GitHub Pages

Using GitHub's "Pages" feature to host static HTML sites

Alan Orth

April, 2015

What is git?

git is a distributed source code version control system.

Why is git?

Obsoletes previous source code version control systems such as CVS and Subversion (SVN).


Provides advanced features, for example:

Distribution - Branching - Tagging - Staging - Stashing

Distributed model

Each copy of a git repository contains the entire history of the repository.

Lightweight "branching"

Branching allows you to create a copy of an object so modifications can be made in parallel (ie features, different devs, versions, etc).

git != GitHub

New users often get confused, but it is an important distinction!

Just learn git!

What is GitHub?

Extremely popular website for hosting git repositories. Many others, but GitHub pefected the model.

Why GitHub?

"Social code"
Contributors - Pull requests - Issues - Forks - Wikis

Why GitHub?

Gamification
Stars - Streaks - Followers - Graphs

Why GitHub?

Oh yeah, it's FREE!

How to use GitHub Pages

  1. Sign up for a GitHub account
  2. Create a new repository with an index.html
  3. Push code to the gh-pages branch 
$ ghp-import -p presentation/

Website is instantly accessible on https://username.github.io/repository

Examples

Examples of websites hosted on GitHub Pages abound!

This presentation! ;)

data.ilri.org (in progress!)

Nairobi GNU/Linux Users Group blog