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Community starter kit

Transform your code into a welcoming open source project

GitHub
Open Source

Join this course

GitHub Learning Lab is an integrated learning experience to help you learn how to use GitHub by using GitHub. Complete courses at your own pace on collaboration, workflow, and more.

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The open source community is full of the most passionate and talented people in the world. We know, because we work with them every day. Learn how to help the community find and contribute to your project.

In this course, you will learn about the informal standards the community has adopted to make it easier to find and contribute to projects.

In this course, you'll learn:

  • How to add metadata and help potential contributors find your project
  • The standard files contributors will look for and what they should contain
  • Tips for building a healthy, welcoming community
  • Other ways you can make your project easy to use

This course has a dedicated message board on the GitHub Community website. If you want to discuss this course with GitHub Trainers or other participants create a post over there. The message board can also be used to troubleshoot any issue you encounter while taking this course.

Steps to complete this course 15

  1. Add a repository description

    Welcome users to the repository with a descriptive README

  2. Edit the README

    Describe the purpose and benefits of your project.

  3. Merge the README

    Merge the pull request to add the README.

  4. Create user documentation

    Support your users with great documentation.

  5. Merge the user documentation

    Merge the pull request to add the user documentation.

  6. Add an issue template

    Use issue templates to gather useful information from contributors.

  7. Merge the issue template

    Merge the pull request to add your issue template.

  8. Add a CONTRIBUTING guide

    A CONTRIBUTING guide is used to tell others how they can help.

  9. Add custom labels to the project

    Create the labels described in the CONTRIBUTING guide and add them to this pull request.

  10. Merge the CONTRIBUTING guide

    Merge the pull request to add your contributing guide.

  11. Add the license

    Add a license to your open source project.

  12. Merge the license

    Merge the pull request to add your license.

  13. Add the Code of Conduct

    Add a Code of Conduct to set expectations for behavior in your project.

  14. Merge the Code of Conduct

    Merge the pull request to add your Code of Conduct.

  15. Help users find the project

    Add repository topics to help GitHub categorize and recommend your project.

This course is part of some Learning Paths:

Getting help

Looking for help? Check out the GitHub Community Forum.

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