Contribute to Data Liberation

Join the Data Liberation team and help build tools for importing, exporting, and migrating WordPress data across platforms. The project’s goal is to make content truly portable across the web, with no lock-in or barriers. This is ongoing development work that spans multiple phases and requires experience with PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php and WordPress development.

• Prerequisite: Comfortable with PHP, familiar with WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development, and able to work with GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ repositories and pull requests
• Reference: Data Liberation project overview — the vision and the five development phases
• Connect: Join #data-liberation on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/ and introduce yourself. Let the team know what skills you bring and where you’d like to help

Steps

1. Understand the five phases. Each phase tackles a different part of the data portability problem. Read through the discussions for each to find where your skills fit best:
   • Phase 1: Migration Guides and Community Tools
   • Phase 2: Importing and Exporting Structured Data
   • Phase 3: Liberating Data From Closed Platforms
   • Phase 4: Direct WordPress-to-WordPress Synchronization
   • Phase 5: Content Creation Powerhouse
2. Explore the repositories. Development happens across the Data Liberation repo and the WordPress Playground repo where much of the importer work lives. Browse open issues and PRs to get a sense of what’s being worked on.

3. Pick an issue to work on. Look for open issues, including any tagged good first issue. If nothing matches your skills, ask in #data-liberation what the team needs most right now.

4. Submit your first pull request. Fork the repo, work on the issue, and open a PR. Reference the issue in your PR description. Let the team know in #data-liberation that your PR is ready for review.

5. Stay involved. Follow the GitHub discussions and participate in #data-liberation on Slack. As you contribute more, you’ll build context on the project and take on larger pieces of work.

Contribution checklist

• Explored the five phases and identified where your skills fit
• Claimed an issue or joined a discussion in the repo
• First PR submitted and shared in #data-liberation

What happens next

A maintainer will review your PR and may request changes. If there’s no response after two weeks, follow up in #data-liberation. As you contribute consistently, you’ll gain deeper context on the project’s direction and take on more complex work across the phases.

Help

Stuck? Check the getting help guide, then ask in #data-liberation.

Further reading:
– Data Liberation GitHub repository
– WordPress Playground repository — where much of the importer development happens
– Data Liberation project plan
– Phase discussions on GitHub
– Write a Migration Guide for WordPress — beginner pathway for non-code contributions
– Published migration guides