I attempted to volunteer (I'm a web developer) but that didn't go anywhere. First, I wanted to help LW grow (in my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread). Then I realized that LW was at serious risk for eternal September and growing it would risk hastening progress toward cultural collapse. So, I did several more threads on that to see if anyone had good arguments about us not being at risk, or good suggestions on how to stop it. I compiled a list of suggestions and held a vote asking people whether they think there is a significant risk and which solution, if any, they wanted. The result was that the majority of respondents think there is a significant risk, and this was presented to Luke, but he said he doesn't want to do anything at this time.
That was, to put it mildly, a bit of a buzz kill in regards to my volunteering energy level.
My advice to you is to make sure of the following things:
That you and Luke (yes, Luke seems to be the contact person) both agree on a project that is to be done. Luke liked the idea of growing LW, but he didn't like the idea of preventing cultural collapse. I can't, in good conscience, grow LW if there is a significant risk of it contributing to cultural collapse, and the group thinks that there is a significant risk. So, we unfortunately appear to be at a stalemate.
That Luke is cool with you specifically making changes. (Luke will need to go to some trouble to verify that you're a good developer. This will take time, and he may or may not be willing to invest it.)
There are multiple people who are interested in doing volunteer work. Myself, you, and at least one other have expressed interest, and I could have swore there were more. Considering that, and the fact that this website is basically full of programmers up to the eyebrows, and the fact that they could ask for volunteers at any time, I really think lack of development resources is not an obstacle. If you attempt to explore and/or tackle the following obstacles you may get somewhere:
Obstacle 1: Luke and Eliezer may be unaware of how many potential developer volunteers they have.
Solution 1: Survey the group asking how many people would be willing to volunteer their web development skills, and which specific skills they can offer. Ask them to describe what type of time commitment they're willing to provide in the comments. (I don't think there's an easy way to organize a bunch of responses that will range from "an hour a week" to "I'll commit, but on a per project basis, depending on the project." I know that one of the research volunteers does the former, and that there is a potential volunteer web development manager who is interested in the latter arrangement.)
Obstacle 2: Managing volunteers has a cost - overhead. Luke and EY are busy, and they're "pivoting away from" community building (see the recent fundraiser post). Although Luke and EY still want to lead the LessWrong community, they must be very short on time. Luke and EY probably do not realistically have the time to manage web development volunteers.
Solution 2: When surveying the group to get an idea of the development resources potential, be sure to ask whether the respondents have experience managing web developers and would be willing to provide this service. Obviously Luke will have to decide whether to trust the volunteer manager, but making a decision about that one person is easier than managing a whole bunch of them, and double-checking the projects when they're finished is a heck of a lot faster than doing all the hand-holding that may otherwise be anticipated without such a manager in place.
If enough people volunteer, this will wake everybody (including them) up to the developer resources that they already have. If their true rejection has not been uncovered, broaching the subject of having a volunteer manager might be the hammer that hits that nail on the head.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.