What is Github?

The short version? Google Docs for programmers​

First warning: don’t pay attention to any scary GitHub YouTube videos. We’ll provide simpler ways to use GitHub that don’t require you to be a programmer.

Like Google Drive or iCloud, Github offers a free place to store files online and collaborate on their contents. The difference is that Github is especially good at storing the files that run computer-oriented projects, and at tracking the individual lines of a file, so that many people can make changes to single document and have all of their changes preserved.

Github also offers a built-in place to built web sites using static-site content management systems like Jekyll (which is what we’re using right now to make this documentation site).

GitHub allows for:

  • Tiny revisions made by lots of people to keep things from breaking
  • Many undo options when changes break things​

All of these things make Github a great place to host websites for free.

Navigating GitHub

Programmer vocabulary that will help

  • Commit instead of Save. saving is saving a whole document all at once
  • Commits: each set of saved changes by each individual person. Lets you see and undo only one small change at a time.​
  • Branch instead of Version. Branches can contain different versions of the same file simultaneously, which allows GitHub to highlight conflicts and help you resolve them.

Tips and Tricks for Using GitHub

Consider making an individual account for yourself using a personal email and a group account for your community using a group-shared email. Then

  • Log in to GitHub using your group account
  • Go to Settings -> Collaborators -> Add People
  • Add your individual-account username
  • Log out of your group account
  • Log into your individual account

You can create a repository using your individual account, with the same contents as your group account. Use that as a playground to test changes before you make those same changes to your group account.

Because you used the “Collaborator” setting to add your individual account to your group account, you’ll be able to make changes to both when you’re logged in using your individual account.