How To Begin Testing Plugins?

I would love to help test and try to contribute to Bukkit as much as possible. If there is any way for me to help test plugins for people, that would be wonderful!
I am unsure if this is in the right place, but I was not sure where to post.

 

All you have to do is download the plugin and test it. If you find bugs then tell the developer. If you want to become official with them don't be afraid to send them a private message. Most of them are kind and will reply with a yes or a no. Don't hate on them if they say no though as they may not need a team or already have one.

 

CompleteClient
Do you mean like BukkitDev?
http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/bukkit-needs-your-help.45231/

 

Yeah, but not as in become a staff member. I mean like becoming a tester for plugins. I see that their are testers, and I would love to help people by testing things for them!

 

Ask people if they need help testing plugins.

 

If you really want to get good at testing, try to find all the ways to break a plugin. Make it a game that you win every time you get the plugin to crash.

1. Test the configuration file
   1. Does the plugin break when you leave out values?
   2. Does the plugin break when you put words where numbers belong?
   3. Does the plugin break when you put numbers where words belong?
   4. Does the plugin break when you put in negative numbers?
   5. Does the plugin break when you put in really long strings?
2. Test the commands
   1. Test invalid values
   2. Test player commands from the console
   3. Test console commands from the player
   4. Test all the permissions
   5. Does the plugin break when a player has one permission but not another?
3. Test event handlers
   1. Do all the event handlers work as expected?
   2. Do the event handlers work when you move between worlds?
   3. Do the event handlers work when you switch between creative and survival mode?
   4. Does the plugin do inappropriate things to creative players, like try to injure them?
   5. Does the plugin break when the player is higher than y=256?
   6. Does the plugin break when the player is below y=0?
4. Test plugin lifecycle
   1. Does the plugin break when you do a /reload?
   2. Does the plugin register duplicate event handlers after a /reload?
   3. Does the plugin correctly reload its config after a /reload?
   4. Does the plugin correctly save its state after a /save?
   5. Does the plugin create a default config file the first time its loaded?

 

deltahat
Stuff like this really helps. It's a pain to constantly test every little detail of plugins whenever you add features to make sure you didn't accidentally break anything.

 

CompleteClient
Usually I go through each and every aspect of the plugins features, such as commands, setup, and gameplay.

 

Just let your mom play it it will most likely break