Webdev/MDN/GetInvolved
Contents
Welcome
About us
Glad you're interested in helping with MDN. Mozilla Developer Network empowers developers to build a better web to serve the greater good for everyone. To that end, the MDN community provides documentation, technology demos, and promotes developer resources and events. As Mozilla's primary developer engagement site, our work is critical - advocating for open web technologies to fellow developers who drive the direction of the Internet.
As you get involved, please reach out to us with any questions:
IRC
We're in #mdn on irc.mozilla.org. groovecoder and lorchard can help you get started. Just send a groovecoder: or lorchard: message and we should see get a notification even if we're not immediately available. Or you can email us ...
If you're more comfortable with email, you can email lcrouch at mozilla dot com or lorchard at mozilla dot com. We get lots of mail but we'll try to respond quickly.
Why MDN?
Mozilla has hundreds of websites. Here's why you want to work on MDN:
- You'll develop the website for a high-profile web company promoting open web development. It's like web development^3 all up in here.
- Cred - you'll show up on our humans.txt file!
- (Possibly) swag - we're hooked up with the development engagement team and they often give out shirts, stickers, bags, sometimes even an android phone!
How to contribute
There are a many ways to contribute to MDN. If you're comfortable with django, you can help us work on the code for the MDN website. Equally as important is translating MDN content into other languages to help developers all over the world. Every web developer can help us write and edit our documentation, and even show off a bit by creating demos that showcase and teach web technologies.
Code
We always like to see more coders around! MDN code is something of a hodge-podge - we run an instance of MindTouch to power the documentation wiki alongside a django site very close to, but not derived from, the standard Mozilla playdoh project. So our technology stack is primarily python, django, html, javascript, and css.
It's best to contribute to the django code. Our repository is kuma on github. (Kuma means "bear" in Japanese; we chose it because our codebase is cloned from the SUMO site, which is code-named Kitsune - "fox". The implication is that SUMO's users are like foxes, while our users are more like bears.) Please make a fork, and then either do a local installation, or use a ready-made virtual machine as described below.
What to work on
Then the best way to get involved is to check our MDN mentored bugs list for anything that appeals to you. These are bugs from the current mdn sprint or from our general product backlog that make for good entry-level bugs.
Local Installation
Follow the installation instructions in the docs folder. We try to keep them updated, but if you run into issues, ping us on irc or email so we can help fix them. Debugging installation issues is also a simple way to work thru our development process for the first time. (see below)
Virtual Machine
Follow the instructions here:
Better instructions coming soon.
Our Development Process
The MDN team uses a type of Agile/Scrum development process. We run 3-week "sprints" with overlapping dev/QA time so we can push code every 2 weeks. Each sprint is a milestone in our bugzilla product - e.g., MDN 1.1, MDN 1.2, MDN 1.3, etc.
For the most part, community contributors won't have to worry about our sprints, but you should at least be aware of them so you know when you contributions will land on the production site!
Localization
MDN Documentation
For more info, see the MDN wiki page.
Every few months, we hold documentation sprints, but you can pitch in any time.
Demos
We always need more high-quality demos to inform and inspire developers to embrace open web technologies. Take a look at the demo studio for your own inspiration, and then start making your own demos. Host the source code online and share the link so other developers can see how you did what you did.
