How to make your GitHub repos stand out
I often search GitHub for libraries and software I need, or browse to discover something interesting. But sometimes I skip or miss several potentially interesting items.
Why?
Because many repos don't provide any information or metadata. Or they don't stand out and get lost. It's a missed opportunity, especially because a few quick fixes may raise the odds of getting the repos noticed.
What can you do to improve the discoverability of your repositories?
First, provide a README.md file with at least one screenshot or other image, a short description of what the code does, installation and setup instructions, and a handful of usage examples.
Next, upload a preview image that social platforms can use to generate a nice snippet with a thumbnail when sharing a link to the repo.
The image may be the same one in README.md. Nothing fancy, even a screenshot of a terminal window running your code will do. On GitHub, you can upload an image to the repo under Settings > General > Social preview.
Finally, add relevant tags to the repo.
If you set up a social image and someone browses the GitHub listing of the repos matching one of your tags, the repos with a social image will stand out prominently. For example, visit the intel-8080 GitHub tag. You can't miss my suite8080 repo, right? It's Suite8080, a suite of Intel 8080 Assembly cross-development tools I'm writing in Python.
These fixes take a dozen minutes and are well worth a try.
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