Contributing to WooCommerce

WooCommerce is now the most popular eCommerce plugin in the world. Yes, exactly, in the world, not only on WordPress.

It’s developed by WooThemes as you probably already know, but what you may not know, is that WooThemes’ developers are not the only developers working on it.

Ok, you could say that now also Automatticians are working on it. You are getting closer, but the most important part is still missing!

Let me give you a hint: You!

Why you are the most important part of WooCommerce

WooCommerce wouldn’t be anything without the community, and you are part of that community.

The community does not only asks for help or offer support. The community is a lot more than that.

The community is made by all the people that actually translate WooCommerce, contribute to its core, support other people around the world (see Facebook, WordPress.org, Twitter and many other channels i don’t even know probably), create extensions for it or create themes that support it.

Isn’t this awesome? Maybe you always thought that only a bunch of ninjas from WooThemes were working on WooCommerce, and now you find that even you, even that small string that you translated one year ago, or that issue that you opened to report a bug, makes you a WooCommerce Contributor.

Woah! That’s exciting! Give me moar!

That’s what i wanted to hear! If you are still reading, you are on the right path already!

There are various ways to contribute to WooCommerce.

Contribute to localizing WooCommerce

Translating WooCommerce is probably the easiest and fastest way to became a contributor. You don’t need any technical knowledge, but only an account on Transifex.com.

Don’t think that translating is not that important as contributing to the code. Translating is very important.

Think that the 75% of the internet does not speak English. By translating WooCommerce you are helping that 75% to use it, make their businesses and make a living. That’s something to be proud of.

Translating the core

There’s a public project on Transifex where you can join the localization team of your language and immediately help by translating WooCommerce.

Translating video tutorials

There’s a growing library of WooCommerce video tutorials. They are available in English, both spoken and written (captions).

On Transfiex you can find this public project where you can help by translating these videos captions in your language.

Contributing to the core

Contributing to the core of WooCommerce means that you are actually writing code that will be included in WooCommerce, or if you are not a developer, you are testing it and reporting issues to the developers.

Reporting issues

This is a great way to became a contributor, you don’t need to be a developer or to have any technical knowledge. Just install WooCommerce and try to break it!

If you can do it, then report an issue on GitHub by explaining how you did and what the developers need to do to reproduce the issue.

Making changes

If you are a developer and you want to help by writing code, this is the best spot for you. Take a look at the existing issues on GitHub and fix some of them by submitting a Pull Request with your patch.

Where do i go now?

My little overview about how to became a contributor for WooCommerce ends here, but there would be a lot more to say.

If you want more detailed information, please read this document.

I’m waiting to welcome you in our community!