> **Welcome, researchers and academics!** Whether you're a professor sharing your publications, a PhD student building your first portfolio, or an AI researcher showcasing your work — this guide will help you contribute to the tool that powers 100,000s of researcher and lab websites worldwide.
> If Hugo Blox has saved you hours, taught you something, or helped you share your work, please take 2 minutes to give back. Most people won't — but if a small part of the community pitches in today, we can ship faster, fix more bugs, and keep the project healthy for everyone.
We want contributing to Hugo Blox to be fun, enjoyable, and educational for anyone and everyone. All contributions are welcome, including new plugins (such as new widgets, shortcodes, theme packs, and language packs), templates, features, documentation as well as updates and tweaks, blog posts, YouTube tutorials, live streaming customizations, meetups, and more.
- **📝 Add to your CV**: Open source contributions demonstrate technical skills and collaboration
- **🌍 Build your reputation**: Your contributions are publicly visible and credited
- **🤝 Network with peers**: Connect with researchers and developers worldwide
- **📚 Learn modern web tech**: Gain experience with Hugo, Tailwind CSS, and modern web development
### For the Community
- **🔬 Shape the tool you use**: Directly influence features that matter to academics
- **⚡ Get fixes faster**: Contributing means your needs get addressed sooner
- **🌱 Support open research**: Keep academic tools free and accessible to all
- **🏆 Join 9k+ stars**: Be part of a thriving academic community
## 🚀 Quick Wins (Pick One!)
### ⏱️ 30 Seconds
- **⭐ Star the repository**: [github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder)
- **👍 Vote on issues**: Shape the roadmap by [upvoting features](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/issues) you need
- **💡 Suggest an enhancement**: Have an idea? [Create a GitHub Issue](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/issues) for the community to vote on
- **📢 Share your site**: Post your Hugo Blox site on X/LinkedIn/Reddit with #HugoBlox
### 🕐 5-10 Minutes
- **📸 Share a screenshot**: Show your beautiful site in [Discussions](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/discussions)
- **🐛 Report issues clearly**: Found a bug? Help us fix it with clear steps to reproduce
- **💬 Help in Discord**: Answer a question in our [Discord community](https://discord.gg/z8wNYzb)
- **✏️ Fix documentation typos**: Spot an error? Fix it directly on GitHub (no setup needed!)
### 🕓 ~1 Hour
- **🔧 Implement a small issue**: See [help-wanted issues](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/labels/help%20wanted)
- **📚 Write documentation**: Help keep the documentation complete and up-to-date
### 🕘 A Few Hours
- **🧩 Take a larger issue**: Contribute a significant feature or improvement
- **🎥 Create tutorials**: Record a YouTube video or write a detailed blog post
- Helping the Hugo Blox community via the live [chat](https://discord.gg/z8wNYzb) and [forum](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/discussions)
- Investigating and reviewing open [Issues](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/issues) and [Pull Requests](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/pulls)
**Note**: To contribute an improvement to a starter template, make your changes to the relevant template within the `starters/` folder. **Do not submit PRs to the dedicated template repositories as they are read-only (changes are automatically propagated there from this mono-repository).**
If you're a developer looking to contribute, but you're not sure where to begin, check out the [help wanted](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/labels/help%20wanted) label on Github, which contains issues which need some love.
If you have a straightforward bug fix or improvement, feel free to contribute it in a [Pull Request](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/pulls) for the community to review.
If you have an idea for a new feature, please start by [searching the issues](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/issues) to check that the feature has not already been suggested and then suggest it by [opening a new issue](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/issues/new/choose), as adding new features to Hugo Blox first requires some analysis around the design and spec.
To contribute a **new language pack** or an improvement to a language pack, refer to the [language pack guide](https://docs.hugoblox.com/reference/language/#create-or-modify-a-language-pack). Once created, [fork Hugo Blox Builder](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder), place your language pack in `modules/blox-tailwind/i18n/`, add the language metadata to `modules/blox-tailwind/data/languages.yaml`, and open a Pull Request on Github with these two files.
Consider duplicating a bare-bones template, such as the [Link In Bio](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/tree/main/starters/link-in-bio) folder, and building up your own template using the Hugo Blox. Reach out on the **Contributing** channel in Discord to submit your template.
To contribute to **Hugo Academic CLI**, the automatic publication and blog post importer, refer to [its dedicated Github repository](https://github.com/GetRD/academic-file-converter) and Issue queue.
Please be _mindful_ that although we encourage feature requests, we cannot expand the scope of the project in every possible direction. There will be feature requests that don't make the roadmap.
Every feature requires effort not just to analyse the requirements, design it, implement it, test it, document it, merge it, write release notes for it, and release it, but also to continuously support users with it and maintain it (fixing and refactoring the feature as the project and its dependencies evolve).
The more regular active volunteers (rather than one-off contributors) we have supporting users and maintaining the project, the more feasible it becomes to expand the scope of the project.
The project's scope also has to be constrained so that it doesn't get too complex and unwieldy, from an architectural perspective, a testing perspective, and from a usability perspective.
Plugins (widgets, shortcodes, theme packs, language packs, and third-party JavaScript integrations) as well as templates allow the community to add major features without needing to contribute to Hugo Blox itself.
Every contribution matters — whether it's fixing a typo, adding a translation, or building a new feature. You're helping thousands of researchers share their work with the world.
**Welcome to the Hugo Blox community!** 🎉
---
_Questions? Join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/z8wNYzb) or start a [Discussion](https://github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/discussions)._
