You can think of a Git repository as the folder for your project that contains all the component files, such as code, documentation, and examples. You can store your repositories on GitHub, where they can be publicly visible (open source) or be private and only accessible to certain users.
When you start working on a project, you need to make your own branch of a repository, which is a parallel version that contains your changes. As you make modifications, like adding or deleting lines of code or files, you save, or commit, your changes.
To propose integrating your commits into the production version of the project, known as the master branch, you open a pull request. A pull request is the way you start a discussion with others about your changes. Other collaborators on the project can review and approve your work. After your pull request is merged, your changes are added to the master branch.
You can review the GitHub Glossary to learn more about common terms.
You can follow these general instructions to make a website with GitHub Pages.
- Create a new repository for your site.
- Create a branch to hold your changes.
- Add some files for your website. At a minimum, you need a file for the homepage. You can name this file index.md and use markdown formatting, or index.html and add the basic HTML page structure.
- Open a pull request to propose adding your changes into the master branch.
- Merge files into the master branch.
- Go to the repository settings and enable GitHub Pages on the master branch.
- Open browser to the page.