Ansh Singhal on KDE Blogs

GSoC 2026: Building Join.Kde.Org

Ansh Singhal — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Intro

Helloooooo,
it’s me again, Ansh! , the mentee who has been working on the Join.kde.org
This is the final update within the official timeline of GSoC 2026 for my project: Building Join.KDE.org.

A quick summary:
Over the past 12 weeks, I have worked on creating, designing and implementing the join.kde site into a platform that can answer most of the basic questions a new contributor has. In this post, I’ll mainly focus on the progress from Week 6 to Week 12 along with my final thoughts.

For a short summary, checkout this status report.

Week 6: Contribute/suggest

This week I worked on the ADD section which got renamed to contribute, it includes several sub sections which allows people to contribute based on their interests.

Routed the explore section to KDE.org for you section so people can explore and find their own use for KDE softwares.

Created the suggest section which contains the information on how to report bugs/request for features.

This week was more about improvements on the navbar, I noticed with all the text the nav-bar looked way too cluttered, and simply overwhelming so with the advice from Anish and how he changed the navbar for the mentorship website, I worked up something similar and made dropdowns for the navbar so it can still have more content when clicked.

Week 8: Work on Projects

For this week I worked on the work on projects section which allows people to find groups of projects in invent based on skillset or the programming languages one knows.

I added all the groups available in KDE invent in this section which little tags of skillset.

Week 9: Incubate projects

Worked on designing Incubate projects section: which basically explains what kind of projects fit in KDE and what are the benifits of it. Linked it through a call-to-action button to the relevant resources to incubate project into KDE.

Week 10: read page/ suggest page improvement

Designed the read page with 3 main blog sites

planet
contributor blogs
mentorship blogs

This week was something new, the cards for the read page were simple but the new design of dropdown in suggest page took some time figuring out. added konqi images to the cards because duh it's konqi (but hey we can change them eventually).

Week 11: Divulge Page

Created the Divulge page which is more for people who want to create content for kde whether it be promo material, tutorials or whether help in promotion itself.

It's kind of a copy of the read page but it can always be changed.

Week 12: Events Page

Created the Events page, which included akademy as the main event and then a section for event's KDE hosts which had some sprints and conf.in and then added the section for the events KDE participates in which will likely be expanded eventually.

Fixed some tiny typos and dead link issues.

My Own Development

I learned a lot from this project, both in coding and beyond. Here are the things I remember right now, though the list could go longer:

Now I am very comfortable with Hugo, semantic maps, and YAML files
Finally learned how to deal with SVGs (was my first time working with them)
My frontend skills improved, I think I can design better pages now
I now want to create more stuff that helps people!

Conclusion

Overall, GSoC 2026 has been a great experience for me. Over these 12 weeks I got the chance to work on issues that i faced myself and fix them in a way that helps everyone joining KDE.

Along the way I learned some technical skills, learned how to work across different timezones, to communicate better, and most importantly realized that long discussions are often more necessary than jumping straight into implementation, especially in open source communities.

Big thanks to my mentors Anish and umm Conulting mentor Paul

This wraps up my GSoC journey, but I will be sticking around KDE and plan to explore other projects, especially in the mentorship side of things. See you around in the community.

How to Reach Me

GSoC Alumni Camp Delhi 2026

Ansh Singhal — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

GSoC Alumni Camp Delhi 2026 – My Experience

I attended the GSoC Alumni Camp in Delhi, it was an amazing opportunity to make people who are already familiar with open source aware of KDE Community and I was actually able to do that. The event itself was from 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. at night. The event started off with a formal opening session. Soon after was the scavenger hunt (we were hunting people!) it was a 5x5 grid where you needed to get signatures of people who fit the question in the box. A few of them were :

I was born in July (I signed a lot of them )
I have held a koala
I know 3+ languages
I can juggle
I prefer go/Rust and so on. In all honesty it was an amazing ice breaker and something to get to know people. After that there were a few unconferences followed by lunch and then more unconferences till 6:00 P.M. after that lightning talk sessions started and fortunately I got to represent KDE.

Unconference Session – From GSoC Student to Maintainer/Mentor

I also hosted one of the first unconference sessions titled:

From GSoC Student to Maintainer/Mentor

I wasn't expecting a large audience, but at one point the room was at its capacity around 40 attendees.

The audience included:

GSoC Organization Administrators
Mentors
Open source employees
Existing contributors
Google code-in students

The discussion focused on contributor retention after GSoC and how organizations can better support contributors beyond the program. It led to some interesting discussions where we found out what some organisations are doing.

Discussion Points (Noted by an org admin)

Leverage Contributors as Subject Matter Experts

GSoC contributors naturally become subject matter experts for the components they build. When new issues, bug reports, or pull requests relate to their work, proactively invite them to participate in the discussion or review. This helps contributors feel that their expertise is valued and keeps them engaged with the project beyond GSoC.

Improve Communication Around Pull Request Reviews

Complex pull requests often require focused reviews and may take longer than isolated bug fixes. While taking the necessary time for a thorough review is important, mentors should acknowledge review requests and, where possible, communicate an expected timeline. Even a brief acknowledgment improves the contributor experience.

Using Organization Stipends for Contributor Retention

Explore using the GSoC organization stipend to support promising contributors after the program ends. This could fund continued maintenance or feature development through a transparent platform such as Open Collective, allowing contributors to invoice for their work and remain actively involved with the project.

Recognizing Mentor Contributions

Mentoring requires a significant investment of time in reviewing code, guiding contributors, and providing technical support. Consider allocating a portion of the organization stipend to compensate mentors, recognizing their efforts and encouraging long-term participation.

KDE's Community Support

Another topic that generated considerable interest was KDE's support for its contributors.

I talked about how KDE sponsors some students to attend Akademy, and how I was also sponsored to attend the event, which a lot of people agreed organizations should've done (some did, a lot didn't) but a lot of people agreed that when an organization consider these things contributors stay.

After all the unconferences ended a lot of people came up to me saying mine was the best and I managed and engaged everyone in the best way possible ( I was on cloud 9).

Lightning Talk

One of the highlights was being selected to give a lightning talk. Only 18 participants were chosen, and I was one of them.

My GSoC project Join KDE is an advertisement for KDE itself, so the project itself became an easy conversation starter. It was a great opportunity to introduce KDE and make more people aware of the organization.

Although I did fumble the last part of my presentation it was more of me being confused where my slide went (some slides were misplaced) aside from that it went as any other informative talk but hey I was funny on the stage (refer to the pics) so people remember me! You win some you lose some, oh well.

Conversations Throughout the Event

Outside the sessions, I had some interesting discussions with contributors from different organizations. Some contributors showed interest in working wwith us while some showed interest in our eduction/science side but honestly it's hard to bring contributors over as they're in different domains, org admins/mentors or they're busy with their careers.

SU2 Foundation

I had a conversation with a maintainer from the SU2 Foundation, whose work focuses on computational fluid dynamics.

We discussed KDE's scientific and educational initiatives, including KDE for Scientists and several education-related projects. I also shared the KDE For You website as an introduction to the wider KDE ecosystem.

After Party

The conversations continued during the after-party on the following day.

I met a group of students who had become interested in open source after interacting with contributors throughout the event. They had originally attended as friends of another contributor.

One of them is now actively looking for a project to begin contributing to within KDE. YAYYY!

New Contributors

Several first-time contributors approached me asking about projects suitable for beginners.

I introduced them to a number of KDE projects and explained possible contribution paths.

But the same issue they're busy with the beginning of their careers.

Overall Thoughts

The Alumni Camp was one of the best ways to make people aware of KDE and I tried my best while i had fun ( we played uno there! Will bill the cards to the organization jkjk), a lot of people seemed intrigued and asked me to share some stuff about KDE to them or they'll try it on their own. Met someone from GNOME (they didn't get any lightning talk HA! I know, I know no inter project fighting that's bad) had some good conversations, teased the person from GNOME, had breakfast with them, and tried to make the most of the unconference session and the lightning talks to at least get people to know the name KDE!

Event Gallery

GSoC 2026: Building Join.Kde.Org

Ansh Singhal — Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Intro

Hi, I'm Ansh Singhal, I am an undergrad Engineer from India, majoring in computer science. My journey in open source started with KDE only, while I was looking for projects to contribute to, I came across the kde mentorship website, tried building it and failed, and then somehow successfully able to build it locally I had my first contribution a line in the readme file of the mentorship site "Note : Ensure your hugo version matches the one in CI/CD pipeline". Then, I discovered about Season of KDE but the contributors for it have already been selected so I texted Paul and he informed me about a new site Join.kde.org that I can work on while the SoK occurs under the mentorship of Anish Tak and so my journey with KDE began, with questions and hiccups along the way I learnt and improved.

From the mentorship site i learnt about GSoC and decided to put in a proposal for the site after consulting Paul and Anish about it, Fortunately my proposal was accepted for GSoC, and over the next 12 weeks, I'll be working on "Building Join.KDE.org" and will be sharing my journey.

About the project

The project, Join.KDE.org, focuses on several things:

Build Join.KDE.org as KDE's new contributor entry point and ensure they can find the perfect project based on their skillset and interests. It will also help with retain said contributors as they can find new projects easily.
This will be done by creating several sections based on interest
- Learn
- Add
- Divulge
- Work on Projects
- Meet
- Incubate
- Explore
- Suggest
- Read

This will allow new contributors to figure out the path they want to follow instead of looking for scattered resources all over ultimately unifying the entry points and resources into join.kde.org.

The goal isn't to replace existing resources but provide a hub/ router to access these easily.

Community Bonding Period

In the community bonding period the goal is to make a template for the front page/landing page and collect all the resources for incubating projects into KDE environment

What's Next (Before the coding period begins)

In the upcoming weeks, My aim is to :

Design all the sections for the site
discussing any additions or corrections with the community
Collecting all the resources how-tos and routing links
Creating graphic assets if needed

Ansh Singhal on KDE Blogs

GSoC 2026: Building Join.Kde.Org

Intro

Week 6: Contribute/suggest

Week 7: Navbar

Week 8: Work on Projects

Week 9: Incubate projects

Week 10: read page/ suggest page improvement

Week 11: Divulge Page

Week 12: Events Page

Related Merge Requests

My Own Development

Conclusion

How to Reach Me

GSoC Alumni Camp Delhi 2026

GSoC Alumni Camp Delhi 2026 – My Experience

Unconference Session – From GSoC Student to Maintainer/Mentor

Discussion Points (Noted by an org admin)

Leverage Contributors as Subject Matter Experts

Improve Communication Around Pull Request Reviews

Using Organization Stipends for Contributor Retention

Recognizing Mentor Contributions

KDE's Community Support

Lightning Talk

Conversations Throughout the Event

SU2 Foundation

After Party

New Contributors

Overall Thoughts

Event Gallery

GSoC 2026: Building Join.Kde.Org

Intro

About the project

Community Bonding Period

Related Issues

What's Next (Before the coding period begins)

How to Reach Me