# Get started contributing

JupyterHub is an open community made up of people all over the world.
We invite participation of all forms - whether that be contributing
code, advice, documentation, support, or just a friendly face!

If you'd like to start getting involved with JupyterHub projects,
here are a few resources to get you started.

## Do I really have something to contribute to JupyterHub?

Absolutely ✅. There are always ways to contribute to this community!

If you'd prefer not to write code, you can help out the JupyterHub community by
providing feedback in issues, participating in the [JupyterHub Discourse](https://discourse.jupyter.org),
sharing your experience with JupyterHub tools in an issue, improving documentation,
helping others with their problems, telling others about JupyterHub tools, and
coming to monthly meetings. There are lots of others ways to contribute without writing code -
we are happy to have any and all contributions!

If you'd like to write code, and have experience in some of the tools that JupyterHub uses
(e.g., shared infrastructure, dev-ops, kubernetes), then we would love your support in keeping
these tools a useful resource for the community. Try finding the
[![Help Wanted](https://img.shields.io/badge/-help%20wanted-159818.svg)][link_helpwanted] tag
in a repository and please ping a JupyterHub team member if you'd like any assistance!

If you don't have experience in these topics, then **contributing to JupyterHub is a great way to learn**.
The JupyterHub community works hard to share its knowledge of both JupyterHub tools and the
general problems that they try to solve, and we'd be happy to help you out.
If you're not sure where to start, look for the [![Good First Issue](https://img.shields.io/badge/-good%20first%20issue-blueviolet.svg)][link_goodfirstissue]
tag to begin your journey  learning about the JupyterHub stack.


## Get connected

First off, get yourself connected with the JupyterHub community online. There
are a few places where we have conversations and discussion.

* [The Jupyter Community Discourse](https://discourse.jupyter.org) is a general watering hole for
  the Jupyter community. The JupyterHub team uses this for most conversation, and tries to keep its
  repositories focused around more actionable items.
* [The JupyterHub team meeting](../meetings/index) takes place once a month, and is open to anybody who
  would like to attend. We try to use this as an opportunity to sync-up and connect with the community.
* The [JupyterHub Gitter channel](https://gitter.im/jupyterhub/jupyterhub) and [Binder gitter channel](https://gitter.im/jupyterhub/binder)
  are for in-person conversation. In general, if conversations last beyond a few seconds, we highly encourage you
  to open a thread in the [JupyterHub Discourse page](https://discourse.jupyter.org) instead!

As a reminder, we expect all members of the JupyterHub community to adhere to the
[Jupyter Code of Conduct][link_coc] in these conversations.


## Contributing through GitHub

[git][link_git] is a really useful tool for version control.
[GitHub][link_github] sits on top of git and supports collaborative and distributed working.

You'll use [Markdown][markdown] to chat in issues and pull requests on GitHub.
You can think of Markdown as a few little symbols around your text that will allow GitHub
to render the text with formatting.
For example you could write words as bold (`**bold**`), or in italics (`*italics*`),
or as a [link][rick_roll] (`[link](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ)`) to another webpage.

GitHub has a helpful page on
[getting started with writing and formatting Markdown on GitHub][writing_formatting_github].


## Find issues to work on

If you'd like to make contributions to one of the JupyterHub repositories (this can
be either contributing code, commenting on issues, reviewing pull requests, or improving
documentation), we recommend checking out the **issue tags** to find issues that
are a good place to start.

The JupyterHub team tries to use tags to signal different *types* of issues. Two that you
might be interested in are **help wanted**, and **good first issue**. [GitHub Issues Search](https://github.com/issues)
can be used to quickly search across all of the issues in a GitHub organization that match
one of these tags. Here are a few links below to help you get started:

* [![Help Wanted](https://img.shields.io/badge/-help%20wanted-159818.svg)][link_helpwanted] *These issues contain a task that a member of the team has determined we need additional help with.*

* [![Good First Issue](https://img.shields.io/badge/-good%20first%20issue-blueviolet.svg)][link_goodfirstissue] *These issues contain a task that a member of the team thinks could be a good entry point to the project.*


## Help contributing to a specific repository

Note that JupyterHub works on many different kinds of technology. The kind of tech you'll
use (as well as the set-up and skill needed to work on that tech) will depend on the
repository that you're working with. For example, the [Zero to JupyterHub for Kubernetes](https://github.com/jupyterhub/zero-to-jupyterhub-k8s)
repository will touch on aspects of dev-ops and cloud infrastructure.

To get oriented with a specific repository's needs and process around making new
contributions, look for a **repository-specific contributing guide**. This often
comes in the form of a **`CONTRIBUTING.md`** file, or a section of the documentation.

For example, [here is the `CONTRIBUTING.md` file for Zero to JupyterHub](https://github.com/jupyterhub/zero-to-jupyterhub-k8s/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md).
Note that it covers some of the tools you'll need for testing and developing the code,
which are not necessarily needed for the *other* JupyterHub repositories.

**Are the contributing docs unclear or misleading?** Then please let us know! We try to
make this documentation as helpful as possible, but we often don't have the perspective of
a new member to the community. Your input is extremely valuable in making it easy for others
to join the JupyterHub community!


## Thank you!

You're awesome. 👋🏻😊🦄

<br>

*&mdash; Based on contributing guidelines from the [STEMMRoleModels][link_stemmrolemodels] project.*


[link_helpwanted]: https://github.com/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+user%3Ajupyterhub+archived%3Afalse+label%3A%22help+wanted%22+sort%3Aupdated-desc+
[link_goodfirstissue]: https://github.com/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+user%3Ajupyterhub+archived%3Afalse+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22+sort%3Aupdated-desc+
[link_coc]: https://github.com/jupyter/governance/blob/master/conduct/code_of_conduct.md
[link_git]: https://git-scm.com
[link_github]: https://github.com/https://github.com/jupyter/governance/blob/master/conduct/code_of_conduct.md
[link_signupinstructions]: https://help.github.com/articles/signing-up-for-a-new-github-account
[link_stemmrolemodels]: https://github.com/KirstieJane/STEMMRoleModels
[markdown]: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown
[rick_roll]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
[writing_formatting_github]: https://help.github.com/articles/getting-started-with-writing-and-formatting-on-github