GitHub Setup

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>> Jen Kramer: This next part that we're going to work on is there's a very specific set of instructions I need for you to follow in order to work with GitHub. And so we're gonna work through these steps one by one and I've spelled them all out here for you.

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So first of all, let's go ahead and download the ZIP of the files for today. So just as I've showed you over the last couple of days, go ahead and download the ZIP file and get it configured and ready to look at on your desktop. And what I'd like for you to do is we're gonna start here at the beginning, which is how we get our web pages online.

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There are a lot of different ways to get web pages online. Typically, what you're going to do is the following. You're gonna need to purchase two things and those of you out there online, don't panic, we're gonna do this all for free. But typically, the way you get a website online is the following.

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One is you purchase the domain name. One is you purchase web hosting. You have to make these two things talk to each other. You have to wait 48 hours for that talking to happen, so that the domain name actually associates with the web hosting and you can find it online and then you use something called FTP to move all of those files on up to the server.

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When I used to teach this like 15 years ago, this was a 3-hour lecture, [LAUGH] okay? Because it was a lot of stuff and a lot of moving parts. To keep things simple, what we're going to do is use something called GitHub pages. So this involves signing up for a GitHub account and then there is a way that you can go ahead, and post your information up on GitHub, and it will show up as a website as well.

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You don't need to purchase a domain name. You don't need to purchase web hosting. You can go ahead and get a very simple site up relatively quickly, okay? So we're gonna go ahead and follow these instructions along the way. So first of all and we'll take sort of a little minute in between each one of these.

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So you guys on online who are following along and I think most of the people here have an account. But for those of you following along, what we're gonna do is we're going to first of all, sign up for GitHub. So the way that you're gonna go about doing that, so if you go to github.com, you should see this screen that looks just like this and you'll be able to pick a username and email and a password.

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So go ahead and fill out that form right now. Click on the sign up for GitHub button, if you do not have an account. If you do have an account, you can just go to the sign in button and we're gonna go ahead and sign in.
>> Jen Kramer: And you should see something like this.

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Cool, once you've got that done, we're on step two. Go ahead and download the GitHub Desktop. Now those of you who have worked with GitHub before, you may be accustomed to working with GitHub on the command line. That means that you have typically a black screen with a little flashing cursor at the bottom and you type in obscure little commands to make magic happen, okay?

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My experience is that working on the command line just leads to tears, especially when people have been coding for four whole days. So what we would prefer to do is we would like you to work with GitHub Desktop, which is gonna give you an interface. It'll be much easier to work with in this environment.

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If you already know how to work with GitHub, you wanna go ahead and work on the command line. Feel free to do so, but I'm gonna be doing the GitHub Desktop. So to do that, we're gonna go ahead and go to githubdesktop.github.com. Go ahead and open that up.

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>> Jen Kramer: And you'll have a button right here in the middle of the page. Mine says, download for Mac OS, because that's what I'm using. Yours may say, download for Windows if that's what you're using. Only for the desktop. Okay, so this is gonna be only for the desktop.

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If they'd pick the wrong operating system, there should be a link underneath. Go ahead and download this, and get it installed on your computer. If you already have it installed in your computer, you can go ahead and open it up
>> Jen Kramer: So I'll give you a couple minutes to go on ahead and download this.

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Get it installed and get it open.