Pro way of making a GitHub Profile views-counter

Table of Contents

• Step 1: Create Bitly Link
• Step 2: Embed to your GitHub Profile
• Bonus: Show GitHub Profile Views badge
• How it works
  • How a Bitly link count profile views?
  • How the badge is generated?

You might want to see how many times your GitHub profile has been viewed. It reflects your popularity on GitHub.

There are many tools for similar purposes on GitHub, but here, we are using Bitly link.

Before starting, you will need to create a Profile README. GitHub Docs has nice documentation on it.

Step 1: Create Bitly Link

• Go to https://bitly.com/, if you don't have a Bitly account, create one. And if you have one, just log in.

• Click Create.

• In the ENTER LONG URL box, type https://example.com/.

• Leave all other fields default and click Create.

• Enter any name you'd like for your link in the TITLE box. For me, it is Profile Views.

• Then, click the Copy button to copy your Bitly link.
  After that, click Save.

Now, you've got your Bitly link set up!

Step 2: Embed to your GitHub Profile

• Head over to your GitHub profile repository.

• Put ![]([your-bitly-link]) at the end of the README file. For example: ![](https:/bit.ly/abcd123). Don't panic if you forgot your Bitly link, just head back to bitly.com and you can copy it again there.

• Click Commit changes.

Now your GitHub Profile Counter is done!
You can check how many people land on your profile at bitly.com.

Bonus: Show GitHub Profile Views badge

You may notice my GitHub Profile has a GitHub Profile Views badge.

Here is how to create it.

• First, back to https://bitly.com.

• Launch Developer Tools by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I

• Go to the Network tab.

• Press Ctrl+R to refresh the tab.

• From a list of network requests, find a line named clicks.

• Right-click at that line, click Copy, and Copy as cURL.

• Now back to your GitHub profile repository

• Go to Settings -> Secrets -> Actions

• Click New repository secret.

• Fill PROFILE_VIEWS in the Name field and paste the cURL command in the Value field. Then, click Add secret.

• Create a file .github/workflows/update-profile-views.yml in your GitHub profile repository.

• Copy these lines to the file.
  

name: Update Profile Views

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '*/5  * * * *'
  workflow_dispatch:
  push: {branches: ["main"]}

env:
  COLOR: 00ff00

jobs:
  update-profile-views:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Update Profile Views
        run: |
          VIEWS="$(${{ secrets.PROFILE_VIEWS }} 2>/dev/null | jq | grep -B 2 '"hash": "YOUR_HASH"' | head -n 1 | grep -o "[1234567890]*")"          
          echo '<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" width="214" height="20" role="img" aria-label="${{ github.actor }}&apos;s GitHub Profile Views: 259"><title>${{ github.actor }}&apos;s GitHub Profile Views: 259</title><linearGradient id="s" x2="0" y2="100%"><stop offset="0" stop-color="#bbb" stop-opacity=".1"/><stop offset="1" stop-opacity=".1"/></linearGradient><clipPath id="r"><rect width="214" height="20" rx="3" fill="#${{ env.COLOR }}"/></clipPath><g clip-path="url(#r)"><rect width="183" height="20" fill="#000"/><rect x="183" width="31" height="20" fill="#4c1"/><rect width="214" height="20" fill="url(#s)"/></g><g fill="#${{ env.COLOR }}" text-anchor="middle" font-family="Verdana,Geneva,DejaVu Sans,sans-serif" text-rendering="geometricPrecision" font-size="110"><text aria-hidden="true" x="925" y="150" fill="#010101" fill-opacity=".3" transform="scale(.1)" textLength="1730">${{ github.actor }}&apos;s GitHub Profile Views</text><text x="925" y="140" transform="scale(.1)" fill="#${{ env.COLOR }}" textLength="1730">${{ github.actor }}&apos;s GitHub Profile Views</text><text aria-hidden="true" x="1975" y="150" fill="#${{ env.COLOR }}" fill-opacity=".3" transform="scale(.1)" textLength="210">259</text><text x="1975" y="140" transform="scale(.1)" fill="#000" textLength="210">259</text></g></svg>' | sed "s/259/$VIEWS/g" > profile-views.svg
          git config user.email "41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com"
          git config user.name "github-actions[bot]"
          git pull
          git add -A
          git diff-index --quiet HEAD || git commit -m "Update profile views to ${VIEWS}"
          git push          

• Replace YOUR_HASH with your Bitly link hash (the text after bit.ly/ in your Bitly link).
  You can also customize the color by replacing 00ff00 with the HEX code of the color you want

• Click Commit new file.

• Place this line of code anywhere in the file you'd like to show the badge. Replace [your-github-username] with your GitHub username.
  

[<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/[your-github-username]/[your-github-username]/main/profile-views.svg" height="50"/>](https://github.com/[your-github-username])

• Click Commit changes to save your changes.

Well done! You should see a beautiful badge in your GitHub profile!

How it works

How a Bitly link count profile views?

The principle is very simple.

We made the link in a img tag. Hence, everytime when users loads your profile page, GitHub will requests to the link.
Although actually it is not an image, the request is still recorded in the Bitly server.

How the badge is generated?

As of the Profile Views badge, we just created a GitHub workflow to automatically update our profile views from Bitly and create a SVG image in the profile repository root every five minutes (it is not exactly five minutes, it runs about 2 to 3 times each hour).

We embed the image in our profile README.

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