Basic GitHub Usage

Basic GitHub Usage

Create a new repository

Unless you want to use the GitHub API, there is no way to create a remote GitHub repo by command line only.

• Go to your GitHub dashboard.
  • Should be the first page that comes up when you go to www.github.com
  • Alternatively, you can type gd within GitHub as a keyboard shortcut to return to your dashboard.
• Make sure your GitHub context is set to your user account, and not some other organization you might belong to.
  • There should be a drop-down button in the top left corner of your dashboard page to allow you to switch contexts.
• In the Your repositories section on the right side of the page, click the New Repository button.
  • Unless you want to pay $7/month to GitHub, your only free option is to create a public repository.

Now that you have a new repository, the things you can do with it are pretty self-explanatory on the GitHub UI.
Here are some common things you can do:

• You can browse the code in the repository, create new branches, issues, pull requests, projects, or wikis.
• You can check the commit history of a selected branch, manage branches, set a different default branch.
• You can create new releases or tags.
• You can add labels to issues, assign issues, create and sort project milestones.

My best advice is to setup a test repo and just play around with the GitHub UI to get a feel for how it all works, and what you can do with it. You can also find quite a few step-by-step guides and tutorials on specific aspects of GitHub by searching on Google.

Shortcut keys

On any page, you can type ? to get context-specific shortcut keys that you can use from that page to navigate elsewhere.