I learnt about GitHub profiles a few weeks ago when the someone I was collaborating with on some project showed me some amazing github profiles he had seen.A profile with stars, trophies makes one seem like and expert of some sort. Most of us just have pinned repositories and our bios as our profiles. I did not care much about the profile customization feature until recently while linking my GitHub in an article, I remembered the feature. I decided to make a profile that is more welcoming and a place where people can get information about me when they visit my GitHub. In this blog post, I will be taking you through how to create a stunning gitHub profile.

What Is Github Profile

A github profile is like your landing page. It is a place you can add information that you think is important for example projects worked on, your interests and picture etc.even though sometimes people tend to go straight to repositories, if they find the code interesting they will check out your profile. A profile can be your opportunity to showcase what you do. The ability to create a customized github profile is a feature that was introduced last year and most people don’t know about it. Let us go through the steps of creating it.

Create A Readme File

Create a repository with the same name as your username for example my username is pronapro and the repository I created was pronapro. If you have a repository with this name already dont worry all you have to do is change it to another name. While creating the repository initialize it with a readme file and make its visibility public. Add some content in your read me file.

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The read me file is initialized with some starter code. Thats all you have to do. You now have a profile.Github will display your profile Readme on your profile page.

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How To Customize Your Readme

We don’t want our profile to only have Hi, we want it to represent us. To do this we edit out Readme file. Readme file uses markdown a lightweight markup language which is easy to learn.I am sure most of you have used markdown to to document your code. If you know markdown feel free to skip this section.

Let us look at the components you are likely to us to customize your profile for example headings, lists, links, images, fonts etc. The great thing about the github readme file is that you can also use html tags. It is better to stick to one language for clarity and readability but if a functionality you want is easier for you in html then use it.

Headings

Headings are important because they help section the content. They also help indicate what is a section hence making the content look organized etc. If you are going to write alot content then headings should be utilized. We use # to create headings

# heading one
## heading two
##### heading five

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Lists If you have things to list like your accomplishments, to do list, articles etc then lists come in handy. This is how we write lists

Unorderded list
*  Item one
*  Item two 
*  Item three

This is displayed as

  • Item one
  • Item two
  • Item three
Ordered list
1.  Item one 
2. Item two
3. Item three

This is displayed as

  1. Item one 
  2. Item two
  3. Item three Items can also be nested

Use Links if have other things somewhere on other platforms you want to share, if you want to share your social media accounts or link people to your youtube channel. Links are the best way to do this. Links are written as placeholder For example

[Napro Dev](https://napro.dev/)

This displays Napro Dev

Images/Visuals

Images bring life to a profile. To add images, gif and other media use html tag. You can add other attributes like alignment, size etc according to your idea profile.

<img align ="right" src= “path to image”>

Adding Statistics

You can also add statistics to your readme for people to see you activities like commits you made, number of followers, pull requests etc.There is code already written so all you have to do is add your username and the stats will be dynamically generated, you won’t have to bother about updating.

Add Language Stat

[![Top Langs](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs/?username=yourusername&text_color=daf7dc&bg_color=151515)](https://github.com/yourusername/github-readme-stats)

Add Github Stats

![user's GitHub stats](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api?username=yourusername&show_icons=true&theme=radical)

Add Trophies

<img src="https://github-profile-trophy.vercel.app/?username=yourusername&theme=darkhub&no-frame=true&margin-w=30" /

The stats have themes I used the dark themes but added links to help you pick a theme you want.

Things To Keep In Mind

  • This is a great feature you might been forced to add alot of things but please do not clutter. Its a profile, keep it simple.
  • Choose your colors and fonts and images well. You do not want to have the worst github profile
  • Look for inspiration from other profiles and see what you want.
  • Have a rough idea of how you want your profile to appear and work with that so that you are not forced to add everything you see.
  • Last but not leasst , do not stress, do something simple and do continous interations to improve it.
  • There are also tools you can use to generate your profile readme if you dont have time.

    Conclusion

    We have looked at how to create stunning profiles.With the basic things like lists, images, links I think you are in position to create a stunning profile. Now go experiment. I hope to see what you create. You can also use mine for inspiration. I will link below plus other profiles you can use for inspiration. Thanks for reading , I hope to see you in my next post.