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Matheus Justin Hasda
Matheus Justin Hasda

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How I Made My First Open Source Contribution: A Beginner’s Guide

When I first wanted to contribute to open source, I was excited but also overwhelmed — What project should I choose? How do I even start? What are the exact steps?

After some research, I found the perfect beginner-friendly project called First Contributions that guides new contributors through the entire process. It helped me understand the open source workflow and successfully submit my first pull request.

Here’s exactly how I did it, step by step:

Fork the Repository
The first step was to fork the repository. Forking means making a personal copy of the project on my own GitHub account. This allowed me to safely make changes without affecting the original project.

Clone the Forked Repo Locally
Next, I cloned the forked repository to my computer with the command:

https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions.git
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Create a New Branch
Before making changes, I created a new branch to keep my edits separate from the main branch. This is good practice in git workflows:

git checkout -b branch-name
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or

git switch -c branch-name
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Edit the Contributors.md File
Then, I opened the Contributors.md file and

[My Name](https://github.com/username) Hello World! This is my first contribution to open source!
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added my name to the list like this. It felt great to see my name alongside other contributors!

Stage and Commit Changes
After saving the file, I staged and committed my changes:

git add Contributors.md
git commit -m "Add my Name to Contributors list"
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Push the Branch to GitHub
I pushed my branch back to my fork on GitHub:

git push -u origin add-myname
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Create a Pull Request
Finally, I went to my forked repo on GitHub and clicked the Compare & pull request button. I added a short description and submitted the pull request.

What I Learned and Why It Matters
This simple process taught me a lot:

  1. How to use basic git commands and branches
  2. The fork-clone-edit-pull request workflow that powers open source
  3. Gained confidence to contribute to other projects

If you’re new to open source and want to start contributing, I highly recommend trying out the First Contributions project. It’s beginner-friendly and walks you through every step clearly.

If you’ve made your first open source contribution, or have tips to share, please comment below! Let’s help each other grow.

Happy coding! 🚀

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