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nastyox
nastyox

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1 Step to Incentivize Stars and Forks on GitHub

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As developers, we put a lot of work into our GitHub repos to make them as useful as possible for others, but great projects sometimes go under-appreciated, and under-starred. Asking for stars is tacky, but publicly thanking your supporters by name in your README file is a sign of appreciation that happens to incentivize more users to join the crowd. And implementation is just a copy and paste from my Repo Roster project. Wouldn't it be worth a click to you to see if your profile went live on a repo's README?

What does it look like?

I like to use rosters as the footer of my README. Here's an example from my Rando.js repo:
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How do I implement it?

You can copy the markdown from my Repo Roster repo and fill in your username/repo data manually, or you can visit the Repo Roster website, paste in a link to your personal repo, and copy the resulting markdown. Then, just paste that wherever you want it to appear in your README. That's all there is to it! From then on, data about your supporters will automatically update right in your README.md file.

Oldest comments (17)

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rowemore profile image
Rowe Morehouse

Awesome. That's clever. "Social Proof" always helps when you are trying to achieve a people goal.

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bretgeek profile image
bretgeek

Awesome! Added to github.com/bretgeek/yumjs

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000

Are you going to open source the frontend and/or the backend?

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nastyox1 profile image
nastyox • Edited

I just published the backend on the repo and added an "UNLICENSE" license so everyone's free to host it themselves if so desired.

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shadowtime2000 profile image
shadowtime2000

Are you going to open source the frontend? It is probably really simple that anyone could implement but there are somethings I want to contribute to it.

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nastyox1 profile image
nastyox

You mean the website? I don't really consider that the point of the project, so I probably wont put it on GitHub, but frontend stuff is always accessible through the browser. Feel free to grab it and message me your suggestions on here. I'll be happy to take a look!

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mrcartoonster profile image
Evan E. Baird

Whoa! Could you make one for sponsors?

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nastyox1 profile image
nastyox • Edited

Glad you like it! I think contributors, watchers, and followers would be the easiest to add. I see what you're talking about with sponsors here. I do not see sponsors in GitHub's API, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, just potentially less reliable. As I develop the project, I'll include this as a feature. Just make sure you're watching the project or doing whatever you prefer to keep up with it so you don't miss out

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atapas profile image
Tapas Adhikary

Thanks, this is very cool. I have used it now for most of my git projects and it looks awesome.

Given a star for your project, it deserves all the stars :)..

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nikhilmwarrier profile image
nikhilmwarrier

Exactly... Me too

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

This is really well done. Definitely considering it for Forem 😄

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nastyox1 profile image
nastyox • Edited

Thanks! I wanted it to be right at the initial release, so I spent extra time developing it up front. Your support on my articles and projects here has been very cool. I'll keep an eye on Forem :)

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ambitiont109 profile image
Muramoto Hideyosi

Hello
Can we talk about the online business?

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nastyox1 profile image
nastyox

hey, feel free to send me a direct message on here. i check them regularly

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ambitiont109 profile image
Muramoto Hideyosi

I don't know how to send a direct message

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nastyox1 profile image
nastyox • Edited

You can message me @nastyox1 on twitter, or you can reply to the email I sent to the address listed on your profile.

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Sandeep

Very cool 👏