Like many other open source products, TYPO3 thrives on contributions of the community. There are a lot of ways to contribute to the project, but besides visiting events I was really interested in helping with the code for years. My problem was always: how to start and what to do. In the last years documentation on how to contribute became better and better and it is now much easier to start contributing. But why should you do contributions to the core and what about TYPO3 Review Friday?
In my opinion if you want to become a good developer, you need to know the tools you are working with. For us TYPO3 developers our most important tool besides your editor and workstation, is TYPO3 itself. If you want to do your job in a proper and sustainable way, you really need to know TYPO3 itself. As I was working with TYPO3 for years, I always thought that I did know TYPO3 quite well. With the latest version of TYPO3 a lot of new features are introduced and a lot of code is refactored. To keep up the changes in the core, I started helping to translate the What’s new slides to Dutch. It forces me to read all the changes of every version and therefor it gave me great insights. I can definitely advice you to read those What’s new slides or even better: help the team to translate those slides in your own language. Want to help? Just send me a message!
By reading the changes in the What’s new slides I realized that I only know little about the core. Of course you do know some of the Core API’s you need every day in your project. But if you take a look at the documentation of the Core API’s, you see there are a lot of features you can use. It is a great resource of information of course, but you need to like to read.
A great way to learn what’s going on is to help with reviewing patches. Every change that is done on the code of TYPO3 is being reviewed. As a non-core-developer you also can give your votes. One is for a code review and the other one is if you verified it worked with your installation. You can give a +1 to both options. Core-developers can give a +2 on both options. Every patch needs at least 1x +1 and 1x +2 on both options before it will be merged.
As you can see. It is important that also non-core-developers help with reviewing. And how about combining doing reviews and have fun with other TYPO3 enthusiasts? That’s why TYPO3 Review Friday is introduced!
Every first Friday of the month, TYPO3 GmbH is opening up its doors for all people that wants to help the TYPO3 project by doing reviews or writing patches. Last week I joined the TYPO3 Review Friday with two colleagues. I had joined the Review Friday once before from remote, but it was the first time I joined in the office. I can say that it was really good to meet the team of TYPO3 GmbH and the other participants. They share nice insights and really helping you to do your contributions.
During the day I personally talked a lot about the new SEO features of the TYPO3 SEO Initiative we are integrating and introduced my colleagues in core contributions. We reviewed some patches and worked on the new SEO features. At the end it was a pretty successful day and I really enjoyed it.
Luckily we had a reservation for a hotel so we joined the people of the GmbH for a dinner and drink in the city. We talked a lot about TYPO3 of course and it was really a great combination of fun and “work”.
If you even think you are interested, don’t hesitate. Just visit one of the upcoming Review Fridays. I will guarantee you that you will learn something new and get to know new people that day! They created a Facebook event for the TYPO3 Review Friday. You can register yourself there or if you don’t use Facebook, contact Anja Leichsenring (@maddy on Slack) where you can find more info and you can register.
When you have questions, you can also ask me of course. More than happy to introduce you in contributing to core!
Do you have a question? Do you want to work together? Just send me a message and I will get in touch as soon as possible.
