Dear Joomla newbie, I assure you that you will be all excited about getting involved and making a contribution to the vibrant Joomla community. Why excited? You are going to gain lots of knowledge about Joomla, befriending a number of Joomla lovers, taking part in monthly Joomla events and especially, making a contribution to the development of your beloved CMS (I’m sure you already love Joomla better than anything else because you are reading my article – it’s all about Joomla!).

Although there are so many Joomla communities around the globe (countless, I have to say), I will show you the general home of Joomla users and developers in the official website of Joomla joomla.org. Here you can get involved in discussions, events and make a contribution to the Joomla! society.

As a Joomla Newbie, you might wonder how to make a difference in the Joomla Community. No worries. Here is “Six ways for newcomers to contribute to Joomla!” written by Mark Dexter.

In this article, I will take you around the Joomla Community so that you have an idea about their common activities, what you can get from that and how you can be a part of them.

How to get involved in the Joomla Community?

Let’s hang around the Community site where all activities of common Joomla users are taking place.

Forum: This is an active and friendly forum of the Joomla Community where you can find answers to your questions.

J! People: Social networking for Joomla users and developers. You can get the fastest answer to any question when you post it in the Answers part of J! People.

Magazine: Here you will find useful articles contributed by Joomla experts in the Joomla! Community Magazine. Together with latest news from the JoomlaSphere, there are a lot of good resources recommended in Joomla! Books category.

Community Portal: The portal collects blog posts from the Joomla teams and leadership board. Latest Joomla! Events, featured articles and related information are available in this page also.

Joomla! User Group: This is a collection of local Joomla user groups from different areas and countries. You can meet new people, get help with a project and share knowledge with other Joomla people here. If you don’t find a Joomla user group of your local area, you can create one.

Joomla! Days: Joomla! Days are the biggest events taking place anywhere in the Joomla Community. This page consists of information about Joomla! Days around the world. If your area is hosting an event, you should attend, as this is a good way to learn new things and meet new people.

What more can you do in the Joomla Community?

This site is mainly for Joomla developers’ community. If you have skills in Web Development, it will be a good place to find resources and get help from other developers.

Developer Portal: The Joomla! Developer Network is a huge resource for developers to build or maintain software based on the Joomla platform. If you are interested in developing or extending the Joomla CMS, you will find lots of useful resources here. It also provides tools to monitor the current status of the Joomla code base, i.e. the code summary application which updates the latest and historic automated test results.

Documentation: The page directs you to the Joomla! Official Documentation where you get all information you need about the CMS.

Resources: You will find a lot of Joomla professionals on this page – Joomla template/extension providers, Joomla Services, Joomla Support and Training.

Extensions: The site provides you with a great number of Joomla extensions uploaded by different Joomla developers over the world. You can download most of them for free.

Translations: Here you will find Joomla accredited packages translated into different languages. Translation includes Joomla! Core, components, modules, plugins and documentation.

Mailing Lists: If you want to stay updated with all the news around the Joomla project and community, just enter your e-mail in this page for whichever group you want to subscribe to. Besides this, you can friend Joomla! on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as well.

Idea Pool: For many people, this site is probably considered the coolest place, where every idea for future development of Joomla! CMS is posted by the community. You can find a lot of creative ideas for Joomla! here and, if you have any suggestions, don’t hesitate to share them with us.

Here ends our journey!

You’ve been to every corner of the official Joomla Community. Now over to you, what do you have in mind? What will you do next? Let me know if you are going to join and make a difference. I’m listening.