same purpose, as an individual member or an organization member. The minimal fees are 15 Euros. Find more information about membership on drupal.org.
Conclusion
Drupal projects are constantly improving thanks to passionate volunteers who work on many subjects: development, documentation, marketing, events organization, supports… There is for sure a task that will suit you and it only takes small time commitment to make changes.
So join the great Drupal community and start getting involved!