Git & GitHub Basics

What is GitHub?

For version control, most of these tutorials use GitHub. If you’re not familiar, GitHub is a platform for version control and collaboration, allowing developers to manage, share, and track changes to code efficiently, making teamwork and project management easier. Like Google Drive for programmers.

Here is a more in-depth breakdown of what GitHub is and how it works: Introduction to GitHub.

Forking a project

If you don’t have it already, download GitHub desktop: desktop.github.com/download.

To fork a project on GitHub:

• Go to the project’s GitHub page
• Click the “Fork” button in the top right corner (this creates a copy of the project in your own GitHub account)
• Then open your newly created fork and click the green “Code” dropdown
• Select “Open with GitHub Desktop”

A fork is a personal copy of a codebase where you can make changes without affecting others.

What is a .gitignore file?

When you use Git to track your project’s files (like code, images, config files), you don’t always want everything to be tracked or pushed to GitHub. That’s where .gitignore comes in.

A .gitignore file tells Git: Ignore these files. Don’t include them in version control or upload them to GitHub.

This is really helpful for:

• Sensitive files (like API keys)
• Build folders (dist/, node_modules/, etc.)
• System files (like .DS_Store on macOS or Thumbs.db on Windows)

How it works

If a file or folder matches a rule in .gitignore, Git will pretend it doesn’t exist. It won’t track changes to it, and it won’t push it to a remote repo like GitHub.

How to add something to .gitignore

Just open the .gitignore file in your project root (or create one if it doesn’t exist), and add the filename or folder you want to ignore.

For example:

# Ignore an API key file
hidden.js

# Ignore all files in node_modules/
node_modules/

Now Git will skip these files when committing or pushing your code — keeping things secure and clean.

Best practice: Always add secret files (like ones containing API keys) to .gitignore before uploading your project to GitHub.