Forem: Vishal Das (he/him)

Making a website using Bootstrap 5 ✨

Vishal Das (he/him) — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 16:13:18 +0000

Mobile-first websites are the standard today; be it your resume or your business website, the chances are that it will be primarily viewed on a smartphone more than any device today. Thanks to Bootstrap 5 (currently v5.1), we can set up a responsive website in less than 5 mins (or more if you are on a comfy couch). Let's build a website using Bootstrap 5 together! Bootstrap 5 is a library that provides power-ups to our plain HTML and JavaScript.

Getting ready 🤓

Let's talk about what is Bootstrap in the first place? Bootstrap is a CSS framework. It is a collection of different CSS styles like buttons, dropdown menus and umpteen other things. Do you need to know CSS for Bootstrap? Not really. And that is the best part and also the reason why it is so popularly used.

However, there are some prerequisites to this blog:

You need to know basics of HTML and JavaScript
You’d obviously need a code editor. Got these two covered? Let’s dive in deeper 🐬

We'll be importing the library and using the various components it has to offer to build our website.

Step 1: Inside your tag, add the following meta tags and link to the CSS. To help you, I've provided you with a starter template.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- This is required by Bootstrap. Without this, you'll see funky and incomplete styling-->
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <!-- Required meta tags -->
    <meta charset="utf-8">
<!-- This ensures proper rendering and touch zooming for all devices -->
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

    <!-- Bootstrap CSS -->
    <link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.1.3/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" integrity="sha384-1BmE4kWBq78iYhFldvKuhfTAU6auU8tT94WrHftjDbrCEXSU1oBoqyl2QvZ6jIW3" crossorigin="anonymous">
    <title>Hello, world!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello, world!</h1>
    <!-- Bootstrap Bundle with Popper -->
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.1.3/dist/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js" integrity="sha384-ka7Sk0Gln4gmtz2MlQnikT1wXgYsOg+OMhuP+IlRH9sENBO0LRn5q+8nbTov4+1p" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
</body>
</html>

This template will give you a fundamental yet Bootstrap-ed website.

Step 2: Save the file as ".html"

Step 3: Open the file in a browser to view your basic bootstrap-ed website 🎉

Now that the basic website is up – we can play around with it like adding breakpoints, containers, etc.

If this excites you, you can learn more about it following the below references:

Until next time 👋
Vishal - your friendly Community Manager ✨

Starting your Life at Open Source ✨

Vishal Das (he/him) — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 15:41:06 +0000

It has been more than a year now since I've started contributing to Open Source and I can say, the journey has been very delightful 💖

As a GitHub Campus Expert and a Mozilla Rep, the most asked question that I've come across is, "How do I contribute to Open Source?". I've been in quite a few meetups and conferences, sometimes even as a speaker and talked about "How to get started contributing to open source", "How to use Git and GitHub" and other such topics; but one thing people ask me very rarely, is "Why should we even contribute to Open Source?", maybe they already know the answer or they don't ask it that often however, here's what I think why one should do it!

I was introduced to Open Source, or more precisely, Linux in the freshmen years in college. The idea at that time was, one who uses Linux in their daily lives, is one hell of a Computer Science geek and that is who we should be too! Quite a bit overrated statement, but that however got the ball rolling for me and I soon switched to Linux against all the odds and comfort of Windows (which I had been using my entire life till that point).

Curiosity se badh kar koi teacher nahi (Curiosity is the Best Teacher)

Using Linux was the point when I learnt that windows too used linux for their servers and this was in fact the most used OS for servers for almost everything in the world that requires running a server and that it was not owned by one company but was rather maintained by people from all over the world! How amazing is that! People from all over the world, making a software together for free, for everyone to use however they wanted to!

Yeah well but where monei in this, hmm Vishal? 💸

As computer science engineers, we're taught to learn the skill to write code for which we get paid, that's all they really tell us! But there's so much more to it than that! Imagine you write a piece of code that changed someone's life, gave someone the ability to walk, to write, to see even! Beautiful right? ✨
That is why one should contribute to Open Source! For the greater good, for the love of it and for the community! Now you might say, "That sounds all sparkles and glitters Vishal, but how does it help us? I mean, after all we cannot live our entire life doing things for free can we?". Well, you'd be surprised to know that open source contributors have some of the most well paid jobs in the industry. That's because:

Contributing to an open source project helps to improve it based on real-world experience and proven, working solutions
Contributing to an open source project helps you gain a much deeper knowledge about the software
Contributing to open source project helps your reputation and can leverage your career
Contributing to open source projects you are using in your projects lets you better deal with potential risks and plan for the future
Contributing to open source projects is fun and gives you personal satisfaction

All those sum to an experience which one can hardly get through traditional schooling! You could be the next Maintainer of Debian, the next to be added to the Mozilla Credits page or even the next open source inspiration this world needs right now 🚀

The Community 💖

Contributing to Open Source has not only been as something I wanted to do for the love of it, but also something that helped me grow career-wise. The best part of being part of open source is the community!

Open Source People are the best kind of People 💙

As a student, being involved in Open Source has been overwhelmingly rewarding for me. Starting from life long friends to mentors, I've got them all throughout this journey, and this only keeps getting better!

Great! Vishal, now tell us how do we get involved! 👀

Getting involved can be quite intimidating and overwhelming in the beginning. Finding the right project, the right community, the right way and so on! You could actually fall into this loop of overthinking and end up never doing it 😫
Nothing to worry about, we've all been there 😌

It's always the first step :)

To help make your first step easier, try completing this fun activity: GitInit 💜
Next, if you're using GitHub, I suggest that you checkout the Explore Tab to find out projects of your choice where you can contribute! Every good open source project would have well laid out README.md, CONTRIBUTOR.md and Code of Conduct.md file, these files tell us how we can contribute to the project and various other important details that we need to know, read them carefully before you jump into making contributions! The Open Source Guides talks about all the aspects of Open Source, I highly encourage you to give it a read.
You also don't have to be technically sound to contribute to Open Source! There are a lot of amazing projects and developers whom you can buy a coffee and show your support 😄
Checkout the GitHub Sponsors Community 🚀

A Year as a GitHub Campus Expert ✨

Vishal Das (he/him) ・ May 12 ・ 4 min read

#github #community #devrel #opensource

If you've made it this far, I hope you make too do your part for Open Source soon! Thanks for the read 💛
Until next time,
Vishal

A Year as a GitHub Campus Expert ✨

Vishal Das (he/him) — Tue, 12 May 2020 17:41:49 +0000

Let me start off by saying, I was simply hoping from one link to another on GitHub and landed on the Education site, what happened next is what this story is about 😊

Last February I attended GitHub's first meetup in India, The GitHub India Meetup with my fellow Campus Experts and Alumnus. I will forever cherish that event. During a random conversation with Khushboo, I realized I had been a CE for a year! So here's my story behind that journey and probably something for you to take away as well 🙂

The Pilot

I am not sure but I think I applied for the program back in August 2018. I was a CSE sophomore student then (a very average one), by the time I was applying for this, I had already been rejected from various other student programs, internships, etc. at this point, I had overcome the fear of getting rejected \o/
Did I feel overwhelmed while applying? No! I simply knew that I wanted to do this and was genuine about why I wanted to, in my application. If you're someone who feels they shouldn't apply because they aren't ready for it, well.. I made it! So can you :)
It took around 2-3 months until I heard back from the team and like everyone applying, I understand the anxiety you face and the patience it takes during that period, it takes time to review that many (~1k or more) applications but it's worth it :)

The Launch

By this time I was used to check my mails more than the apps Haha! Yeah, that actually happens when you've applied for too many things 😅
I remember this day very clearly, I woke up from my evening nap :p and checked the mail and there it was, I had been accepted for the training! Naturally, I didn't think this was true so I refreshed my mail, read the mail at-least a hundred time (not really, but you geddit). My happiness knew no bounds, for the first time ever, I had been accepted for a program and that too by GitHub! 🥳

The Flight

As much excited as I was, I couldn't wait to begin the training and learn everything that the program had to offer me! Heads up, I learned a hell lot and I still do everyday from the community. For those of you who don't know what GitHub Campus Experts is about, in short it trains you to lead communities better in your campus. And you maybe able to relate it to the roles of DevRels in the corporate, they are gems for any organization and CEs are nothing less for their communities! I learned about Inclusion, Fear of Missing Out, Diversity, Safe Spaces, Accessibility and many more realities that I never knew existed! During the training, I had created a community in my thoughts, a community that was accessible to all, one that was inclusive to everyone while making it a safe space for everyone to take part in and made sure no one feels left out. As of today, that community goes by Mozilla Punjab 💖
It took me around 4 months to complete the training and on-boarding (this is variable, please don't compare with yours), before I became a CE officially on February 2019 🎉

The Journey

The training had not only helped me learn how communities work and how to make them better, but also helped me overcome imposter syndrome, get out of my comfort zone and meet new people, represent my community at other events, meetups, conferences, the list keeps extending with time! The best thing about being a CE are the people you meet and know.
I've had times when I needed personal advises, suggestions or simply someone to help me out and the people there are always so welcoming and supporting that I never felt that I had to search another place for me, they're extremely sweet 🍰

The Future

Since GCE happened to me, I have also been a Mozillian for more than a year now and recently became a MozRep officially! As of today, the community of my thoughts which began with a sweet bunch of 5 folks, now is a family of more than 100+ Mozillians and it just keeps growing! I keep studying the needs and struggles of my community members, solve them with the help of a beautiful team of people who started or joined me along in this journey and team up with fellow GCEs, Mozillians and other Community Leaders to bring our communities together to help a larger group of people and help bubble up the most marginalized group of people while helping everyone on the way!

If you're looking to apply for GitHub Campus Experts, check GitHub Campus Experts! Good Luck 😊

Until next time folks! 👋
Vishal