Finding an issue to work on

Last updated on
13 November 2023

Most work in the Drupal open-source project and community is organized around issues (see Overview of projects and issues and Life Cycle of an Issue for background). So a first step, if you want to contribute, is often to find an issue to work on. Here are some tips and suggestions for finding an issue to work on.

Start with a Task

The Contributor Guide's Find a Task page is a great place to start, to find a task to work on. Each task writeup tells you what skills you will need to complete the task, lists background information, and contains step-by-step instructions. For most tasks, the steps start by guiding you towards finding an appropriate issue to work on.

There are also suggested task sequences on Getting started contributing.

Issues tagged Novice

Issues tagged with the "Novice" special issue tag have been identified by experienced contributors as having some aspect that should be easy for a new contributor to do. You can search for an issue tagged with the "Novice" issue tag, click through and see if it has a Novice task identified in the issue summary that you want to work on, and get started that way.

General issue finding suggestions

Here are some additional ways to find an issue to work on:

Join an initiative
There are various strategic initiatives and community initiatives, where people are organizing to improve Drupal. Depending on the initiative, you may be able to help by coding, writing documentation, or by reviewing and testing patches.
One great place to start is the Bug Smash Initiative, which will give you the opportunity to work with others to fix bugs in Drupal.
Attend an event
The community hosts many online and in-person events that include a Mentored Contribution Day. If you attend such an event, mentors will have located issues ahead of time that include tasks suitable for new contributors, and will be on hand to help you get started.
Work on a module, theme, or profile/distribution
If you have experience using a particular Drupal core module, theme, or install profile, you can filter the Drupal core issue queue by Component to find issues related to that module, theme, or profile.
If you have experience with a contributed module, theme, or distribution, you can find the issues for that project.
Start with documentation
If you can write well in English, a good way to get familiar with issue procedures is to start with issues in component Documentation, which exists in most projects. These issues may involve writing or updating API documentation for developers (a great way to get familiar with the code), or documentation for end users of the software.
Work on a topic of interest
You can search issues by keyword, from the issue search page for any project.
There are also special issue tags for many topics; search issues by tag from the Advanced search page for any project.
Find a task needing to be done
Some of the special issue tags start with "Needs", indicating a particular task that needs to be done on that issue. For example, an issue tagged "Needs screenshots" needs someone to make "before and after" screenshots of how the software behaves without and with the proposed software patch.
Review another contributor's work
Issues whose Status field is set to "Needs review" are waiting for someone to review and test proposed fixes. Reviewing other people's work is a vitally important part of the development process.
Ask for help
If you cannot locate a good issue to work on, you may be able to ask a more experienced community member for help locating an issue:

Drupal Core tags/components

If you have a specific interest in some aspect of Drupal core, here is a list of special issue tags and components for the Drupal core project (see links under Related Info for more about issue fields, including tags and components):

Core subsystems

Improvement Initiatives

Theming/Design

User experience

Lessons to learn

Tags

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