It’s that time of year again! We’re back with Hacktoberfest, a celebration of open source contributions in October. It's a chance for everyone to get involved and learn something new.

We’re excited about DigitalOcean’s upcoming special edition Hacktoberfest to show our gratitude for your support over the past year.

Open source software is becoming more popular lately. There are currently more than 200,000 open source projects worth billions of dollars being worked on across the globe.

Some open source communities are small groups of ordinary people; others are associations of big companies.

In this article, I'll share what you need to know if you want to participate in Hacktoberfest 2022 as a beginner and other important details that will help you get started.

Let’s dive in 🌊

What is Hactoberfest? 🤔

Hacktoberfest is a month-long community-wide celebration of open source software run by DigitalOcean in partnership with Docker and other brands. Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in our global community!

How to participate in Hactoberfest? 💻

Hactoberfest welcomes everyone who’s already part of the open-source software community and anyone who is interested in diving in.

To participate and be eligible for the swags, you just need to make four valid pull requests submitted to public GitHub or GitLab repositories participating in #hactoberfest by October 31st, 2022.

On top of a boost to your open-source cred, participants are rewarded with swags. 🤩

Step 1: Register or login to github.com

Step 2: Register to Hacktoberfest.

Step 3: Contribute to four repositories participating in hactoberfest and create respective Pull Request

Step 4: Check your progress from here

Voila, it’s done 🚀

What it means to contribute? 🙄

Not only can we contribute to an open source project with code, but there are many possible ways you can contribute. Some of these ways are described below.

✍️ Writing and improving the documentation or even can translate the documentation in your native language

🎨 Designing the UI and improving the UX of the project

🧑‍💻 Solving any open issues by applying your coding skills

🗣️ Answering questions on open issues and reviewing code on other people’s submissions

🪲 Report the bug and open an issue regarding the same

Creating your first Pull Request (PR) 🙌

In order to create your first PR, you must be familiar with the version control system eg. Git and GitHub.

Git is a version control system that lets you manage and keep track of your source code history GitHub is a cloud-based hosting service that lets you manage Git repositories.

If you’re not very familiar with Git & GitHub, please check this course Version Control with Git

1. Fork the repository
2. Clone the repository
3. Create a branch
4. Commit the changes you’ve made
5. Push changes to the GitHub branch you’ve created
6. Create Pull Pequest

Now that you’ve created your Pull Request, wait till it gets merged. 🤩

Please note that only a merged PR will be counted as a contribution toward Hactoberfest.

Looking for Repositories participating in Hactoberfest 2022? 👀

Planning to participate in the Hactoberfest 2022, but not sure where to start?

I've curated a list of 100+ projects that you can use to start your open-source contributions for hactoberfest 2022.

You can access it from here

Food for thought 🍎

GitHub is a powerful tool for version control. Everyone can contribute to open-source projects by making pull requests. Contributions aren’t always code – there are other ways to contribute too.

Open-Source is open for everyone to participate. There are a lot of opportunities you can take advantage of and learn something new.

Any questions in your mind? You know where to find me

Let's connect on 🤝 Twitter

Happy Hacking 🧑‍💻