Part 3: Getting started with GitHub

Last updated on 2026-01-20 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 30 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • How do I use GitHub?!
  • How can I add my files to a GitHub repository?
  • What are the benfits of using GitHub?

Objectives

  • Get set up with an access token to be able to upload files to GitHub.
  • Create a GitHub repository and upload your local repository to it.
  • View commits and changes within GitHub.

Getting started with GitHub

Begin by going to https://github.com and signing in to your account.

We’re now going to create a personal access token so that you can authenticate with GitHub on the command line.

Callout

It’s important to note that Personal Access Tokens are NOT the recommended way of authenticating with GitHub when using it for everyday use. We’re using this approach here due to time constraints. For proper GitHub use, you should set up an SSH keypair and use SSH-based authentication to GitHub. There’s lots of information on this in the GitHub documentation and another great reference is the material in the Carpentries git lesson on SSH setup.

Setting up an access token

  1. Go to your GitHub homepage (https://github.com), click your user icon at the top right of the page and select “Settings”.

    part of the GitHub homepage showing where to click to find the Settings menu.
    Location of the GitHub user menu where Settings is located.

  2. At the bottom of the Settings menu, select “Developer settings”.

    Screenshot showing location of the Developer settings link on the GitHub Settings page.
    Location of the “Developer settings” option on the GitHub Settings page.

  3. Now expand the “Personal access tokens” option on the menu on the left, select “Tokens (classic)” and then towards the right-hand side of the page, click “Generate new token” and then the “Generate new token (classic)” option.

    Screenshot showing location of the correct "Generate new token (classic)" option on the personal access tokens setup page.
    Location of the “Generate new token (classic)” option on the GitHub personal access tokens setup page.

  4. Add a name/purpose for your token. Set the expiry to 7 days and select the top level “repo” option under “Select scopes”. You can then scroll to the bottom and click “Generate token”.

    Screenshot showing personal access token configuration options.
    Screenshot showing personal access token configuration options.

  5. Your new token should be displayed. This will be your password for accessing GitHub from the command line. Store it in a secure location. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO VIEW THIS TOKEN AGAIN.

    Screenshot showing generated personal access token.
    Screenshot showing generated access token.

Create a GitHub repository

We’ll now create a repository in GitHub that we can link to the local repository that you created on your computer a short while ago.

We can than synchronise the content of your local repository on your computer with the version on GitHub.

The version on GitHub acts like a cloud-based backup of your local content but, more importantly, it provides a remote copy of your repository content that you can share with collaborators who can work with you on updating/contributing to the content.

  1. Select the “New repository” option under the “+” menu in the top bar of the GitHub page.

    Location of the "New repository" option on the GitHub web interface.
    Location of the “New repository” option on the GitHub web interface.

  2. Add some details to create your new repository on GitHub. Call your repository “git-and-github-for-technicians” (or you can use a different name if you prefer). If you see “Choose an owner” option to the left of the “Repository name” box, click it and select your GitHub username. However, this may be pre-populated with your username.

    You can choose whether you want to make your repository public or private. If it’s public, it will be publicly visible to everyone on GitHub. If it’s private, then it will initially only be accessible by you but you can add other GitHub users as collaborators who will be able to view and edit the content in your repository (if you give them the permissions to do so).

    Screenshot showing options to select for creating a new repository in GitHub.
    Screenshot showing options to select for creating a new repository in GitHub.

  3. Your repository is now created and GitHub provides some helpful information on how to proceed to get some content into your repository. Make sure you’re looking at the HTTPS option.

    We already created a repository locally a short while ago so we’re going to “push” that repository from our local computer to this new repository we created in GitHub, using something similar to the example shown in GitHub to “push an existing repository from the command line”.

Push our repository from our local computer to GitHub

Back in your shell on your computer, make sure you’re in the git-intro directory. We’re going to set up something called a remote - a remote location that your repository is linked to. You can have multiple remotes. This is one of the key aspects of the “distributed” nature of git. There are some reasons why you might want to do this but the details are out of scope in this quick intro.

Let’s add the repository we created in GitHub as a remote on our local repository:

BASH 

$ git remote add origin https://github.com/[YOUR GITHUB USERNAME]/git-and-github-for-technicians-example.git
$ git remote -v       # This will show details of remotes you've set up

OUTPUT 

origin	https://github.com/[USERNAME]/git-and-github-for-technicians-example.git (fetch)
origin	https://github.com/[USERNAME]/git-and-github-for-technicians-example.git (push)

Note the origin on the left hand side. Each git “remote” has a name. This is important because if you have multiple remotes, so that you can synchronise your code with different remote repository locations, you need to know which one you’re synchronising with. “origin” is the default name for the main remote for a repository. It’s a convention and it’s simply a string, you could call it anything (and it can be renamed) but “origin” is used by default.

We’re now going to “push” our local repository to GitHub. What does this mean?

  • All the content of our local repository will be sent to GitHub.
  • This includes the current version of the files and all the history - the changes that were made over time.

BASH 

$ git push origin main

When prompted for your username, enter your GitHub username. For the password, enter the access token you created a short while ago. You should see output similar to the following. If this worked, your repository is now in GitHub.

OUTPUT 

Username for 'https://github.com': [YOUR_USERNAME]
Password for 'https://[YOUR_USERNAME]@github.com':

Enumerating objects: 3, done.
Counting objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Delta compression using up to 12 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 664 bytes | 664.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
To https://github.com/[YOUR_USERNAME]/git-and-github-for-technicians-example.git
 * [new branch]      main -> main

Exploring our repository in GitHub

We can now go back to our repository page in GitHub and explore the content there. As you’ll see, it provides a much more user-friendly interface for browsing your repository content.

Screenshot of the GitHub respository page in the web interface showing README and files.
GitHub respository page in the web interface showing README and files.

You can look at the commits and also see what has been changed in each one:

Screenshot of the GitHub commits page showing our repository's list of two commits.
Repository commits shown in the GitHub web interface.



Screenshot of the GitHub web interface showing the changes associated with a commit
GitHub web interface showing the changes associated with a commit.