Using GitHub for Projects

If you are interested in having your project backed up and hosted for free you can use GitHub to do this. It's a bit complicated, and will require setting up a free GitHub account.

In order to use this, you'll need a few things:

• "Git" (the language) needs to be downloaded and installed on your computer (already done on the Room 200 computers)

• You'll need to set up a GItHub account: https://github.com/ 

• Here is an intro to Git and GitHub, along with instructions on running Git from the terminal: https://www.jcchouinard.com/get-started-with-github/ 

• GitHub has a limit of 100MB maximum individual file size.

  • Using a .gitignore file will give you control over what files are uploaded and what files are excluded

  • to start, download this .gitignore file, place it in the root folder of your project, and then open it with Visual Studio Code

  • read the instructions in the file, and use them to configure the file appropriately

• If you would like to use GitHub Desktop to manage your backup/versioning

  • let me know and I can install it on your computer

  • Open the program

  • File _> New Repository

    • For location, select the folder that your project folder is located inside of

    • Make the repository name the same as the name of the project folder

    • Under Git ignore, select "none" as you've already placed your edited .gitignore file in your project folder

    • Click on "Create repository", and then wait until the spinning arrows at the top have finished

    • Publish your repository to GitHub

  • You now have a copy of your project safely saved on GitHub, as the "main" branch.

  • Once you have made substantial changes to your project, you can back it up by "committing" it to "main" on your computer, then "pushing" it to origin remote (GitHub)

• If you are using Visual Studio Code to manage your backup/versioning:

  • You'll need the GitHub Pull extension installed in Visual Studio Code

  • Sign in to your GitHub account in Visual Studio Code

  • Go in to the Source Control View on the left, then publish your site to a public repository

  • If you are running into problems, you can try configuring Git using this tutorial: https://www.jcchouinard.com/install-git-in-vscode/

  • If you need to configure your Git username/email

    • Open powershell

    • Set your username: git config --global user.name "FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME"

    • Set your email address: git config --global user.email "MY_NAME@example.com"