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Guide to Contributing

Guide to Contributing

Introduction

The MSSA Blog site is split into two main sections:

• My personal blog located at https://mssablog.com, which focuses primarily on opinion-based topics, and
• This open-source site for soft skills and technical resources, hosted as a public Github repository at https://github.com/mssablog/mssablog.github.io.

This doc focuses on contributions to the open-source site in the form of adding resources, fixing bugs, and making improvements to the site itself. For more information on other ways to help out with the MSSA Blog project, check out this page.

What to Contribute

No prior coding experience? No problem! Useful contributions to this repository come in a variety of forms, and range from extremely simple to highly complex depending on your objective.

Ideas for Stuff to Work On

• Add a resource to a page. These simple but highly impactful contributions require little or no coding knowledge, although an understanding of markdown syntax is helpful. Simply choose the page you’d like to add to, and use the pre-existing template as a guide to make your changes and include the resources and links that you’d like to share with other students.

• Help out with known issues and feature requests. Check out the issues list for the mssablog repository. This grab bag of bugs and features is a great place to start if you’re looking for something specific to work on. Choose a work item that matches your ability level and interests, and give it a shot!

• Contribute your own ideas and suggestions! As you’re browsing the site, if you have recommendations for improvements or new features, you can either file a new issue as an opportunity for someone else to gain experience, or feel free to create a new branch and build/fix the feature yourself!

Ready to help out? Read on!

How to Contribute

Note: This section serves as a high-level overview of the expected workflow for the mssablog repository, and is not intended as a full guide to source control or Git. If you need assistance with any of the following steps, instructions for most of these topics can easily be found online. You can also seek guidance from your mentors or other developers, who are usually happy to help!

In order to add to the open source section of the MSSA Blog site, you’ll need the following:

• Basic understanding of source control and contributing to open-source projects
• Github account
• Git tool/client of your choice (such as Git Bash, Github Desktop, or similar
• Depending on the nature of the changes you’re making, some coding knowledge may be required

To make your changes, please use a fork-and-branch workflow, summarized below:

• Fork the repository located at https://github.com/mssablog/mssablog.github.io
• Create a new branch, preferably named using the format users/<your Github username>/<branch name>
• Add your resources or make your code changes
• Create a pull request from your branch into the mssablog master
• Once a repository owner has reviewed and approved your changes, complete your pull request and merge!