Gain Open Source Confidence During Hacktoberfest 2021!

Did you know that October is the home of HACKtoberfest? For the next 31 days, the wider software development community will be collaborating over "PRs" (pull requests) on open source projects in the name of expanding the pool of active contributors and project maintainers.

While open source can be intimidating, believe us when we say that there's an entire global community eager to support your journey – especially during Hacktoberfest!

To that end, we wanted to stop by to share some instructions from @cmgorton (Developer Advocate at Forem) to help guide your Hacktoberfest experience (full info shared in this post on DEV)...

Here's how to participate in Hacktoberfest 2021 as a contributor…

1. Review Open Source Etiquette Guidelines

To ensure you’re making valuable contributions to open source projects this month, we encourage you to check out this etiquette guide that will help inform you before making your pull requests. It always helps to review this information – even if you’ve contributed to open source projects before 😊

2. Sign Up

Sign up for Hacktoberfest 2021 to participate.

3. Make 4 Hacktoberfest Pull Requests

- Make at least four pull requests (PRs) by October 31 in any participating GitHub-hosted repository/project
- Your PRs will count toward your participation if they are in a repo with the hacktoberfest topic and once they have been merged, approved by a maintainer, or labeled as hacktoberfest-accepted.
- Maintainers opt-in to participate by classifying their projects with the hacktoberfest topic (find a list of opted-in projects here )
- Any PR with the hacktoberfest-accepted label, submitted to any public GitHub repository, with or without the hacktoberfest topic, will be considered valid.

3. Earn Cool Prizes

By participating in Hacktoberfest 2021, you'll gain more open source experience and get the chance to earn some Hacktoberfest prizes. For the second year in a row, DigitalOcean is offering an alternative to their traditional Hacktoberfest t-shirt prize: a plant-a-tree alternative! While those Hacktoberfest t-shirts are coveted and amazing, it always feels good to help the planet and reduce waste 🌲

4. Share your Hacktoberfest 2021 Story on DEV

We encourage all participants of Hacktoberfest to share their journeys with us on DEV by using the #hacktoberfest tag. Why? The community always benefits from reading stories about other open source contributions so they can improve their own participation in the ecosystem. Oh, and we’ll also be offering anyone who shares a #hacktoberfest post on DEV (who is also a registered Hacktoberfest participant) a limited edition Hacktoberfest 2021 profile badge. Don’t miss these badges – once Hacktoberfest 2021 is over, we’ll never be awarding them again.

Note: We highly encourage you to cross-post your Hacktoberfest DEV post to CodeNewbie Community! We'll give you a special badge on BOTH of your profiles.

Be sure to follow the tag, as the DEV/Forem team will be publishing our own helpful Hacktoberfest content all month long!

Not sure about what kind of Hacktoberfest post you should share with us? Click here for a Hacktoberfest post template where you can choose between these ideas — or write your own Hacktoberfest post from scratch.

We can't wait to read your Hacktoberfest story. ❤️

5. Join DEV/Forem on Twitch

Throughout the month, DEV will be livestreaming about Hacktoberfest! Follow them on Twitch at twitch.tv/thepracticaldev to be notified when a stream begins. 👾

6. Share your Hacktoberfest progress, discuss, and get help

• Tell us when you've completed all PRs in this thread
• Ask a question about Hacktoberfest by using the tags #hacktoberfest and #help (– hint: use this template if you’ve never published a help thread on DEV. Don’t forget to include the #hacktoberfest tag, too!)

7. Contribute to Forem!

For the second year in a row, Forem (the open source software that powers DEV) is actively seeking Hacktoberfest contributions! We would be honored to be amongst your four PRs this month. See all the available Forem Hacktoberfest issues here.

We can't WAIT to follow your Hacktoberfest and open source journeys — both here on CodeNewbie Community and on DEV. 🎉