What is GitHub?

GitHub is a cloud Git repository hosting service with builtin features for collaboration and project management. Think of it as Google Drive for code with super robust “track changes” baked in.

Originally designed to manage large open-source software projects, its use has expanded to many other types of organizations and individuals, with over 30 million users. It is the most popular platform for developing and sharing code from enterprise projects, to hands-on learning, to academic projects. Thus, it is helpful to get familiar with the web interface so that you can take part in this community.

For this workshop, GitHub provides a handy, free platform for creating plain text files and serving them on the live web!

GitHub Pages

One amazingly useful GitHub feature is GitHub Pages. It provides free static web hosting from any repository. GH-Pages is intended to host relatively simple sites for your GitHub portfolio, project, or documentation. Because it is free and a valuable transferable skill, this is a great option for teaching and learning.

Many organizations are using GitHub to collaboratively create and publish public workshop websites. For example:

• Programming Historian
• this site!

Any GitHub repository can have a site by activating gh-pages in the settings and selecting a source branch. Additionally, each user and organization can have one root site by creating a repository called username.github.io (replace username with your actual username!). The site will automatically appear in the github.io domain following this pattern:

https://username.github.io/repositoryname/

Let’s look at the basic ways to use it!