Publishing via GitHub

Now let‘s take you through how to publish your site via GitHub pages. We aren‘t saying this is the only way or even best way to publish your site, but it is free, fairly simple, and touches upon some new skills that you‘ll find useful going forward.

Basic setup

1. First of all, install Git on your machine. This is the underlying version control system software that GitHub works on top of.
2. Next, sign up for a GitHub account. It‘s simple and easy.
3. Once you‘ve signed up, log in to github.com with your username and password.
4. Next, you need to create a new repo for your files to go in. Click Plus (+) in the top right of the GitHub homepage, then choose New Repository.
5. On this page, in the Repository name box, enter username.github.io, where usernameis your username. So for example, our friend bobsmith would enterbobsmith.github.io.
6. Click Create repository; this should bring you to the following page:

Uploading your files to GitHub

This is where we will have a go at using the command line to put our repository on GitHub. A command line is a window where you type in commands to do things like create files and run programs, rather than clicking inside a user interface. It will look something like this:

Note: You could also consider using a Git graphical user interface to do the same work, if you feel uncomfortable with the command line.

Every operating system comes with a command line tool:

• Windows: Command Prompt can be accessed by pressing the Windows key, typingCommand Prompt, and choosing it from the list that appears. Note that Windows has its own command conventions differing from Linux and OS X, so the commands below may vary on your machine.
• OS X: Terminal can be found in Applications > Utilities.
• Linux: Usually you can pull up a terminal with Ctrl + Alt + T. If that doesn‘t work, look for Terminal in an app bar or menu.

This may seem a bit scary at first, but don‘t worry — you‘ll soon get the hang of the basics. You tell the computer to do something in the terminal by typing in a command and hitting Enter.

1. Point the command line to your test-site directory (or whatever you called the directory containing your website). For this, use the cd command (i.e. "changedirectory"). Here‘s what you‘d type if you‘ve put your website in a directory calledtest-site on your desktop:

   cd Desktop/test-site
   

   　　

2. When the command line is pointing inside your website directory, type the following command, which tells the git tool turn the directory into a git repository:

   git init
   

   　　

3. Next, go back to the GitHub site. On the current page, you are interested in the section …or push an existing repository from the command line. You should see two lines of code listed in this section. Copy the whole of the first line, paste it into the command line, and press Enter. The command should look something like this:

   git remote add origin https://github.com/bobsmith/bobsmith.github.io.git
   

   　　

4. Next, type the following two commands, pressing Enter after each one. These prepare the code for uploading to GitHub, and ask Git to manage these files.

   git add --all
   git commit -m ‘adding my files to my repository‘
   

   　　

5. Finally, push the code up to GitHub by going to the GitHub web page you‘re on and entering into the terminal the second of the two commands we saw in step 3:

   git push -u origin master
   

   　　

6. Now when you go to your GitHub pages‘ web address in a new browser tab (username.github.io), you should see your site online! Email it to your friends and show off your mastery.

Note: If you get stuck, the GitHub Pages homepage is also really helpful.

Further GitHub knowledge

If you want to make more changes to your test site and upload those to GitHub, you simply need to make the change to your files just like you did before. Then, you need to enter the following commands (pressing Enter after each one) to push those changes to GitHub:

git add --all
git commit -m ‘another commit‘
git push

You can replace another commit with a more suitable message to describe what change you just made.

We have barely scratched the surface of Git. To learn more, start off with the GitHub Help site.

Conclusion

By this point, you should have your sample website available at a unique web address. Well done!

Further reading

• What is a web server
• Understanding domain names
• How much does it cost to do something on the web?
• Cheap or free static web hosting by Scott Murray has some useful ideas on available services.