Sign up for GitHub

First things first — you need a place for your code to live.

GitHub is where every project in this guide will be stored. Remember the "Google Drive for code" thing from the intro? That's GitHub. Your code lives there, and when you make changes, they flow from there to your live website automatically.

You don't need to understand how it works yet. You just need an account.

?Why GitHub?

Go to github.com and sign up — it's free and takes about 2 minutes. You can sign up with Google or create an account with your email.

If you already have an account, skip ahead. Otherwise, once you're signed in, you're ready for the next step.

Use your personal email

Use your personal email address when signing up. People often sign up with a work email, then when they leave that job, the company deactivates the email. Now they can't log in, can't recover 2FA, and end up creating a second account — losing their contribution history, stars, and repos along the way.

GitHub is designed for individuals — one account, many faces. You can join multiple organizations (your company, your side project, your open source team) all from a single account. You'll never need a second one.

"But what about my work email for work repos?" — GitHub lets you add multiple email addresses and route commits per-org, so your work stuff stays properly attributed.