# Contributing

The ZoneMinder project was originally written by Philip Coombes in 2001. It has since moved to Github and is maintained by just a few who volunteer their spare time.  

Over the years, ZoneMinder has accumulated a rather large user base. This presents a challenge to the development team when it comes to managing communications. Welcome to the world of software development, right?

In order to keep the kinds of issues, which require changes to the source code, separate from all other questions and comments, our methods of communication are organized in the following manner:

- The ZoneMinder Github forum is intended for bug reports and serious feature requests only
- The ZoneMinder user forum is intended for general questions and tech support
- The ZoneMinder IRC channel is intended for general questions and tech support

More details can be found in our [Github Posting Rules](https://github.com/ZoneMinder/ZoneMinder/wiki/Github-Posting-Rules). Please read this before creating an issue in our Github forum.

Knowledge of Github is a necessary first step to contribute to the project. To contribute, one must generate a pull request. For those just starting out, [this guide](https://github.com/ZoneMinder/ZoneMinder/wiki/Understanding-Github-and-Pull-Requests) will step you through the process. 

Note that pasting code into our Github forum, with the expectation we will do the work for you, is not acceptable.
