Appwrite's Hacktoberfest '21 Journey
Tags: appwrite, hacktoberfest, opensource, news
Published: 2021-11-26 13:44:27

**October** 🍁 is our favourite month of the year because it brings with it **Hacktoberfest**, the largest celebration of open source in the world! **Hacktoberfest 2021** was a very special edition for us as we joined DigitalOcean as a sponsor to invest in the upliftment of the open source world. Hacktoberfest brought with it moments of nostalgia seeing young developers join in to take their first steps in the open source world 🤩.  

We had an absolute blast interacting with all the new contributors and hosting all the events throughout the month! Our [**YouTube livestreams**](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-nc7zI7zjsYbqgtbrtqXLS39kDIppmJw) brought in some amazing speakers and our [**Discord server**](https://appwrite.io/discord) was full of **AMAs**, **PR Review parties** and even a [**Meme Hackathon**](https://twitter.com/appwrite_io/status/1463087820285874178/)! 👀 The PR Review Parties enabled us to demonstrate our PR review workflow and allowed the community to really appreciate the work that goes into maintaining open source projects. We were also able to educate new contributors on various facets of open source from using tools like Git and GitHub, the process of submitting a PR, communication best practices, PR best practices and so much more! Overall, this Hacktoberfest was one of the most wholesome and fulfilling experiences for our team and we cannot wait to share our highlights from this edition 🥳. 

![Celebrate](https://i.giphy.com/media/11sBLVxNs7v6WA/giphy.webp)

## 📜 Our History With Hacktoberfest

Before we jump into some amazing open source contributions from Hacktoberfest this year, we'd would love to share why our participation in Hacktoberfest matters far more to us than we can express. **Appwrite was first released back in September 2019** with one simple goal, make software development a lot less complex. **Hacktoberfest 2019** was truly a game-changer for us, as we saw **over 200 contributions** from some lovely members of the open source fraternity that October. The stars on our project doubled that month while entering the 4-digit range for the very first time 📈. 

That one month truly enabled us to lay the foundations of a budding organization with the sole purpose of helping developers build faster and better. And for that, no thank-yous will ever be enough, to express our gratitude for this amazing open source community that chose to carry us on their shoulders at our inception. This year, as sponsors of Hacktoberfest, we set out with the mission to **uplift the ever-growing open source community** and **enable more newcomers** to step in and grow in this ecosystem 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦.


## 👩‍💻 Some Of Our Favourite Contributions

We saw lots of amazing contributions from our community members throughout Hacktoberfest. Some of them really stood out to us, and we thought to share it here for you to check out too! 👀 

* ### Appwrite Minecraft Database

    {% github nCodesDotEU/Appwrite-Minecraft-Database no-readme %}

* ### Godot SDK

    {% github GodotNuts/appwrite-sdk no-readme %}

* ### Appcelerator Titanium Module

    {% github m1ga/ti.appwrite no-readme %}

* ### 3D illustration

    {% twitter 1452170464067944459 %}

* ### Fitness App with Appwrite + Flutter

    {% medium https://medium.com/@gireeshputhumana/building-the-fitness-challenge-app-with-appwrite-367286790f64 %}

* ### Featured Demo Cloud Functions

    * [OpenStreetMap previews](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues/1920)
 
    * [Google Maps previews](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues/1905)

    * [Giphy Gifs using a keyword](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues/1922)

    * [Object Detection using Cloudmersive API](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues/2029)

    * [GDPR export](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues/1904)
    
## 🎖 Milestones Achieved So Far

Together we made a lot of noise during Hacktoberfest and it led to some amazing results for the Appwrite community! 

* Over **14000** GitHub ⭐️ stars
* Over **2500** Commits!
* **1200+** Pull Requests 
* About **450** new GitHub contributors
* **300+** tutorials and demo apps!
* About **200** new Cloud Functions demos 
* **280+** Hacktoberfest issues 
* **10** Hacktoberfest events! 

All these achievements were made possible through the strong collaboration and active participation of the community through a variety of contributions, spanning **platform translations** and **demo cloud functions**, as well as **articles**, **tutorials**, and even **fan art** (which we just saw above)! 

We also saw a major update to the Appwrite ecosystem last month, with the team announcing **support for Apple** 🍎 **platforms** (iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS), as well as a brand new **Swift Server SDK** 🖥, and a **Swift Cloud Function** runtime ⚡.

{% link https://dev.to/appwrite/building-apps-just-got-swifter-announcing-appwrite-v011-4g62 %}

Following the start of Hacktoberfest, we also started our own [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/Appwrite) and held several livestreams on various topics like Open Source, DevOps, Flutter, and Web throughout the month, which had **over 5300 views**! 💻

With all of these fantastic activities taking place, our [Discord server](https://appwrite.io/discord) became the hub to engage in for our community members. Seeing a variety of activities such as **Live PR Review Parties**, **AMAs on Hacktoberfest and Open Source** as well as a **Meme Hackathon**, we saw the server grow substantially, crossing **4500 members**! 🤗

## ⏭ What’s Next For Appwrite

We have a lot of exciting features that we’re working towards as we gear up for the 1st version of the Appwrite Cloud. Our **database refactor** 🧾 is in the works at the moment and brings in support for **more powerful queries**, **database indices** and some **amazing performance improvements**. This refactor will even allow you to **use your favourite database** with Appwrite! We're this close 🤏 to the release and we can't wait to get it in your hands!

We are also working on ways to improve the developer experience around Appwrite's **Cloud Functions** ☁. We're revisiting the entire Cloud Function lifecycle starting from creation, build, deployment and execution to ensure you have the best experience possible. Initial tests have shown **over a 10x improvement** in **function execution speeds** bringing it on par with the industry standards. The **Appwrite CLI** is also being improved to give you a **much better experience** when working with Cloud Functions.

We also have support for **Storage Buckets** 💽 in the works, which will allow you to group your files into buckets and manage common configurations for the entire group like the accepted file size, allowed file extensions, enable/disable encryption and even manage permissions for the group as a whole. We will also be adding **external storage support** allowing you to use **AWS S3**, **DigitalOcean Spaces** and more as a storage option for your Appwrite instance.

## 🙌 How Can You Contribute After Hacktoberfest?

Hacktoberfest may be over but you don’t have to stop contributing! We have **lots of open issues** that you can find on our [GitHub repo](https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues). Moreover, many of our Hacktoberfest issues are still open for assignment! You can also **write articles**, **create tutorials** or **build demo apps** and add them to our [Awesome Appwrite repo](https://github.com/appwrite/awesome-appwrite). There are always new ways to support the community and we truly love all the contributions you make. If you need help with Appwrite or would like to explore some interesting ways to contribute, join us on our [Discord server](https://appwrite.io/discord) and connect with the Appwrite community ❤️.

Thank you so much once again for joining us during Hacktoberfest. We hope you enjoyed contributing to open source as much as we do and we can’t wait to have you all with us next year! 😄

![See You Soon](https://i.giphy.com/media/l1J3CbFgn5o7DGRuE/giphy.webp)