How to Contribute to Chatwoot on Github

Customer management software can be very useful in managing customer’s needs and having meaningful conversations. Fortunately, there are existing tools to help you out. We have Intercom, Zendesk, or Drift with features like social media integration, chatbots, and shared team inboxes. But there is one particular tool; Chatwoot that stands out with intuitive design and its most valuable characteristic; it’s completely open-source.

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The post sheds light on how users can make contributions to a Chatwoot project on Github. But first of all, let’s talk about some solid reasons to contribute to Chatwoot.

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Why contribute to the Chatwoot repository?

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Beginner-friendly projects

Making contributions to open source projects can feel pretty intimidating. Fortunately enough, even though Chatwoot is a big project, the maintainers and the community have made it very simple to start with some good and useful contributions. You can contribute to the documentation: Chatwoot as a customer engagement project comes with a lot of repositories. One of the most important things about an open-source project is the documentation.

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If you are a beginner, it’s always a good idea to start small, before moving to complex issues. Chatwoot makes it easy to start contributing to their documentation with a nice and simple guide. Feel free to consult it here.

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Chatwoot’s multilateral community

Chatwoot has a global community of contributors, developers, and enthusiasts. These great people are connected via Discord or Github with each other. If you are looking to learn more about open source or technical stuff like programming and documentation, it’s all a good place to start. Additionally, contributing to open source is one of the best ways to improve both your skills, as well as the softwares you rely on.

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Chatwoot’s dynamic technology

The Chatwoot software is built upon Ruby and Vuejs. They also have a mobile application turning on React Native and a Flutter SDK actually in development. Some of the dynamic technologies deployed by Chatwoot are:

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JavaScript
Ruby
VueJs
Dart
Flutter
React
React Native
PHP (Their WordPress plugin)
Python

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Trust me, You won’t be bored. Feel free to consult the list of repositories for Chatwoot here. Chatwoot is actively looking for security researchers too, to keep their platform and user safe.

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User guide to contributing to Chatwoot on Github

https://twitter.com/chatwootapp/status/1432334868826836998

Git and Github

As the project source codes are hosted on Github, it’s important to have a good understanding of how Github works. But primarily let’s talk about Git. Git is a free and open-source distributed versioning control system for software. This is the most used versioning control system tool used in the world. But why Git?

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Git tracks the change you make to files through commits and commits messages: you can have a record of all the changes that have been made, you can easily revert to a specific version of the project but also, it makes collaboration easier.

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Github is a cloud-based hosting service to manage Git repositories, where you can share your code with others, allowing them to read and make edits if necessary. An example of one of the largest open source projects of all time? Check the Linux project.

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Here’s a good place for beginners to get started with Git and Github.

Open source jargons

Let’s quickly define some terms you’ll need to know when collaborating or contributing to Chatwoot repositories.

Commit

This is a save of a revision or changes you’ve made to the code. They are always followed by a message called “commit message” and is one important concept for open source projects or collaboration. Every change you make to a file, you must be concise but also follow a convention. Take a look at the Open Source Guide for more information.

Pull Request‌

Here a developer pushes some changes to a branch and asks for reviews. There can be discussions about the changes before the merge request is merged with the targeted branch.

Issue

‌In Git, the issue is just a way to track tasks, enhancements, features, or bugs in a project. They include a title, a description, an assignee, and some options to designate milestones and labels to help you organize the work in the repository. For example, if you’ve encountered a bug in the Chatwoot application, you can create an issue and label it as a bug.‌

Committer

‌It represents an individual working on an open source project. They usually have to write access to the project repository and decide on the changes accepted in the project.

Contributor

‌A contributor is just a user, a developer, or someone making changes to the project. These changes are validated through a pull request to be approved by the committer and merged into the project codebase.

Source code

It represents the part of the software that most computer users don’t see. For us programmers, it represents a list of human-readable instructions that a programmer writes when developing a program.

Branch

A branch is just an independent line of development. It helps you isolate development work without affecting the main branch or other branches in the repository.

License

Open source licenses are licenses that allow the software to be freely used, modified, and shared in the open source space. They are available for free of charge. Note that even if the software is publicly posted on Github without LICENSE, it cannot be exploited by others. You can also make use of GNU’s General Public License created by Richard Stallman for your project.

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Maintainer

The person in charge of the moderation, tracking, management, and organization of an open-source project.

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Community Guidelines

A set of rules decided by the moderators or maintainers of an open-source project. It’s usually related to contribution to the code and communication with other contributors or maintainers.

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Fork

‌A fork is simply a copy of a repository in your account. Then, you can make changes without affecting the original project. Then you can develop features, fix bugs, or add documentation in a restrained area of your repository. For more information on GitHub or git terms, feel free to check the Github glossary.

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Select an issue

Contributing to the customer engagement platform, Chatwoot is easy and beginner-friendly. You can go directly to their contributions page and select an issue. The beginner’s friendly issues are labeled “good first issue”.

Choose the type of issue or project
- Documentation: The Chatwoot documentation is open to the public for documentation. If you are a beginner, you can start by contributing to the documentation of some features or resolve some issues (typo correction, etc). Feel free to check the open issues here.
- Code: The Chatwoot organization has more than 5 repositories. It ranges from the core software and mobile application built on React Native to WordPress plugins. According to your coding background, you can find a project in your preferred programming language and start contributing. Feel free to check the list of repositories here.
- Backend: If you are a backend developer with some knowledge of Rails or you want to learn or master the language, feel free to check the issues with the label “backend”. If you are looking to start small, you can check it with the “good first issues” label too. You can find the list of issues with these specific labels here.
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Frontend: If you have some knowledge about JavaScript, check the issues tagged “frontend”. As always, the contributors make sure you can start small, with the label “good first issues”. You can find a lot of UI enhancement, good for beginners. Check the list here.

Rules to follow when contributing to open source

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There is a lot more about what you should do, than what not to do. The community is kind, and when you make changes, they are reviewed by contributors to make sure your code is correct and won’t break anything. But crucially, you should always be respectful of others' time, principally, contributors and reviewers who help you. Most of the open source contributors out there don’t receive money from working on open source projects, consequently, respect their time.

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Here is some advice :

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A must-read guide on “how to contribute.”
Learn Git basics
Read the repository policies i.e., contribution guidelines, code of conduct
Start small (contribute to documentation, tests, and small features)
Filter issues based on labels such as first-timers, etc.
Follow the discussions in issues, pull requests, and be updated about code changes.
Be patient and open to feedback.

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There is much more but the most valuable advice is to contribute to a library you like using. Because you are already familiar with the library, you can head to the repository, check the roadmap and start coding.

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Parting Note

https://twitter.com/AviyelHq/status/1434871548326727686

A quality of Chatwoot? The customer engagement platform provides a professional environment where you can focus on the conversation. But the most important feature about Chatwoot is being an open source project. If you’ve used the project, you’ll feel the urge to contribute more and be a part of the mission. You can know more about Chatwoot by joining their Discord community.

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Chatwoot, the open source customer engagement platform has partnered with Aviyel to bring the open source technology to doorsteps. With Aviyel, you can create, collaborate, exchange ideas and knowledge on trending open source projects.

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Aviyel is a one stop-hub for creators, maintainers, and collaborators. Follow Aviyel on Twitter and Discord.

How to contribute to Chatwoot on Github?

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