DPS909 & OSD600 Fall 2019 - Lab 1

Start blogging

Due Date

Friday Sept 6 before midnight. NOTE: due to the shorter week, I'll allow you to hand this in until Monday Sept 9.

Requirements

This lab will introduce you to blogging, the CDOT wiki, GitHub and its Trending repositories. Here is a checklist of what needs to be done (see below for more details):

• Create a Blog account
• Create a CDOT wiki account
• Add your Blog's RSS Feed URL to the CDOT Wiki's Planet Feed List
• Create a GitHub account
• Research a repository on GitHub's Trending list
• Fork the repo into your own GitHub account
• Write a short post introducing the project
• Add your Name, Fork and Blog post URLs to the table at the end of this lab

Blogging and Open Source

The "open" in "Open Source" means more than just that the code is available. Real open source is open in terms of its process, too: open source is about working in the open. A big part of working in the open is writing about that work, teaching one another things we discover as we go, and helping to draw attention to important ideas. Writing is a major part of open source, and we'll use our blogs to write, discuss, debate, announce, plan, and learn.

Open source also values writing like this for the historical perspective it gives. Long after project or code decisions are made, we often need and want to go back and understand why things happened as they did. Blogging contributes to the historical record.

Finally, blogging provides a way to capture our hard work and contributions. When students are applying for jobs, it's helpful to have something they can point to, in order to showcase their previous work. By keeping a blog now, you help build a record of your abilities, experience, and contributions.

Having your own blog will enable you to more easily join the global open source community. A blog gives you a voice, which you can use when and how you want.

You will be required to keep a weekly blog for the duration of the course. We'll use this blog to share what we're learning, discuss open source, submit our labs and releases, etc.

In this lab you will create, configure, and use your blog for the first time.

Pick a Blogging Platform

You can use any blogging platform or software you want, as long as it supports RSS/atom feeds. If you already have a blog, you're free to use it (skip to the next section). If you don't, there are a number of free, popular blogging platforms you can use:

• Blogger
• Medium
• Wordpress

Take a look at the different options and choose one you like. Create an account for yourself.

Create a GitHub Account

We will be using git and GitHub for all of our development work, and you need a personal account. If you already have an account, you can use that. If not, you should create one now.

Give some thought to your username, since you might have it for a long, long time. Also, spend some time customizing your GitHub profile. You want your GitHub profile to reflect who you are as a developer, since this is something many developers will look at when they first meet you.

Research a Trending repo

GitHub users can star a repo (or developer), and these stars are used to show trends. The GitHub Trending page is an active list of which project repos and developers are getting the most stares.

Take a look at the list of Trending pages:

• Daily Trends
• Weekly Trends
• Monthly Trends

Pick a project that interests you.

Fork the Repo

Open source repos on GitHub can be "copied" by you into your own account. We call this forking a repo.

Fork the repo you chose in the previous step. When you're done, notice the difference between the URL for your forked version, and the original.

Write a Blog Post

Using the research you did above, write a short blog post about the trending repo you researched. Imagine someone is searching Google for this knowledge and finds your post, what would they want to see? Make sure you include information about what the project is, what it does, which language(s) it's written in, and why you found it interesting.

Tag your Post as "Open Source"

Blogging platforms allow you to tag your posts (sometimes called a "category," or a "feed"). This allows you to syndicate (i.e., share) posts you've written on a given topic without also including others (e.g., you might want to write about "Open Source" and "Baseball" in the same blog).

Give your blog post a tag/category/feed (depending on the blog platform you're using) of "Open Source"

Create a CDOT Wiki account

For various aspects of the course, including this lab, you will need to be able to edit this wiki. Make sure you have an account, or request one.

NOTE: your request will need to be processed by the wiki admin, and it might take a day or so.

Add your "Open Source" RSS feed to the CDOT Planet Feed List

We automatically aggregate all the blogs of our students and faculty who are working on open source at Seneca, and publish it to http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/~chris.tyler/planet/ (aka, Planet CDOT). Add your own blog's "Open Source" feed URL by following the instructions at the Planet CDOT Feed List.

Submission

You will have completed your lab when your blog post from Step 5 appears on the CDOT Planet site. I will mark them as they appear there. NOTE: the planet site updates only once per hour, so your post might not show up right away.

Please add a line for your blog in the following table:

Name	Fork (URL)	Blog Post (URL)
Example Name	https://github.com/example/cool-repo	https://examplestudent.wordpress.com/2019/09/05/introducing-cool-repo/