DAY 3: Fork, Star, Watch 🍴 ⭐ 👀

[ghostinhershell]

Welcome to Day 3 of 7 Days of GitHub ~ a step by step journey to help you go from “just signed up” to “just contributed”.

If you’ve ever opened a GitHub project and thought, “Cool, but what do I do with this?” — today is for you.

GitHub isn’t just a place where developers code — it’s a place to explore ideas, support others, and start your own collection of inspiration.

Today, you’ll learn how to:

• ⭐ Save a project to revisit later
• 👀 Follow projects and get updates
• 🍴 Copy a project** to make it your own

✅ Goal of the Day

Learn how to fork, star, and watch a repository — and what those things actually mean.

🧠 What You Should Know:

GitHub is home to millions of projects — but how do you keep track of the ones you’re interested in?

That’s where fork, star, and watch come in. Let’s break them down with a simple analogy:

Imagine GitHub is a giant library of projects:

Action	What It Does	Think of It Like…
⭐ Star	Save a project to your favorites	Bookmarking a recipe you want to come back to 🥘
👀 Watch	Subscribe to project updates	Following a thread or turning on post notifications 🔔
🍴 Fork	Make your own copy of a project	Cloning a Google Doc so you can edit your version ♻️

These aren’t just buttons — they’re powerful ways to learn, support, and start contributing.

🧑‍💻 Real-World Example: Why Forking Matters

Let’s say you find a simple website template you love. You:

1. Fork the repo to your own GitHub account
2. Edit the colors and content to make it your own
3. Publish your version on GitHub Pages

You just learned by doing — without starting from scratch. That’s the power of GitHub’s open source ecosystem.

Tip

Forks let you build on what others have shared.

🛠️ Hands-On Challenge:

1. Go to github.com/explore
   Find a project that interests you — maybe one tagged with beginner-friendly or something related to your favorite language or topic. Here are some tags that are aimed at new contributors:

• markdown
• portfolio
• html-css
• good first issue

2. On that project’s page:

• ⭐ Click Star to save it
• 👀 Click Watch and choose “Watching” if you want to get updates
• 🍴 Click Fork to make your own editable copy in your account

3. Go to your own profile. You’ll now see the forked repo there — it’s yours to explore!

🧪 Bonus: Click into your new fork and poke around the files. Try reading the README or opening a file in the browser. No pressure to change anything — yet.

💬 Community Prompt:

What project did you star or fork today? Drop a link in the comments and share why it stood out to you!

🔗 Want to Go Deeper?

• Fork a Repo
• Working with Stars
• Watch Settings

---

🎉 You’re halfway there! Tomorrow we’ll write your very first README and learn a little Markdown to help you tell your story.

See you then! 👋

[angeloLib]

🌟 Today I starred a few awesome projects that align with the learning goals I’ve been setting:

Rustlings — I’m using this to get hands-on with Rust syntax and ownership concepts. It’s a great, interactive way to learn by doing.

Rust Book — Reading this alongside Rustlings to deepen my understanding of Rust fundamentals.

ASP.NET Core — Since I already work with .NET, I want to stay sharp and dig into how the framework is structured and maintained.

Ethereum Book — I'm starting to explore Solidity and Web3 development, and this book seems like a solid foundation.

These stood out because they’re well-maintained, beginner-friendly, and aligned with the roadmap I’m building for the next few years. If anyone has tips or project suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

[ghostinhershell]

These stood out because they’re well-maintained, beginner-friendly, and aligned with the roadmap I’m building for the next few years.

Love how intentional you were about choosing projects that not only make themselves accessible to new contributors, but ones that align with your long term goals as well! ✨

[mso-docs]

I forked, watched, and starred the First Contributions repo!

This project stood out to me because it is a list of open source projects. I am excited to learn more about open source projects and how I can start contributing more.

[ghostinhershell]

Hey @mso-docs!

I'm a big fan of first-contributions. Have you gotten a chance to click around and explore their repo (take a look at the issues that have been created, pull requests, etc)?

[mso-docs]

Hey, @ghostinhershell !

Thanks for the tip-- I just did what you suggested and it looks like people are constantly requesting/contributing features. This is definitely something I'm interested in doing. Thanks so much for teaching me about it! 😃

[ghostinhershell]

No problem @mso-docs!

The goal of this campaign is for it to be a step by step journey to help you go from “just signed up” to “just contributed”. And once you get your first contribution under your belt it's a matter of consistency from there. Continue to click around different repos and be curious! And follow along with this series, by the end you should have your first contribution under your belt.

Happy coding! 🍀

[r0b14]

I liked the reference @mso-docs provided. It even influenced me to choose it.

[mso-docs]

@r0b14 Thanks! I hope it helped! 👍

[DhruvJohri]

Completed 🌟

[ghostinhershell]

Thanks so much for participating @DhruvJohri! ⭐

[ghostinhershell]

Day 4 is here!
Today’s post is all about writing your first README and getting familiar with Markdown — a simple way to format text and tell your story on GitHub.

Whether you're creating a profile README or starting a project from scratch, this is your chance to practice using your voice to describe what you're learning, building, or curious about.

✨ Check it out here: DAY 4: Tell Your Story – Write a README Using Markdown 📝

Can't wait to see what you create!!!

[RiteshKushwaha01]

I use this all steps and MARKDOWN my README.
Github link: https://github.com/RiteshKushwaha01/

[r0b14]

I've starred in some projects that I believe make sense for both what I want to study academically and what I already do professionally.

During the study and selection process, I was inspired by some references made by my course friends.

• First Contributions - I took a friend's comment into consideration. I read it and found it impressive.
• Ferramentas Frontend - checking the repositories in the community and seeing my need, I saw that starring this repository would be a good idea.
• Vehicular Networks - The choice was made for reasons that I aim to pursue professional research in this area.

I hope I can directly contribute to the evolution of my colleagues and the growth of the repository.

[ghostinhershell]

These are great projects to start with! ⭐

[Kurai1369]

For future study:
https://github.com/topics/nodejs

Interesting repositories:
https://github.com/HarryHighPants/esp32-git-contributions-epd - I would like to make something like this with my own hands :)
https://github.com/sanaysarthak/git-laugh-track - for variety and to lift your spirits while studying and coding)))