Getting Started

The best way to get started with GitHub is to open your browser and jump right in. Open your favorite browser and enter https://github.com/ to open the GitHub main page. You will see a screen similar to the following:

Figure 2: GitHub home page

While you can search GitHub repositories without creating an account, this chapter covers the basics of setting up an account. If you’d prefer to explore without setting up an account, you can jump ahead to Chapter 4, “Searching GitHub.” However, the chapters on creating and managing your own repositories will require a GitHub user account.

Note: GitHub may change the look of the home page, so your initial page might not look exactly like the screenshot from Figure 2. Signing up

You can sign up for GitHub directly from the home page simply by filling in the requested user name, email address, and password. The fields are dynamically validated, reporting any issues as you type.

Figure 3: GitHub signup

Tip: Your user name will be visible on your public repositories, so be sure to choose one that you don’t mind sharing with other people.

You will be able to change your user name from your profile screen, and GitHub will automatically update your repository information. However, if people have links to your old profile page, these will not be redirected to your new name, but rather return a 404 (not found) error. If you do change your user name, be sure to update any public profiles to reference the new name.

Choosing your plan

Once you’ve filled in your account information, the next step is to choose a GitHub plan. The default plan is the Free plan. This plan allows you to create public repositories and to interact with other repositories as well.

Figure 4: GitHub plan choices

The personal plans indicate the number of private repositories you plan on having. If you only plan on searching and using public repositories, the Free plan will meet your needs. However; as you work with GitHub, you may want to use it for your internal or private development work. In this case, the paid plans are reasonably priced.

Note: in this book we are focused on personal GitHub plans. There are also plans for organizations, which allow different users and different access based on teams. In addition, billing can be sent to a separate email account and team owners can access organization members.

Your dashboard

After entering basic account information and choosing a plan, you are taken to your personal dashboard page. The GitHub Bootcamp banner across the top lets you use a wizard approach to set up Git and your own repositories.

Figure 5: GitHub Dashboard

At this point, you have a GitHub account set up, and you are able to search GitHub, download code (and other files), and interact with other user’s repositories. However, you need to do additional setup work to create your own repositories. This includes installing Git on your computer and creating a Git repository. This is covered in the next chapter. If you are only interested in searching existing work, you can skip that chapter. You will need to come back to it if you decide to put your own work into GitHub.