Exploring GitHub

[00:00] Before we get too far in to this, let's explore GitHub a little bit. The basic unit of GitHub is the repository. You can view public repositories and repositories that you have access to. You can also create your own repositories using this "Create new" link here. We'll click on "New repository." We can give it a name, a description, and create the repository this way.

[00:20] You can also create your own organization, giving it a name, a billing email address, and, just like when creating an account, a plan for the organization. Organizations on GitHub are useful when you want to group similar repositories together, like for a specific company or for a larger project that has multiple repositories associated with it.

[00:39] For example, we can go to the JQuery Foundation. They have their repositories and the team members on the JQuery team. Also, GitHub itself has an organization. In addition to organizations and repositories, you can also explore GitHub by going to github.com/explore. This will give you some interesting projects that you might consider contributing to.

[01:00] You can also look at showcases, which lists some popular repositories, trending, which are some repositories that are getting a lot of attention recently, and stars, which are repositories that you have starred. Also, GitHub has this concept of gist, which is actually just a Git repo hosted on GitHub, except it's a little bit easier way to share single files, part of files, or full applications.

[01:23] A gist doesn't have all the features that a full-fledged GitHub repo has, but it's a nice, quick way to share code with other people. If we go back to GitHub, we'll see this poll requests, which are all of my outstanding poll requests on projects. We'll also see issues, which are all the issues that I have created, that are assigned to me, or that I've been mentioned in.

[01:44] This can be helpful when you're managing a lot of projects and want to know what to work on next.