How to create an impressive GitHub profile README

🗓️ 21 August 2020
🍿 3 mins read time
🏷️ Tags: Web

Introduction

Recently, GitHub introduced a new secret feature on their platform, which is about having a fully customizable profile page. Usually, when you create your account on GitHub, you are given the opportunity to write a small biography (shown right under your avatar), some contact information and that’s it. Now, instead, you can enrich your profile page to make it unique and appealing. Let’s see how it’s done.

The how

In order to have the ability of editing your personal GitHub page, head over to the Repositories tab and click on the New green button. Now, make sure to write your full username, case included, in the Repository name field.

If you correctly followed the instructions, a green banner should appear directly under the Repository name textbox, reporting the following:

You found a secret! <username>/<username> is a ✨special ✨ repository that you can use to add a README.md to your GitHub profile. Make sure it’s public and initialize it with a README to get started.

Now you just need to click on the Public radio button (which should be selected by default) and on the Initialize this repository with a README checkbox. Finally, click on the green Create repository button and you are done.

The what & the who

Write your first GitHub profile README

Once this special repository is created, head over to it (at the link https://github.com/<username>/<username>) and open the README.md file in edit mode. You should see some default sentences, inserted by GitHub to give you some inspiration, like the following:

### Hi there 👋

<!--
**<username>/<username>** is a ✨_special_ ✨ repository because it's README (this file) appears on your GitHub profile.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

- 🔭 I'm currently working on ...
- 🌱 I'm currently learning ...
- 👯 I'm looking to collaborate on ...
- 🤔 I'm looking for help with ...
- 💬 Ask me about ...
- 📫 How to reach me: ...
- 😄 Pronouns: ...
- ⚡ Fun fact: ...
-->

You can edit this pre-defined template and talk a little bit about yourself, your hobbies and your current projects. You just have to be creative.

In case you’re missing some creativity, as I personally do, you can take some ideas from well-estabilished GitHub profile READMEs. For example, you could look at the ones featured in the awesome-github-profile-readme repo, or you could simply look at the profile-readme topic on GitHub.

Add awesome plugins

The great thing about this personal page is that you can enhance its README by leveraging the tools and the utilities that GitHub and its community are giving you for free. One example of such great things is that you can use plugins and custom workflows to showcase some amazing content. My personal favorites are the following:

Other good ones:

Conclusion

As I already said, with this new tool you really have the power to show your creativity and present your work in a fancy way. If you are not satisfied with the currently available plugins, you can always build one on your own and share it with the community. Remember that the presented feature is a new one and I’m sure that, with time, more and more cool Github profile README modules will appear online.

In case you are interested, you can also check what plugins and addons I’m using by visiting my GitHub profile.