Get and Give Help

Guidelines for asking questions

• Please search the documentation wiki , which includes the FAQ , (the search form is on the top right-hand side), the forums , issues , and the mailing list archives before sending a question.

• Post a new message on the appropriate forum :
  • With a subject that describes your problem.
  • Be sure to include a description of the platform you are running on (Drupal or Joomla with version, version of PHP and MySQL, version with revision of CiviCRM).
  • Do not reply to a message on another topic when you're posting a new topic — it messes up the thread.

• When your problem is resolved, please be sure to say so on the forums, and also summarize your problem and its solution and post it in the FAQ. See Guidelines for posting to the FAQ .

For developers: Subscribe to the developers list . You can then send mail to civicrm-dev@lists.civicrm.org with your question.

For real-time support: Use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) at irc.freenode.net, #civicrm. Some popular IRC clients include Colloquy, Chatzilla, mIRC. Please do a search to learn more about IRC.

How you can help

Community support and input are super important to the CiviCRM project in all respects. It lets everyone know how folks are using the product for their organization / business / group. A lot of the features and direction that CiviCRM has gone in have been heavily influenced by the needs and comments of the community on the mailing list and forum.

Please continue sending your thoughts / reviews and critique. Please also take the time to make CiviCRM a better product by:

• Answer support questions from folks on the forums . There is no such thing as a stupid question or a wrong answer.

• A tremendous thank-you to the CiviCRM community would be to contribute:
  • a case study
  • a cookbook (how-to article)
  • a presentation or flier.

• Write new documentation and update the current documentation on the wiki.

• File issues on our issue tracker with detailed instructions on how to reproduce. Preferably reproduce the bug on the demo machine .

• Suggest new features for future versions of CiviCRM that will meet your needs in a better manner.

• Help with the spec process by describing desired functionality in a fairly detailed and specific manner.

• Contribute development / user interface / testing / documentation resources to the CiviCRM project.

For more information, see Participate .