10 ideas to help in the Joomla! community (in random order)

Help out 6 – Magazine

The Joomla! Community Magazine (JCM) is a magazine 'written by the community, for the community' and contains background information about Joomla! related news.

1. Share Joomla! related background information
   If you want to share background information about anything Joomla! related, feel free to contact the JCM editors. When you write an article, please try to follow the JCM guide
2. Join team of JCM editors
   The JCM team does a great job in collecting, translating, editing submitted articles. Are you interested to help out as editor? Please contact them!

Help out 7 – Social networking

Joomla! People Site (Jpeople) is a social networking website to connect with other people in the Joomla! community.

1. Share your opinion
   At Jpeople you can share your constructive opinion about Joomla! related topics. You can join a Joomla! related group or start your own.
2. Report misbehavior
   Keep this network a friendly place and please report any violations.
3. Jpeople moderator
   All Jpeople groups have some moderators. Consider joining a group to help out.

Help out 8 – Real life meetings

Communicating with other people about Joomla! is a fun way to share knowledge. Meeting people in real life will even more improve your relations within the Joomla! community. Two ways to meet Joomla! community members are JUGs (local meetings about Joomla) and Joomladays (one or two day conferences about Joomla, organized all over the world).

Joomla! User Groups (JUG)

1. Attend a Joomla! User Group Meeting
   Please look at the JUG list to find a JUG near your own geographic location, and contact them about the next JUG. Share your knowledge at such a meeting, or consider giving a presentation or workshop on a Joomla! related subject
2. Organize a Joomla! User Groups Meeting
   If there's not a JUG in your neighborhood, please find some other people and set up a JUG yourself

Joomladays

1. Attend a Joomladay
   The Joomla! community site has a list of all future Joomladays. Attend a Joomladay to share your knowledge and enthusiasm about Joomla.
2. Organize a Joomladay
   Is there no Joomladay in your country? Please consider organizing one yourself. Contact the Joomla! Events team to find out how to do so. If there has been a Joomladay in the past, please contact the people who organized it, to share knowledge and to get more people involved. See also the Joomla!Day Charter page.

Help out 9 – Share your websites

The Joomla! Community Showcase ('Joomla! Site Showcase') is an extensive directory about websites that run on Joomla

1. Share your 'awesome' Joomla! website
   The awesome Joomla! websites that you have created yourself can be good promotional material to show other people what you can do with Joomla. Please share the best sites you've created!
2. Refer people to the Site Showcase
   Help to promote Joomla! and refer other people to this showcase directory.

Help out 10 – Use your imagination!

There are even more ways to help out with Joomla:

1. Help other people with Joomla! websites
   I'll bet that you know people who want their own website, or have one in HTML or a closed source CMS. You can help them with setting up their own Joomla! website. That doesn't mean that you'll have to do all the work. Just give them some pointers, and refer to sources of Joomla! knowledge. Help them to help themselves!
2. Help other people with Joomla! knowledge
   As you know Joomla! is Open Source software. Because it's Open Source, you have access to the source code, which might give you knowledge about the inner workings of the software. The Joomla!community functions likewise: it's an open community that shares Joomla! knowledge. Please do likewise and share your knowledge and enthusiasm with other people.
3. Help to promote Joomla! in positive way
   There is always room for improvement. Whether it's the software or the community resources. Feel free to give friendly and constructive feedback. But don't be part of the problem, instead be part of the solution! Please come up with ideas how to solve the problems that you identified.

Bonus: Help out 11 – Need some more ideas?

If you can contribute some of your valuable time, but don't know how, there are two places to visit:

1. Can you help in community over a longer period of time?
   Visit 'Help wanted in the community' (a board on Joomla! forum) for some more ideas.
2. Do you have very limited time?
   The 'JPeople Projects' list small tasks that need to be done, but which costs only a small amount of time.

Question 2: Are you willing to help out in the Joomla! community, but you don't feel comfortable with the English Language?

Fact 2: You don't need to know English very well to help out within the Joomla! community.

You can help out in your own language, e.g. In an international language board on the forum. Or help out in the local community of your own language. Those local communities do tremendous work with Translations, Usergroups (JUGS), Forums, Documentation, News, Showcase, all in your own language. Please contact your local community to find out how you can contribute.

Conclusion about community involvement

I hope that this article (and the first part, published in JCM September 2011. link: ) gives you some (new) ideas about how you can be involved in the Joomla! community. If you have any other suggestions about community involvement, please share them!

I would like to conclude this article with my following statement:

Please share your valuable time
in some way
with other people
through the (international) Joomla! community
and we will all benefit from it!