I'm sorry that you're afraid of the process. I agree it can be daunting, but hey - I got through it. And I'm probably a worse coder than you.

The important thing is that you wouldn't be going alone. I stand ready to mentor (hand-hold) anyone who's willing to give it a try.
The first thing is to dig into the code and try to understand how it works. You don't have to understand it all; take it bit by bit (or byte by byte). Here is my first patch. I tweaked the content of some html!

By the way. Unfortunately, the Everything documents (such as the Everything Bible) are next to useless for PerlMonks. The baselines have diverged too much in the last 20 years.

Regarding multiple servers: No; we have multiple servers but they're all running code out of the same database. Yes, the code lives in a database (mostly).

I always appreciate the offer and the effort. It's not fear that stops me though… well, maybe a little fear of embarrassing myself by breaking something but that's really just vanity. :P

How hard would it be to build and run a clone/development version on any given *nix? Do instructions exist? If I should already know the answer to these… I will say 10 Hail Larrys and whip myself with a dead python.

maybe a little fear of embarrassing myself by breaking something

ha ha no. you think you have direct access to the live code? ;-)
You submit patches (which are really full revisions, not deltas). We do a code review. If we see any potential issues, we throw it back to you, with discussion. Please don't be afraid of the process, whether out of vanity or any other reason.

How hard would it be to build and run a clone/development version

I'm not sure of the precise answer, but I believe it's in the vicinity of "very", unless we don't mind giving away the passwords to every account; in that case, it would be "not at all". :-)

I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.