Lesson 2 of 4

Git & GitHub

A time machine for your project, plus a safe home for it in the cloud.

Why bother with version control?

Imagine editing your site, breaking something, and having no way back. Or emailing yourself site-final-v2-REALLY-final.zip. Git fixes both problems. It takes snapshots of your project so you can:

Rewind to any earlier version if you break something.
See exactly what changed, when, and why.
Back everything up online and work from any computer.
Let tools like Cloudflare Pages auto-publish whenever you save changes.

Git vs GitHub — what's the difference?

Git

The tool

A program on your computer that takes the snapshots. It works entirely offline.

GitHub

The website

A place on the internet that stores your Git snapshots so they're backed up and shareable. Think "cloud storage for code".

Analogy: Git is the camera; GitHub is the online photo album you upload the pictures to.

One-time setup

Create a free account at github.com.
Install Git from git-scm.com/downloads (Mac users often already have it).
Tell Git who you are — run these once in your terminal:

terminal

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

The everyday loop

Inside your website folder, the core rhythm is just a few commands. Here's the whole cycle, start to finish:

terminal — inside your project folder

# 1. Turn this folder into a Git project (only once, ever)
git init

# 2. Check what has changed at any time
git status

# 3. Stage the files you want to snapshot ("." means everything)
git add .

# 4. Save the snapshot with a short message describing it
git commit -m "Add home page and styling"

Key words, decoded:

Repository (or "repo") — your project folder, tracked by Git.
Commit — one saved snapshot, with a message. Your history is a list of commits.
Branch — a parallel line of work. The main one is usually called main.
Push — upload your commits to GitHub. Pull — download changes from GitHub.

Push your project to GitHub

On GitHub, click New repository, give it a name (e.g. my-website), and create it. Leave it empty — don't add a README yet.
GitHub shows you a URL like https://github.com/you/my-website.git. Connect your local folder to it and push:

terminal

# Point your local repo at the GitHub one ("origin" is just a nickname)
git remote add origin https://github.com/you/my-website.git

# Name your main branch and upload it
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

Refresh your GitHub repo page — your files are now safely in the cloud. 🎉 From now on, after each commit, just run git push to sync.

Good commit messages matter. Write them like a short instruction: "Add contact form", "Fix mobile menu", "Change accent color to blue". Future-you will thank present-you.

Never commit secrets. Passwords, API keys, and tokens should not go into a repo. Put their filenames in a .gitignore file and Git will skip them.

Typing every file by hand is a lot. In the next lesson, meet Claude Code — an AI that can write and edit these files (and even run the Git commands) with you.