I use open source self hosted software everyday. I love the community and I would love to be able to contribute to some of these projects.
As far as code goes, I basically no nothing about how it works. I see the development section of the repos I use and again, I’ve go no idea how it works.
How can I teach myself how to offer small improvements to the projects I use?
It depends on the project. Often there’s a “Contributing” page on its website or a file named
CONTRIBUTING.mdor similar in the source tree. Start from reading it. Sometimes information there is aimed at experienced developers, but sometimes it is very friendly for beginners.