Drupal has an amazing community of people who create the software and help each other make the best use of it. It is the best resource to understand, and become a part of, in order to help you on your Drupal journey. There is a wide variety of learning resources and ways to get support, as well as a thriving tradition of local events: meetups, “camps”, and conferences. Since Drupal is created and maintained by volunteers, the more you get involved with the project, the more quickly you can learn and get access to the answers you need.
Example tasks
- Find an answer in the community documentation
- Attend a local event
- Report and help fix a bug in a contributed module
Confidence
The community is always improving processes and tools, so specific steps and resources for getting involved with the community may change over time.
Drupalize.Me resources
How to connect and get involved in the open-source community.
How to find support for issues faced while developing a site.
14.3. Learning More
FreeHow to find additional material to gain advanced site-building skills.
Before we jump into building our first Drupal 7 site, we should also take a look at the great resources you have out there to help you on your journey. Being an open source project, Drupal has an amazing community of people who have paved this road before you. In this lesson we're going to look at the free community resources that you can use to not only find answers to your questions, but also connect with thousands of people around the world who are working in the same space you are. -- We are going to take a tour of the communtiy documentation, various Drupal forums, project issue queues, where you can glean a lot of useful information and help, Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, for real-time collaboration, and getting in touch with user groups of like-minded people around the world.
Additional resources
Drupal.org Troubleshooting Guide
Drupal Answers on Stack Exchange
Drupal Groups Site (groups.drupal.org)
By far, the best way to keep up-to-date on which modules are the most useful, and to ensure that those modules do what you need, is to actually get directly involved and help. The Drupal community offers a myriad of ways for everyone, from the person who just installed Drupal for the first time yesterday to the person who has been coding since she was in diapers, to give something back. In this tutorial we'll look at all of these options and explain how you can dive in.
Additional resources
Contributing to Drupal
TopicAs an open source project, Drupal depends on community contributions in many forms including documentation, code, translation, speaking, organizing events, mentoring others, and even donating money.
External resources
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Drupal Contributor Guide (Drupal.org)
- In the Drupal Contributor Guide, you will find information to help you figure out how you can bring your unique skills and perspectives and join with others in the Drupal community to improve the Drupal software, translations, documentation, and the community itself. Whether you are new to contributing to the Drupal project and community, or are an experienced contributor looking for a new task or role, you can use the following entry points to explore the many possible ways you can contribute.
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Where is the Drupal Community? (Drupal.org)
- The official community guide for different ways to find and interact with the Drupal community.
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Drupical Event Map (drupical.com)
- This is a quick and filterable way to see events happening all the world.
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Community Documentation (Drupal.org)
- This is the central location for all community-maintained documentation about all aspects of the Drupal software and community.