7 Innovative GitHub personal readmes'
7 of the most creative uses of GitHubs new personal readmes' feature.
In May, GitHub quietly released a new feature allowing users to create and display a 'personal readme' on the front of their profiles, quickly becoming a cool new way for users to introduce and express themselves on the site. Naturally, being a website full of makers, devs and hackers, some users found creative ways to exploit the feature. Here are 7 of the most creative personal readmes’ I've seen so far.
Community Chess | Tim Burgan
In 1960 Bobby Fisher played 50 games of chess simultaneously. In 2020, Tim Burgan played against all of GitHub.
The repo is a chessboard and anyone is free to make the next move, opening an issue stating which piece to move next. The whole process is automated using GitHub Actions to take the autogenerated issue and update the board. The action will also generate a list of possible moves for the next player and generate the next set of possible issues.
Once a game finishes a new one starts, so click the link above and place a few moves yourself!
timburgan
Skill Endorsements | Josh Manders
As more job applications and recruiters ask for GitHub usernames, for prospective jobseekers your GitHub profile can be more important than LinkedIn or even your resume these days - which @joshmanders is more than prepped for, adding community based skill endorsements.
The readme allows anyone to endorse a skill currently listed or to endorse a new skill by opening an issue.
Old School Hit-counter and Guestbook | Marcel Pociot
Remember that quirky fan page you made on Geocities/Freewebs/Piczo etc back in high school? Marcel Pociot has resurrected the old charm of those sites by adding a hit counter and guestbook to his personal readme.
The guestbook is a discussion thread for a gif image and the hit counter is live (refresh the page for proof!). Props to Pociot for going web 1.0 in his readme, no doubt you'll be filled with nostalgia when you visit the repo too.
Auto-Updating Tweets | Zhi Yang
Zhi Yang built an automated workflow that takes her latest tweet and displays it at the bottom of her readme based on GitHub actions. The workflow checks runs every 40 minutes and if a new tweet has been posted grabs a screenshot of it and updates the repo.
Automated YouTube and Instagram | Miguel Ángel Durán
Similar to @zhiiyang's readme above, Durán uses GitHub actions to automatically pull his latest YouTube Videos and Instagram posts, displaying the most recent posts, alongside his latest blog posts. Each video, post and article can be clicked, too - making readmes' a great way to promote your social media and your work outside of GitHub in a more creative way than one singular link in your bio.
midudev
Something Fun | Sindre Sorhus
Presented without comment 😉.
Awesome gif Header | Ari-hacks
This clean readme file reads like an animated business card, with links to her twitter and dev.to profile, and an animated gif under her introduction, Ari's readme is by far one of the most interesting minimalistic readmes' I've seen so far.
These are some of the most interesting readmes' so far, I'm excited to see what other creative ideas users can build with this feature as it gets more popular.
If you have found some interesting examples not mentioned above, drop me and email or share it with me on twitter!
Header Image by Richy Great on Unsplash.