🔥The Beginner’s Guide to Hacktoberfest 2020 & Winning the T-shirt 👕
The best time to get into open source and getting some swag as reward
Edited and updated for 2020 edition on 25th September 2020. Originally published at wajahatkarim.com
❓ What is Hacktoberfest 2020?
Hacktoberfest 2020 is a month long virtual festival event to celebrate open source contributions presented by Digital Ocean, Intel and DEV. It is the easiest way to get into open source!
During the entire month of October 2020, all you have to do is contribute to any open source projects and open at least 4 pull requests. Yes, any project and any kind of contributions. You don’t need to be an expert in programming or coding. It can be a be a bug fix, improvement, or even a documentation change! And win an awesome T-shirt and awesome stickers.
😕 Why Should I Contribute?
The Hacktoberfest’s simple plain objective is:
Support open source and earn a limited edition T-shirt!
But, it’s not just about the t-shirts or stickers. Its about supporting open source. Its about celebrating open source, and giving it back. If you’ve never contributed to open source before, this is the perfect time to get started because Hacktoberfest provides a large list of available contribution opportunities (and yes, there are always plenty for beginners too).
👌 What Can I Contribute?
Hacktoberfest® is open to everyone in our global community. Whether you’re a developer, student learning to code, event host, or company of any size, you can help drive growth of open source and make positive contributions to an ever-growing community. All backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to complete the challenge.
It doesn’t need to be code. It can be even documentation. Or spelling fix.
You can contribute to any open source project hosted on Github.com and contribute anything between October 1 to October 31 midnight in 2020. You will find plenty of issues labeled with hacktoberfest or good-first-issue etc on Github. These will be the simple ones most probably and easy to fix.
📚 How Can I Contribute?
First you need to get yourself registered for Hacktoberfest. Signup at the Hacktoberfest 2020 website below.
Now you can search for the available issues for Hacktoberfest on the following link and start fixing those and contributing.
Or if you are newbie, then here’s a simple way to create your first pull request within few minutes.
- Go to this Hacktoberfest 2020 repository at Github
2. Fork this repository by clicking the “Fork” button on top-right of the repository page.
3. Now, you will see a repository will be created in your profile. It will look like this:
4. Now, click on Add File button and select Create new file button like shown below.
5. Set the file name with Your-Full-Name.md . For example, wajahat-karim.md in my case. And add the following lines in it.
### YOUR FULL NAME
- Photo: YOUR PHOTO URL
- Location: YOUR CITY, COUNTRY
- Bio: YOUR 1-2 LINES BIO
- Github: YOUR GITHUB URL
***Here’s an example of my file:
### Wajahat Karim
- Photo: https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/8867121?s=460&v=4
- Location: Karachi, Pakistan
- Bio: Google Developer Expert . Android Developer . Open Source Contributor . Writer . Speaker .
- Github: https://github.com/wajahatkarim3
***6. Commit your changes by pressing the green Commit new file button.
7. Now, you will see a banner will show up in your repository with 2 buttons in it. Click on the Pull Request button from that.
8. Finally, click the big green “Create Pull Request” button and you’re all set.
I send a bi-monthly newsletter sharing different tips, articles, resources about open source contributions, android development, and my work as a Google Developer Expert in Android. Please subscribe it here and it would mean a lot to me.
📈 How Can I Check My Status?
To check if you have made at least 4 pull requests, and eligibility for your contributions, you can check the Hacktoberfest’s own website below:
Click on the Profile button on top menu, and this will show you your pull requests and how many have you made so far.
👕 Win Your T-Shirt
In past years, shirts have arrived in November or December, depending on how far you live from San Francisco. In case of Pakistan for me, I received my swag in the end of January last time.
The Digital Ocean team should eventually contact you asking for your shirt size and shipping address. (Keep in mind they are shipping 40,000 shirts so this process will take a while.) And yes, they will ship internationally.
Don’t miss this opportunity. Start contributing to open source and get a limited edition T-shirt for Free! And also, Stickers!
🎉Happy Hacktoberfest & Happy Coding!!! 😃
Wajahat Karim is Pakistan’s first Google Developer Expert in Android. As an experience Android developer, he deeply cares about it and keeps writing and speaking about it. He has written two worldwide 300+ pages books on Android development with more than 100 articles around the internet either on his website or his Medium publications. He is also a passionate contributor in open source and has created many Android libraries used by thousands of developers in their apps worldwide. As active public speaker, he spends lots of time giving talks in conferences and motivating people on Android development. You can find Wajahat most active on Twitter @WajahatKarim where he regularly shares all the good stuff about Android and community building.
Contact him through his website at wajahatkarim.com with DEAR WAJAHAT in the subject line.
Originally published at https://wajahatkarim.com on October 1, 2019.
