So you have heard about Github Profile README (It's a new feature github added recently, you might wanna google it if you don't know what I am talking about). I have come across couple of posts and articles on how to create a great README for github profile. They are great at explaning how markdown works and also in making a great profile. But is this only the way to use it? I mean there already are many platforms for your profile (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and many more) right? Of course these platform might not seem as much for techies as github is, But you could also host your profile as a static website with github-pages for free. And yes, github-pages supports markdown too!! With a bit of javaScript you could also make your portfolio much more dynamic. The link to your personal portfolio can be place just below you display picture, what a perfect fit!

🤔 (Me): "Sooo what could this README possibly used for???"

This feature is available for all the users. So the README must be personal to a particular user...?

Me: Opens a web browser and starts searching for user profiles.

This guy has a good profile. Ten repos! not bad.
Wow! Thirty repos 😲!! This girl is amazing! Oh wait, there are many forked repos too without any contributions.

(Me): Uses github search filters to display only the non forked repos.

Now that we have filtered out the irrelavant repos using github search filters, we still need to go open their repositories and go through the README file to literally figure out what this users is actually into. This is where Github Profile README can be usefull. It can act as a index for your repositories.

You could use the README to list out your favourite contributions and with a link to the repository alongside a brief about that repo, you could make a useful index for listing out your open source achievements. Rather than telling people who you are, listing out what you have done is a great way to showcase your skills.

Have a look at my github profile (I am kinda novice). You can also keep track of how many users visited your github profile. Have a look at this hitcounter if you want the counting thing. It bascally works by incrementing a count in the database whenever a page requests for an image, and then sends back the corresponding image for that count.

Cheers!