I plan to apply to Google Summer of Code 2026 with Wagtail. Wagtail is an open source CMS built on Django. The project I chose is the Starter Kit Upgrade.
I chose this project because it is the most Django-focused option. I am most comfortable with Django. Frontend stresses me out so I avoid full stack projects. The starter kit upgrade focuses on Django's management commands. I have not really focused on this part of Django before. I am excited to dive deep and learn interesting things.
Exploring the codebase was - and still is - pretty terrifying. It's slightly overwhelming but I'm trying to understand the key parts first. I have noticed however, that when Wagtail releases a new version, the starter kit falls behind. Someone has to manually update it.
I searched for code improvements I could make to build confidence.. I removed dead code in wagtail/bin/wagtail.py that handled Python 3.7. Python 3.7 is no longer supported. Wagtail's minimum version is 3.10, making the code unreachable. The PR was merged with some useful notes. It was my first contribution to a large codebase. I learned that every PR should be on a separate branch to keep contributions clean. I found missing imports in the news-template that caused runtime errors and submitted a fix.
I'm really excited about the program. I want to grow as a confident open source contributor. I plan to keep contributing to Wagtail regardless of the outcome. Everyone has been eager to help. I plan to stick around for a while.
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