Get involved - Contribute to OpenCms

If you like OpenCms and want to take part in it's further development, there are various ways to become an active part of the OpenCms community. We invite you to participate as much or as little as you choose. Besides writing code and providing modules and examples to the community, you can also make contributions to the evolution of OpenCms without spending a lot of time with it:

• Become an active participant on the OpenCms mailing list
• Report OpenCms reference sites and success stories
• Test out new OpenCms functionality
• Report bugs using the OpenCms bug tracking system
• Extend the documentation and write how-tos
• Localize the OpenCms workplace or the online help

If you are a developer and a little bit more ambitious, you can:

• Develop modules and make them available to the community
• Extend OpenCms with new core functionalities
• Fix bugs in the OpenCms core

We really enjoy to have an active community, so all your contributions are welcome.

In each case, we strongly suggest you to join the OpenCms mailing list.

Please note: If you want your code contribution to be distributed with the OpenCms core, you will have to fill out the OpenCms CLA and fax a signed copy to Alkacon Software.

How you can contribute

Participate on the OpenCms mailing list

Please use the OpenCms mailing list for questions and comments, discussions on the development, about the documentation or about OpenCms in general. Any feedback and suggestions about OpenCms and it's functions are welcome - it's your feedback that allows OpenCms to evolve. A lot of questions on the list are newcomer questions related to setup issues and to the usage of basic OpenCms functions. If someone asks a question and you know the answer, please post it to the list in order to help others getting started with OpenCms.

Report OpenCms reference sites and success stories

If you've built a Website based on OpenCms, we'd like to hear about it - please report the site for our list of OpenCms references using the Add reference site form. For the reference description, we are interested in details - for example, why did you choose OpenCms, how long did it take to develop the site, what is the exact environment, how many users are served by your OpenCms installation etc.

Test out new OpenCms functionality

Another way to participate in the OpenCms development process is to help testing new functionality of OpenCms. In order to do so, you should use the latest development source version from the CVS system. Keep in mind: the sources from our CVS are work in progress and not meant for production purposes. If you find something not working as expected, please mail your observation to the OpenCms mailing list or file a bug report.

Report bugs using the OpenCms bug tracking system

You might find that something does not work as it should. If so, please file a bug report using the OpenCms bug tracking system. You will have to create an account first. Please use the bug tracking system and not the mailing list to report bugs. However, if you encounter setup related problems, please post them on the mailing list first, as in 95% of all cases setup issues are not bugs in OpenCms but related to your local environment configuration.

Extend the documentation and write how-tos

Since the main OpenCms documentation is now HTML based and managed as OpenCms modules, it's easy to extend it. Perhaps you've faced challenges in setting up or customizing OpenCms in special environments or according to special requirements. If so, we suggest to write a How-To module about this topic and make it available on the Modules download section using the Add a module download form.

Localize the OpenCms workplace or the online help

If you are a native speaker of a language not yet supported in the OpenCms workplace or the OpenCms online help system, please contribute a translation. There is a special documentation module available in the Modules download section that explains how to create such a translation. It's a good idea to post a message on the OpenCms mailing list first to check out if others are already working on a translation for your language. If you have finished a translation, please bundle it as a module and use the the Add a module download form to make it available to the OpenCms community.

Develop modules and make them available to the community

The most convenient way to extend OpenCms is to create a module that provides additional functionalities. If you want to share your development with the OpenCms community, please make it available on the Modules download section using the Add a module download form.

Extend OpenCms with new core functionalities

You might have developed an OpenCms core extension for your own purposes. If you think this extension might be useful for others, please make it available on the Modules download section using the Add a module download form even if it is not truly a module. Try to provide detailed setup instructions if required. Please contact Alkacon Software if you are interested in making your extension become a part of the core OpenCms distribution.

Fix bugs in the OpenCms core

Instead of just reporting a bug, feel free to dig into the code and fix it by yourself. Then create a patch and attach it to the bug reported in the OpenCms bug tracking system. We will review the patch and integrate it into a later version of OpenCms. If you have created a patch for a bug not listed in the bug tracker, please inform Alkacon Software.