A Journey of Growth and Collaboration
What is Wagtail? What is the Accessibility Features Documentation Project about?
In my previous post, I shared how I chose the Outreachy project, Wagtail. I will be sharing my progress so far on this project. Stay glued.
Wagtail is a content management system (CMS) built upon the Django web framework. Its CMS features a very polished administration interface with powerful content management features. Large amounts of content can be managed on most Wagtail websites without impacting performance.
For this contribution stage, I chose the Accessibility Features Documentation project. The goal of this project is to extend the user guide documentation and keep it updated. This includes updated information on Wagtail’s accessibility features, in line with the ATAG 2.0 standard.
Steps to Getting Familiar with Open-Source
To get started, the first thing I did was learn about open source and how to contribute to it, since I will be doing this frequently. I also learned some open-source etiquette. These include:
Contribute to other threads if you have a useful point to make or can answer someone else's question.
Read the manual first to try to answer the question yourself before asking it.
The second step is to create a copy of the repository on my own Github profile, which we call forking. I could either edit it directly on my Github profile or clone it. But because I wanted to work offline, I cloned my forked repository onto my system. After which, I then set the upstream to the original repository to which I will be making contributions.
Next, I synced my repo to the original repository. This gets updates from the remote and allows my repository to stay up-to-date with all recent changes in the project. Open source involves different people making good contributions to a project to help improve it.
Fourthly, I push to my repository and then create a pull request. This is another important part. It should include a good title, proper referencing, and a message.
Also, I use Git markdown text formatting for documentation on the repository. This allows you to create formatted text using plain text syntax. I used several resources to be able to grasp this. You may check out the following:
Summary
In summary, I will say that learning is continuous. I have learned how to collaborate properly, and I am still learning a lot about the project. Open-source is less about you benefiting and more about you giving. This involves your knowledge, helping people facing difficulties, and contributing meaningfully and appropriately. In my next post, I will shed more light on accessibility and the accessibility features in Wagtail.