Recently we have found many of our prospective clients asking us “How are you involved in the Drupal.org community and what do you give back?” which we think is a great question, because it means not only do our clients understand the importance of community contribution, but it means they’re also passionate about working with suppliers who understand the importance of contributing to the Drupal community which is what helps Drupal grow as a platform.

This is important for everybody involved, as many people could argue reasons for and against using different CMS’s, but at the end of the day it’s the strength of the community that really sets Drupal aside from other CMS’s.

How do you begin getting involved in the community?

When I was first introduced to the Drupal community I assumed it would be hard to get involved since my initial assumptions were that submitting Modules and patches was the only way to contribute back to Drupal, and since I’m not a back-end developer I thought I’d struggle to get involved here.

Soon enough I found there really is something for everyone, no matter what your skill set is. I began by helping out in the content queue, more specifically by reviewing Marketplace listings. After a couple of months I was given a webmaster role, so I now feel I have my own responsibility within the community! Find out how you can help content moderation here.

How does Microserve give back to the Drupal community?

Here is a list of what we have given back to the community and advice on how you can get involved too:

Sponsorship/Association

The Microserve team attended our first DrupalCon in Prague this year, and as part of this step we also sponsored the event at silver level. We feel it was a great decision and hope to do the same again next year at Amsterdam, hopefully at a gold level. We would highly recommend it to other agencies, if not for the experience alone. See why you should sponsor here.

We are also Drupal Association Organisation members.

As a Drupal Development Agency we are one of many Supporting Partners that help make it financially possible to maintain and improve drupal.org.

Global Training Day Initiative

When we began offering Drupal Training as a service we thought it was only right to host a Drupal Global Training Day. These days are free or low cost training events which are aimed at users who are new to Drupal. We thought the event was a success and was a great boost for Drupal in our local community which helped inject confidence into a variety of users who were uncomfortable with Drupal before attending the event. More information about the day can be found here.

Modules/Patches

We have improved modules by submitting patches and helping within the issue queues, we have also submitted a number of our own modules:

Fast database logging and Extended block visibility by Mark PavlitskiTTR Configurable Widget by Saemie Chouchane (see the accompanying blog post)Textmarketer SMS Integration by Simon DixWho Sends API by Darren Whittington

After submitting Textmarketer SMS Integration, Simon wrote a blog on his experience throughout the submission process. Read it for instructions and tips on how you can submit your first module if you haven’t already.

Textmarketer SMS Integration and TTR Configurable Widget were initially based on features of an existing client project, and with the clients permission we extended this functionality to create modules which other members of the community would find useful. When appropriate we discuss community contribution with clients if we spot any functionality which we think would be beneficial to the community during a project.

What else is there to do?

Want to get involved in the Drupal Community too? There are many other ways to get involved in Drupal which we haven't covered above, so you can be sure there will be something to suit your skillset.

Native in a non-English language? Why not help with Drupal translations.

Maybe you're a designer and the thought of technical contributions has deterred you. In that case why not help out with Usability, which is a key part right now with the release of Drupal 8.

How about marketing if this is your area of expertise?

However you choose to contribute it is all beneficial to the Drupal community and you should be proud of your contributions however large or small they may be. It's the users who make up the community and without contribution Drupal wouldn't be what it is today. We will continue to contribute wherever is possible and we hope anybody reading this will do the same!

Microserve is listed as 1 of just 10 drupal.org recognised Featured Service Providers within the UK. You can see our listing here to see more about us and find out about our individual team members - https://drupal.org/marketplace/microserve