Hacktoberfest 2020: Celebrate Open Source with Social9!

October is here, and Hacktoberfest is upon us! It's that time of year for a month-long celebration of something we all really love – open source. This year, we're kicking off our first annual Hacktoberfest!

To celebrate Hacktoberfest, we want to give a shout-out to our amazing community and reward folks who contribute to open source projects throughout October. While we're always happy to see contributions year-round, now you can snag some special prizes for your efforts.

Welcome to #Hacktoberfest 2020! Get involved with open source this October and snag some cool swag. 👕 Brought to you by @digitalocean, @intel, and @ThePracticalDev. You can find more details and resources on their site: https://t.co/EABbXwl8QX 🔗 💙 — Hacktoberfest (@hacktoberfest) August 18, 2020

So, if you're as stoked about open source as we are, grab your laptop, get comfy, and let's get hacking!

Why Should I Contribute?

For a lot of us, open source is more than just a hobby. It's a chance to be part of something bigger, to make a real difference in projects we care about. Whether you're totally new to open source or you've been around the block, it feels good to make changes, even small ones – they really do help move things forward.

Open source brings together people with all sorts of skills, experiences, and backgrounds from everywhere. It's a great way to grow, both professionally and personally. Plus, it's just plain fun and enjoyable (and sometimes you get cool swag!).

This Sounds Great! How Do I Get Started?

Signing up is super easy.

1. This event is mainly sponsored by DigitalOcean. So, first, register yourself here hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com using your GitHub account.
2. That's it! Now you just need to make 4 valid pull requests, and they'll be tracked automatically. You can check them out in your profile section here.

Wait a sec, what's a "valid pull request"? 😕

What is a Valid Pull Request?

Over the past 7 years since this fest started, the quality of pull requests has kinda slumped. (Handling repeatedly poor Pull Requests : r/softwaredevelopment) So, to help protect maintainers and make sure pull requests are better quality, some changes were made starting October 3rd, 2020, at 12:00:00 UTC.

1. The open-source projects need to have a label called hacktoberfest.
2. Once you create a pull request, it either needs to be approved by the maintainer or get a hacktoberfest-accepted label, which means it's accepted and will be merged later.

Quick Summary

1. Find a project that's listed for hacktoberfest.
2. Fork it to your own GitHub account. (Forking is basically making a copy of the project on your account so you can make changes without affecting the original.)
3. Make your changes, making sure to follow any contribution guidelines.
4. Create a pull request to the original project. (A pull request is how you ask the original project to include the changes you made.)
5. Once it's reviewed and merged, or gets the hacktoberfest-accepted label, you're golden!

How is Social9 Involved?

We've open-sourced a bunch of projects and plan to do even more. You can check out the projects we have available by searching for hacktoberfest topics within the Social9 organization: https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Ahacktoberfest+org%3Asocial9&type=Repositories.

We're pretty flexible with tech. You can contribute in any language or by doing any of these:

1. Add a new feature to any of our existing projects.
2. Add or update documentation.
3. Fix any bugs that are already there, or ones you might have found recently.
4. And last but not least, slide into our DMs on Twitter or send us an email if you can help create a Social9 plugin using any other technology. We'll even set up a repo for you! 😃

Let's connect on Twitter for more updates: Follow @Social9dotcom

Stay tuned for more updates. Happy hacking!