How Non-Developers Can Contribute to and Influence WordPress Core Development

If you don’t consider yourself a developer and want to contribute to WordPress core, Hugh Lashbrooke’s guide offers a few different techniques. The guide explains how and where to provide feedback and how important it is to beta test new features.

Over the years, I’ve used WP Tavern to advocate for and against features in WordPress. One of the best pieces of advice I can give non-developers is to organize your thoughts or stance on a specific feature or direction and publish them on your site. This allows you to control the conversation and gives you plenty of space to explain your perspective.

A great example is this post asking for help to add comment moderation approval notifications to WordPress. I explain why it’s needed with a link to the ticket I created to keep track of the conversation. I prefer to write about potential features and based on feedback, I’ll either create a trac ticket myself or someone will do it for me with a link to the post.

The Tavern is in the dashboard and is read by a large audience, including core developers. However, thanks to social media, a well constructed post with solid points will make the rounds on Twitter, Facebook, and within WordPress sub-communities.

It’s those posts and associated comments that serve as one of many foundations for change in WordPress without touching a line of code. Keep in mind that there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to directly influence WordPress core development with words alone, but respectful, in-depth conversations with differing opinions and perspectives are an important part of the community regardless.