Contribute To This Project

Announcement:

Would you like to become a maintainer on this project and help keeping it going? If you are interested, read the maintainer's guide and send me a DM on Twitter.

Introduction

IDEATION

The ideation for this project comes from a awesome mentor, follow through on his socials: Twitter, Facebook, GitHub and his resource website: Codrops filled with awesome resources i suggest you checkout.

The ultimate goal is to make this project into a fully responsive website and to help beginners navigate the habit of contributing to a codebase and learn how to create pull request and collaborate with others. You can add to, remove or create issues you think will improve this projects.

For first time contributers

This project aims to simplify and guide the way beginners make their first contribution. If you are looking to make your first contribution, follow the steps below.

For more comfortable developers

More experienced developers can examine the projects in this repository and enhance, add to, or improve on them based on their current level of expertise.

Objectives

Make a contribution to an open source project.
Get more comfortable in using GitHub.
Improve on the projects in this repo

Who is this for?

This is for absolute beginners. If you know how to write and edit an anchor tag <a href="" target=""></a> then you should be able to do it.
It is also for those with a little more experience but who want to make their first open source contribution, or get more contributions for more experience and confidence.

Why do I need to do this?

Any web developer, aspiring or experienced needs to use Git version control, and GitHub is the most popular Git hosting service used by everyone. It is also the heart of the Open Source community. Getting comfortable using GitHub is an essential skill. Making a contribution to a project boosts your confidence and gives you something to show on your GitHub profile.
If you are a new developer and you are wondering if you need to learn Git and GitHub then here is the answer: You Should've Learned Git Yesterday.

What am I going to contribute?

For everyone forking this repo, you have to contribute to the contributors list as shown above or else your PRʻs will not be accepted.It will include your name, your socials as shown above.

You will customise the first example with your own information.

If you're comfortable with the terminal go to this tutorial

Quick Access Index

Introduction What am I going to contribute? Setup Contribute → Next Steps Acknowledgements	Contribute: Step 1: Fork this repository Step 2: Clone the repository Step 3: Create a new branch Step 4:Open the contributors.md file Step 5: Commit your changes Step 6: Push your changes to GitHub Step 7: Submit a PR Step 8: Celebrate!

Setup! :)

First let's get setup to do the work

Login to your GitHub account. If you don't yet have an account then join GitHub. I recommend that you do the GitHub Hello World tutorial before you continue.
Download GitHub Desktop app.
- Alternatively if you are comfortable using Git on the command line you can do so Here is the link to the CLI tutorial.
- If you use VS Code it comes with integrated Git and allows you to do what we need straight from the editor.
- However the simplest and easiest way to follow this tutorial is using GitHub Desktop.

Now that you are all setup let's get on with the business of contributing to the project.

↑ Go to top ↑

Contribute

Become an open source contributor in these easy steps.

Estimated time: Less than 30 minutes.

Step 1: Fork this repository

The objective here is to make a copy of this project and place it in your account.
A repository (repo) is how a project is called on GitHub and a fork is a copy of it.
Make sure you are on the main page of this repo.

Click on the Fork button

You now have a complete copy of the project in your own account. ↑ Go to top ↑

Step 2: Clone the repository

Now we want to make a local copy of the project. That is a copy saved on your own machine.
Open the GitHub desktop app. In the app:

Click on Add then Clone repository

You will see a list of your projects and forks on GitHub. Select `<your-github-username>/Contribute-To-This-Project`. Click Clone

A forked project will have the fork symbol on the left.
Your fork will have your own GitHub user name.

This will take a moment as the project is copied to your hard disk. I recommend that you keep the default path which is usually ..\Documents\GitHub.
Now you have a local copy of the project.

Step 3: Create a new branch

Once the repo has been cloned and you have it open in GitHub desktop it is time to create a new branch.
A branch is a way to keep your changes separate from the main part of the project called Master. For example if things go wrong and you are not happy with your changes you can simply delete the branch and the main project won't be affected.

Click on Current branch Then click on New

Give your branch a name Click `Create branch`

You can name it whatever you want, but since this is a branch to add your name to the project, calling it your-name is good practice because it keeps the intention of this branch clear.

Publish your new branch to GitHub

Now you have created a new branch separate from the master.
For the next steps make sure you are working in this branch. You will see the name of the branch you are on at the top center of the GitHub desktop app where it says Current branch.

Do NOT work on the master branch

Step 4: Open the contributors md file

Now we need to open the file we are going to edit with your favourite code editor.
Find the project folder on your computer. If you have kept the default this should be something like your-computer > Documents > GitHub > Vanilla-JS-Projects
The contributor.md file is directly in the Vanilla-JS-Projects folder.

Open your code editor (Sublime, VS Code, Atom..etc) and use the `Open file` command and locate the contributors.md file in the main directory of the project Alternatively you can locate the file on your hard drive, right click, and open with your editor

Now you have the file you are going to edit open in your editor and you are ready to start making changes to it.

Step 5: Commit your changes

Go back to the GitHub desktop app.
Your changes will have been added automatically to the staging area.
This means that Git has recorded all the saved changes.
You can see this reflected in the app. Everything you have added to the file will be in green, and deletions will show as red.

The next step is called Commit
This roughly means "confirm the changes"

To _Commit_ you must fill in the _Summary_ field
This is the commit message explaining what you have changed
In this case "Add my information" would be a reasonable message
Optionally you can add a more detailed _Description_
Click the _Commit_ button. Your button will say something like `Commit to "your-branch-name"`

Step 6: Push your changes to GitHub

Your changes are now saved or committed. But they are saved only locally, that is on your computer.
Synchronizing local changes with your repository on GitHub is called a Push. You are "pushing" the changes from your local repository to the remote repository on GitHub.
After a few seconds the operation is complete and now you have exactly the same copy of this branch on your machine as well as on GitHub.

Step 7: Submit a PR

This is the moment you have been waiting for; submitting a Pull Request (PR).
So far all the work you have done has been on the fork of the project, which as you remember resides on your own account of GitHub.
Now it's time to send your changes to the main project to be merged with it.
This is called a Pull Request because you are asking the original project maintainer to "pull" your changes into their project.
Go to the main page of your fork on GitHub (it will have the fork icon and your own user name at the top).
Towards the top of the repo you will see a highlighted pull request message with a green button.

Click on the `Compare and pull request`

This is what the `Open a pull request` page looks like. REMEMBER you are trying to merge your branch with the original project not with the `Master` branch on your fork. The image below gives you an idea of how the header of your pull request should look like. On the left is the original project, followed by the master branch. On the right is your fork and the branch you created.

Create a pull request: Write a title Add optional information in the description Click `Create pull request`

Don't be fazed by all the options. You only need to do these three steps for now.
Leave the option Allow edits from maintainers ticked.
Now, a Pull Request will be sent to the project maintainer.

Step 8: Celebrate!!

That's it. You have done it! You have now contributed to open source on GitHub.

Your changes won't be visible immediately; first they have to be reviewed, accepted, and merged by the project maintainer. Once they are merged your card should be visible and live on the page.

It is very normal for a reviewer to ask for changes on a PR. Think of it as good practice if it happens to you. Keep an eye for comments and requested changes. Once you make the requested changes (back in your branch) all you have to do is to commit and push your changes. The PR will automatically update with the new changes.

I promise I will try to review and merge as soon as possible but I do this in my spare time, so a few days delay is inevitable.

Next Steps

Come back in a while to check for your merged Pull Request.
You should receive an email from GitHub when your changes have been approved, or if additional changes are requested. And when the PR is finally merged with the master and your card has been added.
If you found this project useful please give it a ⭐ star ⭐ at the top of the page and Tweet about it to help spread the word
You can follow me and get in touch on Twitter
This is an open source project so apart from contributing your name and socials you are welcome to help fix bugs, improvements, or new features. Open an issue or send a new pull request
To help improve our community discussion will be here Discussions tab located next to Pull Requests. This area is a place to introduce yourself, go into deeper discussions on Open Source, and communicate with the Project Maintainers. Will you help us build out this feature and enhance our community?
Thanks for contributing to this project. Now you can go ahead and try contributing to other projects; look for the label for beginner-friendly contribution options.
I'm also looking for collaborators to give me a hand in reviewing and merging PRs. If you would like to get more advanced Git practice please send me a DM on Twitter and read the maintainer's guide.