Heads up: @nickytonline and I are kicking off Hacktoberfest with a celebration on the DEV Community Twitch stream TODAY! Join us at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET/ 4 PM UTC here

The worldwide celebration of open source projects and contributions is back – and for the eighth year in a row, it’s hosted by our friends over at @DigitalOcean.

We’re excited to follow your journey from Friday, October 1 through Sunday, October 31, 2021 right here on DEV. But before we share exactly how you can participate in the DEV Hacktoberfest celebration in 2021, please let us know if you plan to participate by leaving a comment in this thread. If you’re an open source project maintainer seeking contributions for Hacktoberfest this year, the community would love to hear all about your project here.

Let's talk about how you can participate in Hacktoberfest 2021…

1. Review Open Source Etiquette Guidelines

To ensure you’re making valuable contributions to open source projects this month, we encourage you to check out this open source etiquette guide from last year that will help inform you before making your pull requests. It always helps to review this information – even if you’ve contributed to open source projects before 😊

Hacktoberfest Etiquette for Contributors

Christina Gorton for The DEV Team ・ Oct 1 '20

#hacktoberfest #opensource

2. Sign Up

• Sign up for Hacktoberfest 2021 to participate

3. Make 4 Hacktoberfest Pull Requests

• Make at least four pull requests (PRs) by October 31 in any participating GitHub-hosted repository/project
• Your PRs will count toward your participation if they are in a repo with the hacktoberfest topic and once they have been merged, approved by a maintainer, or labeled as hacktoberfest-accepted.
• Maintainers can opt-in to participate by classifying their projects with the hacktoberfest topic (find a list of opted-in projects here )
• Any PR with the hacktoberfest-accepted label, submitted to any public GitHub repository, with or without the hacktoberfest topic, will be considered valid.

3. Earn Cool Prizes, Plant Trees

By participating in Hacktoberfest 2021, you'll gain more open source experience and get the chance to earn some Hacktoberfest prizes. For the second year in a row, DigitalOcean is offering an alternative to their traditional Hacktoberfest t-shirt prize: a plant-a-tree alternative! While those Hacktoberfest t-shirts are coveted and amazing, it always feels good to help the planet and reduce waste 🌲

4. Share your Hacktoberfest 2021 Story on DEV

We encourage all participants of Hacktoberfest to share their journeys with us on DEV by using the #hacktoberfest tag. Why? The community always benefits from reading stories about other open source contributions so they can improve their own participation in the ecosystem. Oh, and we’ll also be offering anyone who shares a #hacktoberfest post on DEV (who is also a registered Hacktoberfest participant) a limited edition Hacktoberfest 2021 profile badge. To receive your badge at the end of the month, just keep your eyes out for a post by @thepracticaldev where you'll submit your email and a bit of information about your participation. Don’t miss these badges – once Hacktoberfest 2021 is over, we’ll never be awarding them again. If you'd like a badge on your CodeNewbie Community profile, too, just cross-post your DEV article there this month.

Be sure to follow the tag, as the DEV/Forem team will be publishing our own helpful Hacktoberfest content all month long!

Not sure about what kind of Hacktoberfest post you should share with us? Click here for a Hacktoberfest post template where you can choose between a few ideas — or write your own Hacktoberfest post from scratch.

We can't wait to read your Hacktoberfest story ❤️

5. Join DEV/Forem on Twitch

Throughout the month, @nickytonline and I will be livestreaming about Hacktoberfest! Follow us on Twitch at twitch.tv/thepracticaldev to be notified when a stream begins. 👾

Join us for the first Hacktoberfest stream today at 9 AM PT/12 PM ET/ 4 PM UTC on Twitch

6. Share your Hacktoberfest progress, discuss, and get help

• Ask a question about Hacktoberfest by using the tags #hacktoberfest and #help (– hint: use this template if you’ve never published a help thread on DEV. Don’t forget to include the #hacktoberfest tag, too!)
• Discuss your Hacktoberfest journey in this thread
• Tell us when you've completed all PRs in this thread

7. Contribute to Forem!

For the second year in a row, Forem (the open source software that powers DEV) is actively seeking Hacktoberfest contributions! We would be honored to be amongst your four PRs this month.

>> Check out all the Hacktoberfest-eligible bugs in the Forem codebase

We hope you have a blast contributing to/celebrating open source this month. Tell us all about it here on DEV when you get the chance!

Happy Hacktoberfest 2021 🎃