Hacktoberfest Guide for Beginners 
Tags: hacktoberfest, opensource, github, beginners
Published: 2020-10-15 16:42:00


Everyone is talking about Hacktober Fest & Free T-shirts. But what exactly Hacktoberfest is & how can you participate to win that fancy limited edition T-Shirt? If you have these questions in your mind, you are in the right place. Stick to this blog post & at the end of it, you will have all the answers.

**So let's begin!**

![Hacktoberfest 2020](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/bfsrdvyfs89i3ahqm5dp.png)

## What is HacktoberFest?

Hacktoberfest is a month-long community event in October where people from all sorts of professions come to help each other to learn & share new skills through contributing to open-source projects and to support the open-source community. Participants also win awesome swag like the T-Shirt we just mentioned.

**The main aim of Hacktoberfest is to encourage people to contribute more to open source projects.**

If you don't know what are open source projects, open-source projects are the projects where anyone can make their own contributions through various means regardless of their relation to the project or to the project owners.

**Anyone can participate in Hacktoberfest & it is not at all mandatory to have any experience or knowledge in coding.**

## Are there any Prerequisites?

The contributions for Hacktoberfest takes place through Git & GitHub, so you need to have some basic knowledge of Git & Github. You don't really have to learn everything about them. Well, if you know how to make a pull request, then you already have sufficient knowledge required for Hacktoberfest.

**But if you don't, below are some useful resources for you to learn and master Git & GitHub in no time:**

-   [Git & Github Crash Course by freecodecamp](https://youtu.be/RGOj5yH7evk)
-   [Git Tutorial for Beginners](https://youtu.be/8JJ101D3knE)
-   [GitHub Guide](https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/)

**Apart from the basic knowledge of Git & GitHub, you don't really need to have any other skill to get started.**

You can contribute with whatever skills you currently have. No need to learn something new (_although it's always good to learn new stuff_)...

**Below are some of the different ways in which you can contribute:**

-   **Code -** The most obvious way to contribute to a project is coding. However, you don't have to be a professional programmer or Mr Robot to help open source community.
-   **Design -** You can also help by designing or redesigning project assets like landing pages, UI or illustrations. Possibilities are endless here!
-   **Review -** You can also help by checking the project code & can suggest better ways of implementing the same logic or help the owner to find & fix bugs in the project.
-   **Documentation -** One of the easiest yet important way of contributing to a project is to add documentation to the project or help improve the current documentation.

## How to get started?

**Here are detailed step by step instructions:**

### **Step 1 - Register yourself for Hacktoberfest**

**Registration is pretty simple!**

-   Go to official [**Hacktoberfest website**](http://hacktoberfest.com/)
-   Click on **Start Hacking** & sign in with your **GitHub account**

![Hacktoberfest.com](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/1wekk2uormh81jgbzzjx.png)
-   **That's it!** You are now officially registered for Hacktoberfest 2020!

### **Step 2 - Find repositories to make contributions**

Now next step is to find a repository of your choice which matches your skill set, it could be any repository on GitHub labelled as **_hacktoberfest_.**

You can find the label on the right-hand section of repository page under About section. If the **_hacktoberfest_** label is not present, it means that any contributions you make to this particular repository **will not be counted for Hacktoberfest 2020**.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/9i7uwgcsth439nysfx8k.png)

**Here are some of the repositories I recommend to beginners:** 

- [TesseractCoding/NeoAlgo](https://github.com/TesseractCoding/NeoAlgo)
- [surajsrv11/JavaScript](https://github.com/surajsrv11/JavaScript)
- [api-platform/api-platform](https://github.com/api-platform/api-platform)


### **Step 3 - Start Hacking/Contributing**

Now once you have found the repositories you want to contribute into. **It's now time to actually start hacking(contributing).**

**Here are few points, you should keep in mind:**

-   Throughout the month of October, you have to make at least 4 valid pull requests in any repository on GitHub which is labelled **_hacktoberfest_** as previously mentioned.
-   The pull requests you have made will have to go through a **review process of 14 Days**. You can check the status of your pull requests from [here](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/profile).
-   Within that 14 Day review process, the repository owner will have a chance to see & evaluate your pull requests, if everything goes well & all 4 of your pull requests got accepted then after 14 days you will receive an email from Hacktoberfest organizers to claim your prize.
-   In case, any of your pull requests wasn't accepted, you can try again to make more valid pull requests to different repositories **before the end of Hacktoberfest 2020 (_i.e. before October 30_)**.
-   I recommend you to make as many contributions as you can on multiple repositories, as this will increase the number of pull requests you have made & eventually your chances of completing Hacktoberfest 2020 challenge will increase as well!

**Congratulations! You are now all set to participate in Hacktoberfest 2020!**

Join our  [Telegram group](https://t.me/joinchat/LEu2cUxPvSOW2nC0JN2nSw) which we have specially created to help beginners with Hacktoberfest 2020!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in comments, I'll be there to help & guide you throughout your Hacktoberfest journey.

_Thank you so much for reading! I hope I have covered everything required for you to get started with Hacktoberfest & win that awesome limited edition Hacktoberfest t-shirt. I will keep this blog post updated with the latest updates & news about Hacktoberfest. **Feel free to give your feedback & constructive criticism in the comments section.**_

**Stay Safe, everyone!**