We need your help

[Joachim Müller]

An open source project like coppermine can use all the help it can get, as the success of coppermine is based on you, the users. We (the coppermine dev team) think that this application we're having fun to maintain and develop even further is one of the best you can get. If you feel the same, you might consider to give something back to the community; I'm not talking about money - you can help in many other ways. You don't necessarily have to be a coder to contribute to the project. There are several other things we could use.

• Write a plugin/mod/hack
  If you have come up with a modification or hack for your coppermine gallery, and you think that others might be interessted in it as well, just post your hack in the support board that corrsponds to the coppermine version you're using. A moderator will then move it to the Modifications/Add-Ons/Hacks board if applicable.
  
  
• Give support
  You might think that your coppermine knowledge or coding skills are not enough to help others, but you will soon find out that there are others who have very "basic" problems an experienced coppermine admin can easily solve. Just stay around this forum and give support to others - this way, the dev team members will have to do less support work and can spend their time doing actual developemt
  
  
• Design a theme
  Even if you have no idea of PHP or mySQL, you should still be able to build a theme of your own (at least if you know some HTML and CSS). All genuine theme contributions that are posted here on the board make it to the demo and the theme download section; get some of the fame and contribute your theme.
  
  
• Upgrade a theme
  There are user-contributed themes that were designed for older versions of coppermine. Even if you haven't been the original contributor of the theme, we'd like to see your version of the theme where you have upgraded it to work this the most recent coppermine release. There's a theme upgrade guide that comes with the coppermine package, telling you what you need to do to make older themes work with newer versions.
  
  
• Graphic resources
  Design a coppermine logo/banner/button or some other "fan art" stuff. Threads you might want to visit (and maybe reply to, posting your own graphic work): Logo Competition/Logo & Logo Design
  
  
• Translation
  Translate coppermine (one language file) into your language, or translate the documentation into your language - all contributions are welcome
  
  
• Voting/Review
  Write a review (preferably as registered user, as their rating counts more) on the script resources that list coppermine, e.g. hotscripts (see Coppermine home page "Vote  for us").
  
  
• Compare to other gallery apps
  Write a feature comparison to help others decide which gallery application is suitable for them.
  
  
• Tutorials
  Write a tutorial to illustrate how some coppermine setup/administrative tasks are done, as many users don't like reading documentations, but prefer to be guided through tasks with step-by-step instructions
  
  
• Sponsor a mod or feature request
  If you're ready to actually spend some money, why don't you sponsor a feature request or mod by posting your request on the board Looking for Freelancers / Paid help, asking a freelancer to code something for both you and the community.
  
  
• Donate
  The creator of the original (first) version of coppermine, Gregory Demar, has often been asked if he accepted donations from users who wanted to give something back for the free software had created. He turned donations down and asked people to donate to local charity instead. If you have no idea where to donate, you might consider to paypal some money to our webhost Sourceforge, who hosts coppermine as well as thousands of other open source projects. The coppermine project itself does not accept donations.
  
  

Joachim Müller (aka GauGau)
- Coppermine project manager -