WebGUI Community Wiki
In the spirit of open source and community, this wiki was created to facilitate a neat and orderly fashion of sharing information. To encourage community involvement, Plain Black contributed the initial content for this Wiki. Our hope is that community members will actively participate by updating wiki content as often as they wish. Of course,"with great power, comes great responsibility." To that end, anyone caught abusing the wiki will be immediately banned.
After adding a new topic to the Wiki, please take a moment to add your topic title to the Table of Contents.
Because this is a community wiki and can be updated by anyone, at any time, Plain Black makes no guarantee of the accuracy of any of the information. Plain Black offers commercial documentation and support, among other services, to meet all your WebGUI needs.
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Featured Article: Getting Started in the WebGUI Community
Introduction
The WebGUI Community is a very diverse and talented group of people. If you're interested in contributing back to the WebGUI project you're in the right place. You don't have to be a programmer to be involved, not by any means.
This site is devoted to the community and supporting its members. You might want to check out the Community Support page. It contains information and links to numerous community resources.
The Hang Outs
One thing that will help you immensely as a contributor is knowing where to find like minded individuals. This section is meant to give you a few places to look.
IRC - Internet Relay Chat.
You have a good chance of finding members of the WebGUI Community on the #webgui chat channel on the Freenode IRC network. If you're not familiar with IRC, it's essentially like AOL Instant messenger except that instead of their being two people in the chat, there can be many many more who all talk together. You can find out more about IRC with a simple google search. A few things you'll need to know:
- You need an IRC client program, there are many available only that can be downloaded free of charge.
- The IRC network we're using is Freenode
- Our channel is #webgui
- If you see someone with an @ next to their name, these are channel operators. All channel operators in #webgui are Plain Black employees
- If you see someone with an + next to their name, that means the person is a recognized contributor int the webgui community. Most likely for being recognized as one of the People Behind WebGUI
If you're looking for a mentor, recognized contributors are a good place to start.
The Mailing Lists
There are also a lot of contributors on the various Plain Black mailing lists including the developers mailing list, the various forums such as Install/Upgrade help, and etcetera.
Subscribe to the mailinglists fast and easy by using these links:
- The etcetera forum
- The webdesign template and themes forum
- The upgrade/install help forum
- The webgui developers forum
- The webgui sightings page
- The bug tracker
- The rfe tracker
- The black blog
- The plain black news page
- The plain black staff blog
The WebGUI Users Conference
An annual event, this is the one time a year when WebGUI users and Plain Black's staff come together to do all things WebGUI. This is by far, the best way to get involved with the community as nothing can replace face to face interaction and mentoring. The conference is usually held in the fall of each year and more information on attending can be found on the WebGUI Users Conference website as details become available.
Email the Community Coordinator
If all else fails, you can email kristi AT plainblack DOT com. She is the WebGUI Community Coordinator / Advocate at Plain Black. If you truly want to be involved, she will do anything she can to help you get started.
How to Contribute
There are many opportunities to get involved with the WebGUI community. If you have anything to do with, or any interest in, WebGUI, you can help. Examples of how you can contribute include:
- Translators - Visit i18n.webgui.org and either help translate a few items in an existing language, or create a new translation.
- Graphic Designers - Create webgui style themes, icons, fix UI bugs
- Usability Experts - Help make WebGUI more accessable and easier to use.
- Doc Writers - Write documents like this one in the wiki, help out on the boards, improve webgui's built in documentation.
- Testers - Validate WebGUI's features against it's documentation, search for errors, and report bugs.
- Test writers - If you have some Perl abilities, you can help develop unit tests to make sure the WebGUI api is behaving as documented.
- Developers - Write a new feature for webgui like a macro, asset, wobject, auth module or workflow activity and contribute it to the user contributions.
- Bug Fixers - Cruise the bug list and submit patches to correct the problem.
- Core Developers - Becoming a core developer is a privilege. To earn it, you have to demonstrate through bug fixes and/or contributions that you can make sound programming decisions without the need for someone to scrutinize everything you check in. WebGUI is a very large and complex application so getting to this level can take some time. Core developers are developers with commit privileges to the subversion repository
- Advocates - Spread the word about WebGUI, tell people about how you use it and how it's helped you. Encourage people to try it out.
- Marketing and Promotion - If you have a talent for marketing, advertising, or promotion you can be a super advocate! Have a marketing idea? Contact tavis AT plainblack DOT com. Make a WebGUI banner or print ad and contribute it! Maybe you have a design for a cool wallpaper or tshirt, anything to get the word out.
Developers
If you are interested in being a WebGUI developer, you will want to check out the numerous articles on getting started as a developer and best practices.
