So let's start off with proof that this actually works. This is a screenshot of my repo > Insights > Traffic, where I see all the views of my repo, which has just started to blow up with views.
Here is my repo, by the way, if you want to check it out:
MatthewTamYT / LearnPython
Everything you need to know about learning Python is here. This is a catalog that teaches you how to code in Python. In fact, everything you need to know from beginner to intermediate is here. Even experts could learn from this!
5 Steps to Getting Stars
So here are 5 of the most important steps to getting more views on GitHub. Feel free to go through them step by step while modifying your own repo. So let's get started.
1 Repo Content
You might be surprised, but different repo types get very different kind of views. After thorough experimentation, I have found that tutorials on how to code a certain language racks up a lot of views. In fact, mine got 70 stars on the first day it launched without advertising. The second most popular type of repo is one that is not just a game or somewhat, but something that actually makes something better, like IDE plugins, etc. Of course, you could do more experiments on popular repos.
2 README
If you are reading this article, I am assuming that you really want more views and stars on your repo and that you have already gone through other articles about a pretty README. I hate to break it to you, but it's true. Spend time on your README! Make sure you get a good logo in black and white for your README. Then maybe add a GIF right below it, followed by some Shields.io. If you need a tutorial on Shields, I recommend this video. The best example for this is my repo on Breakout.
3 Social Card
The Social Card is the first image people see when clicking into a sharable link of your repo. People could see that it looks good and star it anyways. The truth is, many people star because it looks nice and appealing, not because it is useful. Spend some time on appearance and you may get crazy results. If you want to know more about how you should create a logo, watch this YouTube video I made, and please subscribe if you like it.
4 Advertisement
I have found out that Reddit, contrary to public belief, does not actually work a charm. However, posting to Dev.to (this website) actually got me thousands of views a day. Hacker news does not work too good either. Of course, this varies project to project, I am just trying to tell you what happened to my repo.
Here is what I posted to Dev.to:
The Best Way to Learn Python (Beginners-Friendly)!
Matthew Tam ・ Jul 25 '21 ・ 1 min read
5 Community Bits and Bobs
Go to the Insights tab, click Community, and finish all the tasks there. GitHub is more likely to promote your project if you meet community guidelines. This is a very quick step, but very effective.
Bonus 1: Stargazers
This is a project where you can display the names of your stars in a beautiful yet informative way. Huge thanks to NastyOx for this project: https://github.com/nastyox/Repo-Roster
Bonus 2: Unlicense
People don't like it when you tell them what they can and can't do. That's why you should choose the Unlicense License, so people are free to copy or reproduce your product.
Bonus 3: Comment
You can comment down below and give your repo name, and what it does, I will check it out, I promise.
Top comments (20)
Hey Matthew, this article is really helpful. It made me surprised that Reddit didn't do well on advertising GitHub repos (I was about to make a post on Reddit).
Anyway, recently I have been working on an app called Raise, a simple GitHub Trending client that lives in your menubar. It's built on Electron and supports macOS and Windows.
Check it out here: github.com/meetyan/raise. Thanks!
Hey there. This was actually really really useful. Really interesting idea and I've never seen anything like this before. Genuinely really surprised. Good job!
Thanks for the kind words!
Hi. This was nice. I’m hoping to try these methods myself as I am trying to develop and maintain a fork of faker (repo deleted now), called blaver. Check it out here: github.com/luciferreeves/blaver. Hoping to have a star from you too 😅
Sorry for the late reply Conrad. You earnt a star. Well done!
github.com/developervijay7/laravel...
laravel-quickstart.co
Laravel Quickstart is a boilerplate for Laravel Application with typical packages preinstalled and configured to extend a full-fledged ap
plication. We tried to make it as minimal as possible.
Nice program to save time. Very practical and useful project. Nice!
Simple yet useful. It could be because little people could reach this project. I would suggest you use the stargazers tip, and maybe advertise on Dev.to. Your project works great, just missing the advertisement bit. It could also be because you use the programming language that is not very popular. I suggest CSS, Python, or Java. They rack a lot of views compared to Pascal. Maybe also consider doing a version for Windows and MacOs, because most people have those rather than Linux. Great work. You earnt yourself a star!
Hi there! I'd like to introduce the Debugger. It helps you to receive logs, dump outputs from your application and display them in a readable way. It is fully opensource.Debugger is a beautiful, lightweight web server built on Laravel and VueJs that helps debugging your app. It runs without installation on multiple platforms via docker and supports symfony var-dumper, monolog, sentry, smtp and spatie ray package. Github repo github.com/debugger-server/debugge...
I need your feedback and stars :)
Hi there, I really like what you have done on the README, and it is looking absolutely beautiful. Thank you for taking your time to comment, I really means a lot to me.
One piece of advice I would give to you is to organise your folders a little better. A lesser-experienced programmer might struggle to see all your files and find the right piece.
Great work. You deserve that star. (PS. I see that you already have quite some stars already, so congratulations!)
Sorry for the late reply, by the way. Happy New Year!
This article definitely seems to be based on my 9 Steps to Get 100 Stars on GitHub article. You title it similarly, start off the same way, itemize your list similarly, use the term "social card," and finish off with a "bonus" encouraging people to comment their own repos just like I did.
I appreciate the shoutout for my Repo Roster project, but you should probably credit the article I wrote that you're basing this on as well. Loved the additional insights you were able to provide here that were supplemental to what my article covered!
cypress-boilerplate
Quickly generate new projects, and start coding immediately with an already pre-configured project. While using this boilerplate you and your team can focus more on coding, and less wory about configuration. This boilerplate is full of useful plugins already configured, and much more! Good luck!
Nice, I hadn't noticed the community page for some reason! Stargazers is great.
js-coroutines GitHub Page
Yes, it is! It just shows you all the people who star your project so simply and beatifully. They incentive stars because people know they themselves get a promotion.
Your GitHub project is very useful, so that would get a lot of stars whether you tried my ways or not! Great work!
Nice, simple, useful article
Thank you for taking your time to comment. It really means a lot to me, since I am quite a small contributor. To see people actually read and appreciate my hard work is just so pleasing. Thank you!
It was a useful article. I have a repo called panix.js which is something like react without jsx . It is lightweight and fast :
Panix.js
I love the gif at the start. It just grabs your attention with the animations. Appreciate the effort. Great job! Earnt yourself a star!