If you've ever wanted to contribute to an open source project but didn't have any idea where to begin, Rob Allen has a few suggestions to help you get started. His guide is a bit more on the technical level than others that talk more about finding a project or community to be a part of, though.

This is a guide to contributing to an open source project that uses GitHub. It's mostly based on how I've seen Zend Framework, Slim Framework and joind.in operate. However, this is a general guide so check your project's README for specifics.

He walks you through a four step process to getting ready to contribute and make that first submission to the project of your choice:

• Set up a working copy on your computer
• Do some work
• Create the PR (Pull Request)
• Review by the maintainers

Naturally, some of this depends on the process that the project follows to take in new submissions, either from an issues list or just random buxfixes. It's a pretty standard GitHub-centric guide to follow though. He also recommends reading this article from Lorna Mitchell about code reviews and what the maintainers of most open source projects will look for in submissions.