Modify, update or correct a thing

How to contribute to 23 Things, using just this website

Before you do anything, you'll need to fork this repository by clicking on the fork button in the top right. Forking basically creates a copy of this repository in your account. Any changes you make are isolated to your fork, and are reviewed before they are brought into this repository. You will need an account on GitHub to do this.

There are four basic steps that apply every time you want to make an edit:

1. Navigate to your forked copy of the repository
2. Sync your fork with the base repository
3. Follow the seperate instructions to either make a quick edit or make a series of edits
4. team members review then merge the change into the main repository

Sync your fork

If anyone else submits changes then you may need to update the copy of the 23 things in your fork. If you just forked this repository, it's probably up to date, and you can skip this step. But if you're submitting updates over some period of time, you should sync your fork before you get started on edits.

1. navigate to your fork
2. click the Pull requests tab
3. choose New pull request
4. click the link that says switching the base
5. click create new pull request and name it something like sync with base
6. click send pull request
7. click merge pull request and then confirm merge

Make a quick edit

If you have something quick to submit like a new URL or a fixing a typo, it's actually pretty easy to add a quick edit following these steps:

1. navigate to the thing you want to change within your fork (look under _things)
2. click edit
3. make the changes
4. scroll to the bottom
5. add a meaningful commit message (e.g. "update a link in thing 9")
6. Choose "Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request" to inform us of the change
7. name the branch including which thing it applies to (e.g., "update a link in thing 9")
8. click Propose file change

Then we review the changes and merge them into the base repository.

Make a series of edits

If the edits you want to make are more substantial, then follow the steps below. Try to commit every time you complete a change (e.g. "update the introduction", "fix links in challenge me", "replace content in learn more").

To make reviewing easier to manage, please don't go editing multiple files in a single branch (described below). Instead make a branch for each thing/file that you're working on. That way you can work on multiple files at the same time if you like. The exception would be if the change you are making is the same across all files (e.g., a commit like "change the capitalisation on all headings in all things").

1. make sure you are viewing your fork, not the main repository
2. Under the <> Code tab, you will most likely be in the gh-pages branch (if not, switch to this branch)
3. from this branch make a new branch (in the same menu) and give it a meaningful name (e.g., "thing-9-edits")
4. make sure you have switched to this branch (e.g., "thing-9-edits", not "gh-pages")
5. navigate to the thing you want to change within your fork (look under _things)
6. click edit
7. make the changes
8. scroll to the bottom
9. add a meaningful commit message (e.g. "update a link in thing 9")
10. commit directly to the branch you created above (e.g., "thing-9-edits") to save your changes
11. repeat from "make sure you have switched to this branch..." above until you are ready to submit the changes
12. while still in the <> Code tab, click New pull request
13. (if necessary, click "compare across forks")
14. If not already chosen, choose the base repository au-research/ARDC-23-things with branch gh-pages
15. If not already chosen, choose your fork as the head repository with your custom branch (e.g., thing-9-edits)
16. click Create pull request and name it something sensible
17. click send pull request