Git & GitHub

Git and GitHub are some of the most popular tools for version control. Here’s an example of how they work:

1. First, we write some code for our website. Let’s say we add a new paragraph to our website.
2. Next, we “stage” these changes. Git will compare all of our current code to what our code looked like the last time we made an update, and find all the differences.
3. Third, we “commit” these changes. This prepares all of our changes to be pushed to GitHub.
4. Lastly, we “push” these changes. This will update our code in GitHub, and update our website with the new changes.

To get started with GitHub, you’ll need to make an account by clicking here.

Enter your email, then create a cool username and secure password. Once your account has been created, you should see a page like this:

GitHub Desktop

GitHub Desktop is a useful app built by GitHub that allows you to stage, commit, and push changes to GitHub with just a few button clicks. Because version control is usually handled with command-line apps (lots of typing!), this is a great introduction to how it works without needing to learn more code.

Click here to download GitHub Desktop, then open it and sign in with the GitHub account you just created.

GitHub Pages

Another really cool feature of GitHub is GitHub Pages, which is a super easy way for us to publish our websites on the internet for everyone to see. We’ll talk more about how to publish our websites using GitHub pages in a future section.