How to customize your GitHub profile?

Did you know that you can customize your GitHub profile and make it even more appealing? You can insert pictures, personal info, stats and give your personal profile a little touch of personality, rising your portfolio above other devs out there -- and this can make a huge difference when a headhunter looks at it. Curious already? Take a look at a repo that contains a number of examples to inspire yourself.

Also, follow me on GitHub and also Dev.Lawyer's profile so that you can have instant access to all the content I am posting here.

I also present to you guys and girls the video I made on this topic from my YouTube channel, which is where I share some thoughts, tips and projects I am currently working on with other tech-fanatics, whether you are a developer, lawyer or enthusiast. Please also consider subscribing to my channel to not miss future videos and to join our live "coding sessions" and a nice, relaxing tech-related chat -- I promise to keep things interesting. The content is in Portuguese, but you can watch my videos with subtitles (maybe I will switch to English in the future, if this makes sense).

Watch here: https://youtu.be/DyK5oZD612M

All set? Follow me then.

The Markdown¶

Have you ever heard of "Markdown"? 

Markdown is a markup text language that lets you insert formatting elements to a simple text file. In other words, when using markdown you can create a document with relatively complex formatting directly on your notepad, which besides being legible for anyone, it will still be easy to see the "different" elements in the text.

Through only a few markups you will be able to indicate which parts of your text will have a proper formatting. For example, if you want to insert a title row, you can put a "#" in the begining of the line. If you want to make a word bold, just put it between double asterisks such as **this**.

See a markdown example below (from online markdown editor Dillinger):

Why should I use Markdown?¶

If we already have a number of text editors such as MS Word, Pages and LibreOffice, what is exactly the upside of using Markdown? This seems more complicated than the traditional WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get - text editors in which everything typed and formatted reflects the final result) approach and it would have the same goal.

There are some very interesting applications for Markdown:

1. you can use Markdown to take quick notes if you don't have access to a text editing software, so that all your markups are easily spotted afterwards. Also, markdown can be used for almost anything, from websites to documentation, books and e-mails.
2. markdown file format is "universal", which means that you can use the same file in several Markdown applications and it will always have the same format. This also means that markdown compatibility will not be affected by future versions of the software used such as MS Word (.doc and .docx formats);
3. many websites accept Markdown as valid syntax, as GitHub. We will also use markdown in our future content as well :)

How to use Markdown? Basic Syntax¶

You will find many Markdown editors on the Internet, such as StackEdit and Dillinger, which will bring you a side-by-side screen with the markdown and the rendered final result. You can find markdown's basic syntax HERE but, in general, the markups I use the most are the following:

Basic syntax that I use in my texts

Also, note that you can even directly insert HTML code into the markdown file -- many markdown editors work with HTML codes (such as GitHub's).

After creating your document, you can save your it as a .md file and you are done! You can use it anywhere now.

How to create a custom GitHub profile page?¶

Now that we know how to use Markdown syntax, let's finally create our custom GitHub profile page. For that, simply login into GitHub and create a new repository with a name exactly the same as your username. Check the "Add a README file" option and let's make it public.

Creating a new repo with your username. The alert above happens because I have already created mine.

You are yet to create your GitHub profile or do not know how to create a repo? Read here our content on this topic.

Check our video out too:

With your newly created repo, change the README.md file using the markdown syntax and customize it for your needs. See below some ideas on what to do:

• Talk a little bit more about you, your past and current projects and your goals in GitHub and general programming;

• Show stats which can be obtained using other repos such as https://github.com/anuraghazra/github-readme-stats#customization;

• You can also insert dynamic data such as blog posts and your latest YouTube videos using GitHub Actions (automated scripts), as shown in this very interesting repo: https://github.com/gautamkrishnar/blog-post-workflow;

• Let your personallity show up with images, making your profile visually appealing. You can even upload your images in the repository itself, by clicking on "Add file" and"Upload files" (see image below). After that, you can right-click on the uploaded file name to get its url:

Click Add file and Upload files to send your images to your repo

Now that you have your image url, you can insert the image in your README.md file:

![Imagem Header](https://github.com/OctavioSI/OctavioSI/blob/main/header.png)

In case you have any doubts about the steps above (even for the statistics portion), check my profile repo and see what I did there. You can find my profile repo HERE. (EDIT: This repo was backed up to be consistent with this article. If you access my current profile page, there will be many changes due to post changes made).

Well, just get creative and pump your profile beyond all others :)

/* End of the post, see you next time */