I'm writing here for first time so please excuse for any typo mistakes and all suggestions and feedbacks are appreciated 😇.
Maintaining good github profile has become essential thing in our dev community since it lets people know about your coding interests and projects your are working, more than it has started working like resume. And all of us are taking good care of pushing our small, big projects to github. While creating repository also we are asked whether to create a README for that repository many of us even go ahead without creating one. In this blog I'm writing about README file, its importance and how to maintain it in proper way.
This README file is like a brand ambassador and advertisement for your project or that repository. so your README should be able to do mainly two things:
- catch the visitor's attention so that he/she get intrested towards the project.
- it should give briefing about project.
So first let's talk about making it catchy for eyes💫. Add some banner kind of image with title of your project it should be like a cover page for your repository just like you have it in your social media accounts which grabs user attention.
Then I'll suggest you to add badges which will reflect status/state of project at a glance. commonly used badges like license, build, whether it is open for PR , last update date. For adding and creating shields you can refer shield.io.
Then goes the main content i.e. briefing about project. You must cover below point:
- Purpose/goal of the project.
- How to use the project try to add demo in the form of video or images so that visitor can understand easily.
- Whether project is open for open source contribution, if any rules for raising PRs, issues likewise. -You can also enlist issues or feature which you want visitor to contribute to, basically describe contribution guide.
Above image is an illustration of what I'm trying to suggest to follow. hope it helps😊.