DAY 6: Your First Commit — Save Your Progress, Share Your Work 💾

[ghostinhershell]

Welcome to Day 6 of 7 Days of GitHub — your hands-on path from “just signed up” to “just contributed”.

Today’s a big milestone: you’ll make your very first commit. This is a foundational step in your journey from learner to contributor.

✅ Goal of the Day:

Learn how to edit a file in a GitHub repository and commit your changes.

🧠 What You Should Know

Commits are how developers track progress, explain changes, and collaborate. Each commit creates a snapshot of a file at a moment in time.

Over time, commits help tell the story of a project — what changed, when, and why.

If Issues are about talking about work, commits are about doing the work.

And your first commit? That’s a huge step. It means you’ve gone from observing to contributing. From reading to writing.

🧑‍💻 Real-World Example: Why Commits Matter

Let’s say you notice a typo in a project’s README. Instead of just opening an issue, you want to go one step further and fix it yourself.

By clicking "Edit", making the change, and submitting it, you’re helping improve the project directly.

This is what open source is all about!

🛠️ Hands-On Challenge:

Step 1: Fork a Repo to Practice

If you don’t already have a test repo, here’s one you can use:
👉 https://github.com/firstcontributions/first-contributions

Click Fork (top right) to make your own copy.

Step 2: Navigate to a File You Want to Edit

• In your forked repo, click into the README.md or any .md file. If you forked the first-contributions repo, you can add your name to Contributors.md
• Click the pencil icon ✏️ in the top right of the file to open the editor.

Step 3: Make a Small Change

• Add a sentence to say you're learning GitHub
• Fix a typo, reword a sentence, or add a fun fact

For example:

_This is part of my 7 Days of GitHub learning journey!_

Step 4: Write a Commit Message
Below the file editor, you’ll see a field for a commit message. Keep it short and clear.

Step 5: Commit Your Changes

Select "Commit directly to the main branch"
Then click Commit changes

🎉 Just like that, you've made your first commit!

💬 Community Prompt:

What did you change or add in your commit today? Drop a link to your fork or commit below — we’d love to see it!

🔗 Want to Go Deeper?

• Making changes in a file
• Contributing to Open Source Can Change Your Life - Here’s How to Do It
• First Contributions Interactive Guide

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🔥 One more day to go! Tomorrow, you’ll take everything you’ve learned and use it to either start your own project or contribute to someone else’s.

You’re so close — and we’re cheering for you all the way!

[mso-docs]

Today's Commit

For today's challenge, I made some big changes to a personal documentation project I'm working on!

What I Changed

I did some pull requests to...

• Add a directory from my computer to GitHub.
• Add a README file to the GitHub repo.
• Fix an outdated sitemap.

What I Learned

I had fun working on this project!

I feel excited to contribute more to existing GitHub projects. I'm on the lookout for projects in need of documentation!

Thanks again for another great post-- this whole course has been so helpful and I really appreciate it! 😄

[ghostinhershell]

You made it to Day 7 of 7 Days of GitHub — congratulations!!! 🎉

Let’s wrap it up with one of the most rewarding parts of being on GitHub: starting your own project or contributing to one you care about.
Check out the final post: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/168615

Proud of how far you’ve come! 😄

[DhruvJohri]

Done @ghostinhershell

[DhruvJohri]

Thank you for this amazing experience

[ghostinhershell]

Thank you (again) for participating! 🙌🏾

[angeloLib]

✅ Done! I’ve added my name as a contributor!