Using GitHub
DM2280B spring 2014 · Corcoran School of Art + Design
Instructor: David Ramos (alberto_ramos@corcoran.edu)
We’re using Git and GitHub to track changes to your web projects, publish websites, and turn in work.
Sign up for a GitHub account
There’s a signup form on the GitHub site. (The free plan will suffice for our class.) Verify your email address on the new account.
Get the GitHub client
Install the GitHub.app client program (Mac and Windows) on your own computer.
Make sure you add your email address!
The first time you run the GitHub client, you’ll need to add your name and email address, and you’ll also sign in to your GitHub account. You need to provide name/email in order to publish sites.
Fork a project
For our major assignments, don’t download the files directly: fork the project and download from your forked repository.
- Log in to GitHub.
- Go to the project’s page on GitHub. (That’s here for the web1-basic starter project.)
- Fork the project. On the upper-right corner of the page, click on the “Fork” button.
- GitHub will create your own copy of the project. The page for this new copy will load – it’ll look like the previous project page, but with your username in the headline, and with a note saying that the project is “forked from” the original.
- Rename your forked copy of the project. Go to Settings ➔ Repository Name. Type a new name and press the “Rename” button. (Use dashes instead of spaces.)
- To get a copy of the project onto your own computer, click on the “Clone in Desktop” button. GitHub.app will open and ask you where you want to save the files.
Commit and sync changes
When you’ve made changes to your files, you’ll need to commit those changes to your project history. Open GitHub.app and find your project. Write a brief commit message in the “Summary” field – your text should summarize the changes that you’ve made. If you need to provide more details, you can add them in the “Description” field. Then click on the “Commit” button.
Last, click on the “Sync” button. That’ll push your changes to the GitHub site. If you go to your project page on GitHub, your changes will show in the project history. The live website, published on GitHub, will also update, though that might take ten minutes.
GitHub sites
Any changes that you sync to GitHub will be published on a live website. You can find your site at http://username.github.io/projectname (substitute your real GitHub username and project name).