Table of contents

  1. Composr Community Ecosystem
    1. Code Contributions / Reporting Issues
    2. Offering Free and/or Paid Support
    3. The Points System
      1. Voting Power
      2. Sponsoring Issues
      3. Exchanging (Escrowing) Points for Products or Services
      4. Giving Points to Others
    4. Writing / Reviewing Tutorials
    5. Promotion / Evangelism
  2. Benefits of Contributing to the Ecosystem

Composr Community Ecosystem

The Composr community operates on the Bazaar model which is an open and democratic system. Every member of the Composr community can play a vital role in the community whether that is through development, funding, support, services, promotion, moderation, testing, reporting issues, or voting on decisions. There is no central company to Composr. And there are no central members. While there is a Board to help guide the decisions, and a Core Development Team who does most of the development, the members as a collective whole have the final say-so in the direction of Composr.

It is essential for the Composr community and its members to participate in the ecosystem if they can do so (however much or little they can). By doing so, we establish a continuous economic giving/receiving circle of contributions which benefit everyone and the Composr project as a whole.

Code Contributions / Reporting Issues

Composr CMS is Free and Open Source (FOSS). This means that the software itself is free to download and use as-is, without warranty, subject to its licence terms. Furthermore, anyone can view the full source code of the software at any time both when they download it and through our GitLab repository. By opening the source code up to the public, anyone can inspect it and offer bug fixes, feature implementations, and security patches. These are done through our issue tracker and through making merge requests to the repository.

Members can make code-based contributions in the following ways:

  • Addons: Members have the freedom to extend Composr's capabilities by making non-bundled addons. Members should have a general understanding of programming before attempting this feat. Members can share their addons in the forum, or if they want it included in Composr's addon directory, they can follow the contribution process.
  • Themes: The core developers only officially maintain the default and admin themes. So members are highly encouraged to make their own themes and release them for others to enjoy. Check out this tutorial on themes to learn more about making them.
  • Translations: The core developers only officially maintain en_GB (British English) and en_US (American English) for Composr. Members are encouraged to make new language packs and submit them to Transifex so members can use Composr in other languages.
  • Automated testing: Members can help the core developers improve the software and keep it free from breaking issues by developing automated tests for our testing platform. While our goal is not 100% coverage (this does not make economical sense), we want coverage for the major components of Composr and anything that may be prone to breaking. The testing platform is contained in its own addon and on our Git repository.
  • Contribute code directly: Members can directly contribute code to the core Composr software to make it better than ever for everyone else.

Offering Free and/or Paid Support

Members are encouraged to collaborate with each other and share their own tips, tricks, advice, and ideas through the forums. Doing so is an easy way to earn points (see below). We advise the following regarding free support:

  • Members should limit the amount of free support they offer to others to what is reasonable. For example, if it would take hours for you to help someone out, or if someone wants you to do the work for them, you might suggest a work contract instead. It is not fair to you to spend a lot of time helping others without a return on your investment (e.g. financial compensation). This also hurts the ecosystem because the economic circle of giving / receiving is impeded.
  • Members should not expect a response for their inquiries, nor should they expect them timely, but rather approach them with gratitude. It is nice to receive a response, and members are encouraged to respond where they can. But free support is not guaranteed nor quick support. It is the responsibility of members to hire or contract others, such as someone from the Composr partners directory, if they need guaranteed or timely support for mission-critical issues or features.

Members and companies are allowed, and encouraged, to exchange their paid professional support services for Composr through our platform. Those who offer professional support should consider creating a listing on our Composr Partners page, and to link to their entry in their signature. That way, those looking for paid / professional support can quickly refer to that directory and contact someone to hire them.

If you would like some tips and guidelines on how to provide paid professional support to others, you can check out this tutorial on how to run a web agency (and the "See Also" documents listed on that tutorial). You can also ask questions on the (TODO) forum specific for web agencies.

The Points System

Composr.app utilises a points system. Members receive points for a variety of reasons which they can track on their profile points page. Here are some of the ways members can earn points:

  • Activity in the forums
  • Reporting issues to the tracker (which later get resolved or implemented)
  • Resolving tracker issues (you also collect any points which were sponsored / escrowed on the issue by other members)
  • Publishing addons or themes
  • Publishing tutorials
  • Publishing translations / language packs
  • Making code contributions to the Composr GitLab repository (merge requests)
  • Being a great community ambassador (this is indirect; members can give each other points for various good deeds)

Where you receive points from other members, a "role" may be assigned to the transaction / reason, which means you could get listed in one of several Community Stars categories.

Voting Power

The primary use of points is voting power. As you earn points, your "life-time points" count goes up, and consequentially your voting power increases. When you vote in polls regarding decisions for the Composr community, the amount of influence your vote has in the poll depends on your voting power. The more voting power you have, the more influence your vote has. Therefore, the more active you are in the Composr community, the bigger your digital voice is in these votes / polls.

Sponsoring Issues

Another use for points is to sponsor them on issues. If you see an issue or feature on the issue tracker that is important to you and you'd like to see resolved or implemented, you can sponsor points on the issue. Sponsoring issues will encourage other members / developers to implement the issue because they will receive your sponsored points by doing so. When you sponsor points, you escrow them on the issue (spend them immediately to the system, which then get awarded to whomever resolves the issue, or they get refunded back to you if the issue is closed).

Exchanging (Escrowing) Points for Products or Services

Another use for points is to exchange them with other members in escrow for a product or service. You can do this by going to the member's profile, click their points tab, and click to escrow points to them. You will be asked how much to escrow, a deadline if applicable, and a list of terms that must be satisfied for the escrow transaction to be completed (for example, if you're using points to have someone implement a new feature on your site, you would detail those terms on the escrow).

When you have determined the escrow as satisfied, you can mark it off as such. And the other member can do so as well. Once both of you have marked the escrow satisfied, the other member will receive your points. If either of you have a dispute, you can dispute the escrow, which calls upon a staff member to intervene and decide how to handle the escrow.

Giving Points to Others

The final use of points is simply to give them to other members for good deeds or being helpful. You can do this by going to a member's profile, click points, and fill out the short form under "Give Points". You can also select a "role" for your gift, which if you do, will tally your gift against the member's other gifts in that category and potentially list them on the Community Stars page.

You can also give points to a member by clicking a "Thank" button on one of their forum posts.

Regularly giving points to members who contribute positive things to the community will reinforce their positive behaviour and encourage other members to do the same.

Writing / Reviewing Tutorials

Our tutorials need regular review for accuracy. Members are encouraged to review the tutorials and report any inaccuracies they find to the tracker so we can update them. Members are also encouraged to write and submit their own tutorials for Composr CMS (a link is provided on the tutorials link at the bottom to submit a tutorial).

Promotion / Evangelism

Members are encouraged to spread the word about Composr to anyone who needs a free and open source software to build a website. By spreading the word, more people will use Composr, and in-turn more people will join and contribute to the community / ecosystem. Members are also encouraged to follow Composr on, and share, the following locations:

Benefits of Contributing to the Ecosystem

There are numerous benefits to contributing to the Composr community / ecosystem. Here are just a few:

  • Moving development forward: You're making the web development world a better place for people who aren't necessarily programmers or millionaires. By its very nature, the Open Source model depends on people to share talents in big and small ways.
  • Helping the core development team: You can be a big help to the hard-working core developer team who've continued to spend years on very modest incomes to see the vision of Composr come to pass.
  • Getting noticed: People who contribute significantly will be well respected and thanked by the community. Not to mention, contributors are listed throughout composr.app on the Community stars, change logs of every Composr release, and a special page in the Composr Admin Zone (Admin Zone > Tools > Version information/tools). It feels good!
  • Building a career: Your contributions count as experience which can be listed on your CV or Résumé.
  • Building a business: We have a directory of partners who are directly offering Composr services. Your role and importance in the community could directly lead to establishing a business and contracting paid work for you. Composr users sometimes look for professional support where free support is not enough for them. And that's where you could come in!