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It's a lofty goal, and we'd love your help!
In addition, starting in September 2009 we will regularly highlight members who have made significant contributions via our community leader-board and “member of the month” award. You could be next!
Finally, people who contribute significantly will be well respected and thanked by our staff and community. For exceptional work, members may receive some free support or development time from our paid staff (we should note we can't guarantee this, it depends on free time and if it happens it is a reflection of our appreciation and human desire to give back).
If you support the mission of ocProducts and have enjoyed the benefits of ocPortal, please consider giving back with a little of your time. You're the one who will benefit, after all! – as ocPortal's recognition grows, so can ocProducts win clients to continue development and give back, yet again, to our awesome community.
How to help out
Do you want to help our mission: bringing a way that empowers the masses to create better websites on saner budgets?It's a lofty goal, and we'd love your help!
Why do you want my help?
By virtue of the fact that you are reading this, you have at least some interest in web development and/or ocPortal. This makes you perfect for so many reasons:- The enthusiasm of you and others is key: so many jobs, such as spreading the word, could never be done well by a machine – and if we tried to do everything ourselves, we couldn't sustain the product and community
- You're different. Different from us, and different from many other ocPortal users – either in little or big ways. This diversity is exactly what we need - a variety of skills make ocPortal more valuable for everybody. Share your own special perspectives and talents.
- We need feedback from people on the front lines. What would you improve in ocPortal?
Here are a few ideas of ways to help
Evangelism
- TwitterFollow ocChris and ocAllen on Twitter, and tweet about #ocPortal.
- Become a fan of ocPortal on Facebook.
- Support us on YouTubeRate and comment on our video tutorials on YouTube.
- Vote for ocPortalVote/rate and review ocPortal wherever you see it. HotScripts and OpenSourceCMS are two places to start.
- Post about ocPortalIf you see CMSs compared on other websites and ocPortal isn't mentioned, let us know about it!
- Tell a friendRecommend ocPortal if a friend or your company is looking to make a website.
- Mention ocProductsMention the staff as web developers to help them bring in an income.
- Self-initiativesFind any opportunity to share ocPortal with someone. Write your own article and publish it. Talk about ocPortal at a conference. Be creative!
Skill-based
- Make addonsIf you know PHP, or are learning, make and release some addons for the community. It takes a lot of knowledge, but anybody can learn and it's fun, fulfilling and makes you employable.
- ThemeIf you know XHTML/CSS, or are learning, make and release some themes for the community. With CSS you can start small and still achieve cool things.
- TranslateIf you know another language, collaborate with others on LaunchPad to make a new language pack.
- Use ocPortal for your own clientsAre you a professional website developer? Try to start using ocPortal for your projects – it provides you lots of advantages to other software, it's free, and we want the community and install-base to grow!
- Google Summer of CodeIf you're a student and want to work on ocPortal for the Google Summer of Code, please contact us and we will work to try and make it happen.
On ocPortal.com
- Reach out to other usersParticularly new members, try to welcome them and help make sure they don't get lost. Also put yourself on the map so people near you can get in contact.
- Help others on the forumWhere you can, answer other user's questions.
- Give gift pointsIf you see other members doing good things, give them some gift points.
Usability and stability
- Reporting bugsBig or tiny – we will be happy if you even report typos we make as bugs.
- Reporting usability issuesWe will be happy if you have any concrete suggestions for making reasonably common tasks even a little bit easier.
- Write community tutorialsPost them on CEDI and the staff may highlight them.
- Developing unit testsIf you know some PHP you can help us test ocPortal en-masse. Write unit tests.
Other
- Supply test data for importersSend an SQL-dump of a website powered by other software to help us create an ocPortal importer. Please be aware here though that we are very happy to receive submissions but they won't necessarily be used unless we already have plans to make an importer – most likely we'd keep them privately on file for use when we need them.
- Sponsor a featureDo you have a decent budget, and need something new implemented in ocPortal? Hire ocProducts to develop it, which helps bring the staff some money, and supplies a feature we may include in future ocPortal versions.
- OtherDo you have some other expertise? Do you have the ability to help the staff make business connections? There are many other ways to support our mission – be imaginative!
What's in it for you?
For one thing, you're helping us in our mission to make the web development world a better place for people who aren't necessarily programmers or millionaires. This is a big help to the incredibly hard-working ocProducts team who've invested years for very modest incomes up until this point, to see our vision come to pass. By its very nature the open-source model depends on people like you to share talents in big and small ways.In addition, starting in September 2009 we will regularly highlight members who have made significant contributions via our community leader-board and “member of the month” award. You could be next!
Finally, people who contribute significantly will be well respected and thanked by our staff and community. For exceptional work, members may receive some free support or development time from our paid staff (we should note we can't guarantee this, it depends on free time and if it happens it is a reflection of our appreciation and human desire to give back).
How to get started
We have a pledge calendar (below) where, optionally, you can publicly commit to helping ocPortal by describing what you intend to do, and by when. Aside from this, just go ahead and pick something on the above list and go for it! Again – even tiny efforts like micro-blogging do far more good than you might imagine. So why not?If you support the mission of ocProducts and have enjoyed the benefits of ocPortal, please consider giving back with a little of your time. You're the one who will benefit, after all! – as ocPortal's recognition grows, so can ocProducts win clients to continue development and give back, yet again, to our awesome community.
Move the web forward with us!
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