Publishing using Github

Show us your art!

The next thing we want to do is show the world what we've made! There are different ways to go about this. One of the easiest ones is provided by Github.

You should all have signed up for a Github account. If you haven't, now is the time!

As you might remember, Github is a version control software that is used to track changes in text documents. This alone makes it perfect for hosting our code and enables us to travel back in time and undo errors that we might introduce.

On Github you can create so-called repositories in your folders. This folder and its subfolders are then tracked and Github tells you immediately if and what has changed in the files that are contained within the repository. You can 'commit' to a change you made and synchronize your local folder with the one that is hosted on Github.

But what's even better is that Github gives us the possibility to turn every repository into a website.

First, let's create our new repository:

• Click on your face (upper right corner)
• Go to the 'Repository' tab
• Click 'Add a new repository'
• Name it 'myartwork', and click 'Create repository'

Don't worry about the other options for now.

• Click 'Set up in Desktop'.

Your computer should now be cloning the (still empty) repository to the location of your choice. Copy the file that contains your artwork into this folder and call it 'index.html'. The reason for this is that 'index.html' is the default location that is shown.

Save the file, commit to the change using your Github program, and push the changes to your repository ('Publish' button in the GUI).

Right now, our code is on the web, but we haven't told the Github to publish it yet. To do this, we create a branch called 'gh-pages'.

• To create this branch, navigate to your repository and click on where it says "branch:master" first (...and then some more things??...). You will find your webpage at www.username.github.io/repositoryname. From now on, remember to only commit to your gh-pages branch. Otherwise changes will not show up.