In recent years, the dark mode has become increasingly popular among users of digital devices. The feature, which inverts the color scheme of an application or website, has been shown to reduce eye strain and fatigue, improve visibility and contrast, and even save energy on devices with OLED screens. As a result, many platforms, including GitHub, have added dark mode as an option for their users. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of dark mode on GitHub, how to enable it, and the advantages and common issues associated with using it.

What is Dark Mode?

Before diving into GitHub’s dark mode, let’s first define what dark mode is. The dark mode is a feature that changes the color scheme of an application or website from a light background with dark text to a dark background with light text. This inversion of colors is said to reduce the amount of blue light emitted by the screen, which can cause eye strain and fatigue, especially in low-light environments. In addition, the contrast between the text and background is often improved, making it easier to read and reducing the risk of eye strain.

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Why Dark Mode Matters on GitHhub

GitHub is a popular platform for developers and coders, who often spend long hours staring at code on their screens. As such, the importance of dark mode on Github cannot be overstated. Enabling dark mode on Github can help reduce eye strain and fatigue, allowing users to work longer and more comfortably. In addition, the improved visibility and contrast provided by dark mode can make it easier to read code and spot errors, improving productivity and efficiency.

Enabling Dark Mode on GitHub

Enabling dark mode on GitHub is a simple process that can be done in just a few clicks. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log in to your GitHub account and navigate to the settings page.

2. Select the “Appearance” tab.

3. Under the “Theme” section, click the “Dark” option.

And that’s it! Your GitHub account will now be in dark mode, with a black background and white text.

Alternative Method of Enabling Dark Mode on GitHub

If you prefer, you can also enable dark mode on Github using browser extensions. There are several extensions available for popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari that can add dark mode to Github and other websites. These extensions often provide additional customization options and can be a good choice if you want more control over the look and feel of Github in dark mode.

Advantages of Using Dark Mode on GitHub

As mentioned earlier, there are several advantages to using dark mode on GitHub. Let’s take a closer look at some of them:

✅ Reduced eye strain and fatigue – the reduced blue light emitted by dark mode can help reduce eye strain and fatigue, making it easier to work for more extended periods of time.

✅ Improved visibility and contrast – the improved contrast provided by dark mode can make it easier to read code and spot errors, leading to improved productivity and efficiency.

✅ Energy-saving benefits for devices with OLED screens – OLED screens are able to turn off individual pixels, resulting in energy savings when displaying black pixels. Using dark mode on GitHub can help reduce the amount of energy used by devices with OLED screens, leading to longer battery life.

Common Issues with Dark Mode on GitHub

While dark mode on GitHub is generally a great feature, there are some common issues that users may encounter:

❌ Compatibility issues with certain browsers – some older browsers may not be compatible with GitHub’s dark mode, resulting in display issues or other problems. If you encounter these issues, try upgrading your browser to the latest version.

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The post GitHub Dark Mode: Improve Your Coding Focus appeared first on Everhour Blog.

There’s so much to learn and understand about GitHub – from time tracking inside GitHub, GitHub templates to hosting a website in GitHub – so let’s start our journey by learning how to create a README template.

What Is a GitHub README File Template?

A GitHub README is a text file that introduces and explains a project. It also contains information required to understand what the project is about. If you’re working on a programming project, others working on the same thing can use it or contribute. 

Further, a README is a set of helpful information about a project. You can also call it a manual for what the reader can expect. Usually, a README text file appears in multiple places and applies to more than programming. However, programming is mostly the core of README files. 

If you work professionally or learn to code, you will likely come across public repositories. The libraries there are made available by other developers as open-source code. Also, you can contribute to a project and add new functionalities. Such projects are useful because they offer quality solutions, especially with optimized, user-friendly descriptions in their README files. 

Generally, a README file template points you in the right direction so that you and other users are not disappointed when looking for solutions to specific problems. 

Why Use a README File Template? 

A README template GitHub is a platform where open-source code is shared with the world moving towards more open-source projects and code.

That’s where a README file comes in to make things easy and seamless for both the creator and the reader. 

In addition, the template helps you put your explanations in order. This way, your README gets to explain what is uploaded and how users can install or use it. As the uploader, you can add images and videos to help the readers navigate the project. Besides, a good README will help you stand out among the large crowd of developers using GitHub.

How to Write a Great GitHub README Template

Firstly, note that there’s no right way to structure a great README. As a result, you’ll come across multiple ways to generate a template. However, the following steps will help you get a great template to develop. 

If you’re a beginner or still working on getting the hang of it, open a README.md file in a new project. Always make sure that the file includes these elements: 

1️⃣ Project titles and internal titles 
2️⃣ Introduction of the project aim
3️⃣ Technologies used
4️⃣ Launch
5️⃣ Table of content
6️⃣ Illustrations
7️⃣ Scope of functions
8️⃣ Use examples
9️⃣ Project status
🔟 Sources

Titles

You need a title to describe the project clearly. For example, the project name usually is an H1 heading with a # prefix. Further, the text must include titles of different sections and, in most cases, internal titles. Ensure your README is easy to understand. In your README.md file, write the headings down with multiples of #. For example, # header H1, ## header H2, ### header H3, etc. A project title should carry a brief explanation of what it is about and the purpose of the project.

Introduction 

The introduction is more like a summary, so it should be brief. Interested contributors want to avoid reading a long essay on a project, especially with other parts to follow. 

Use engaging and interesting hooks to describe the aims and purpose of the project, the problems it hopes to solve, and other definitive parts. For this part, it’s best to use two or three sentences, which are enough for a small project. For example, you should mention your incentive for a training project and answer questions like the following: 

• Why did you create the project? 
• What particular technology do you want to learn? 
• Is it for a non-profit organization? 
• What was the inspiration behind creating the project? 

Apart from these prompts, you might create a template to include the material from workshops or online courses. Whatever it is, it’s worth mentioning in the introduction. 

Technologies applied 

It’s important to document the programming languages used, tools, libraries, and their versions. Some newbies often wonder why this is necessary. It is helpful to write down the programming languages because of a future date when you launch the project. The versions of libraries change, and if that change isn’t noticeable, some problems may arise from it. For this reason, it’s best to know the version used for every part of the code. For example:

• PHP version 7 or 8
• Bootstrap 3, 4 or 5
• ReactJS version 16, 17 or 18
• Laravel 8, 9 or 10

Also, you should document the tools that helped you achieve efficiency in your project. For example, if you used a top-rated time tracker like Everhour, documenting it in your README will go a long way to help other developers benefit from the tool. Everhour integrates smoothly with GitHub, handling every aspect of time tracking, reporting, invoicing, and many other processes. 

Launch 

You have to run the project after it has met the minimum hardware requirements. So, your README should include information about the launch. Sometimes, you can merge the technologies, launch, and hardware requirements for better results. However, if you share them into two subsections, it’s worth focusing specifically on the project in your description. 

Whether it’s a website or application, you can set it up via a local environment, link to GitHub pages, and other applications. You also get to input data in your preferred format. 

Other elements that can improve your README template include:

• Motivation

This section aims to let the reader know why you created this project, why you pursued it, and why you chose to do it. Motivation can range from everyday challenges like weight management to societal trends. Mention your motivation to attract developers with similar interests. 

• Build status

The build status explains the current status of the project. It’s a stage to figure out if a bug or error needs addressing. This is done for two different reasons. First, the user understands that this is an issue and does not waste more time thinking it was a mistake on their part. Second, a developer familiar with the problem can suggest some solutions directly, even without going through the entire code.

• Code style

This is important because the users learn the code style you’ve applied to your project. This way, they can contribute to your project so the code style stays the same. For example, your code style could be procedural or object-oriented. State it so that other developers can follow suit.

• Screenshots

A picture can do an excellent job for your README file. Also, some people only need a visual representation of the project. It helps them understand the file better. Screenshots of the project or a video recording will work just fine. 

• Features

What are the extra features you added to your project? Write them all down. In the long run, such features will help set your work apart from the rest, thanks to a definitive touch. 

• Code examples

This is another vital area because you compress your project to make the reader understand what it does. The code examples must be as simple as possible. This way, the reader understands whether your code solves their issue.

• Installation

Your project will likely need the installation of specific software or configurations to the system. You should explain the installation process in this section; it helps the reader to know how to use your project. Further, add links to help readers better understand how to configure/install the necessary files or software if possible.

• API reference

You can add the reference docs in the README if you run a small project. However, it’s better to include links to where the API reference documentation is located for larger projects. 

• Tests

This is the section where you mention all the tests that can be performed with the code examples you’ve provided. Further, tests will help show that you are confident about your project working without any challenges, giving other people confidence in it, too. 

• How to use

You never know who will read your README file and use your project. To this end, providing information on how to use your project is better. A step-by-step or how-to guide is best suited for this purpose. It is better to give a detailed explanation of the steps as much as possible. This way, it’s easy for beginners to understand.

• Badges 

A badge is optional, but applying one is a simple way of letting others know that you know what you’re doing. Also, this section can showcase vital tools and some statistics about your project, including contributors, number of forks, open issues, etc. The good thing about the badges section is that it automatically updates itself. 

• Contribute

In this section, you let people know they can contribute and help you. Provide a guideline on how to contribute. Knowing how to contribute is mostly useful if you are developing an open-source project that requires contributions from other developers. Also, ensure that the license you choose for open-source projects is correct to avoid conflicts in the future. 

• Credits

Giving proper credit is a significant part of the process. Mention and include any links/repositories that helped or inspired you to build this project. It can be a blog, another open-source project, or some readers who have contributed to building your project.

• License

This is usually considered the last part for most README GitHub template files. With the license, other developers know what they can do with your project and what they can do without it. There are different types of licenses, depending on the kind of project you are working on. The license will determine the contributions your project gets.

The most common license is the GPL license, which allows others to modify your code and use it for commercial purposes.

Examples of Good GitHub README Templates

There’s no better way to explain how a good GitHub README template looks or works than these examples below. 

a) MananTank/radioactive-state – It comes with Badges (version, coverage, downloads, size), Twitter Intent, Project Logo, Feature list, Emojis, Motivation, Installation, Example with GIFs, Collapsible Sections, Live Demos, API detailed usage, FAQs, and a Chat link. 

b) Slackadays/Clipboard – This README comes with build and test badges. It provides a detailed description and animated GIF illustrating its usage. Custom banners to show various sections. Custom text assets for file headers. Available call-to-action with a quick start section. Consistent and easy-to-read command names and signatures. Three immediate options for getting help are provided. 

c) Gofiber/fiber – It has a well-designed project logo, links, and badges  (language switch, code style, docs, test cover, Discord channel). A clear description of what the project does and how it works with quickstart, well-documented code examples (with the ability to hide long content), benchmark charts, project philosophy notes (“the why of the project”), tables with project add-ons, list of contributors, star growth statistics, etc.

d) GitHub repo – public-APIs – This repository contains numerous APIs that can be used to build an application. In addition, the feature of tables in markdown is well-used. At the top, a link name and sub-title explain the repository. At the top of the project, you’ll find all the useful links, like the contributing guides, licenses, and Issues.

This kind of list is huge, so having a good structure and a table of content becomes essential. The repository has both. After every category of API, there’s a Back to Index link to get back to the table of content.

e) Create-go-app/cli – It has a unique project logo and badges (version, code style, docs, test cover). Clear README with a quick start, easy-to-read installation and user information, video screencast, and well-documented project features, including a demo recording of the work in the terminal, titles, project philosophy notes (“the why another”), most frequently asked questions, and much more. 

f) Refine is another open-source web application framework. The README file has a beautiful appearance with images, badges, and emojis. At the top, you’ll find the project name with a short description. They have also added all the useful links at the top for convenience.

Refine addresses all the information related to the project. The information includes all the essential topics, such as the project setup, licenses, contributions, and many more. 

g) Ma-shamshiri/Pacman-Game – If you love the game, get set for a beautiful table of contents and project logo. Cool project banner with impressive animation. Comprehensive list of project files alongside their functions. Complete execution instructions are available as well. 

h) Stack-in-a-box/triumphmayflowerclub.com – This is one of the examples that stands out. While it’s a simple website, it is presented as a very open project for developers with little to no experience. It has a friendly, inclusive tone and easily accessible setup instructions. It also comes with many common elements found in other beautiful README files, such as introduction, contribution, and features.

Conclusion: GitHub README Template

There you have everything you need to know and learn to create the best GitHub README template. You can use this article to start writing your first README file or improving your existing one. That puts you and other developers in the best position to add an interactive and informative guide to your next project and help others draw from the templates you create. They can also contribute to its success. 

Also, your README template must include some vital parts such as credits, licenses, how-tos, titles, and more. Remember to include an introduction to your project and what it hopes to achieve so that anyone that sees it will understand where to begin.

The post GitHub README Template: Customize for Your Open Source Project appeared first on Everhour Blog.

There are an array of GitHub alternatives that offer users high-quality features for collaboration on pivotal tech-based projects. These alternatives to GitHub may not be as popular as the platform, but some have unique features, with things such as a time tracker, timesheet app, and attendance tracker, that can make them the perfect addition to a tech stack or a great educational source for coders. Let’s look at some platforms and sites similar to GitHub that offer incredible user value.

GitLab

GitLab is a major platform that is one of the biggest names in DevOps. Teams can use it as a central hub for everything from planning and production to deployment. There are a lot of advantages to using GitLab, which is one of the reasons it is trusted by major companies ranging from Goldman Sachs to T-Mobile. It has CI tools that automatically verify your code, easy planning features to ensure a seamless development journey, and an array of other features intended to help developers with every phase of the coding lifecycle. There are also GitLab time tracking features built into the platform.

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GitLab is one of the biggest names in the industry because it improves the time to market for code in a significant way. It is secure and highly effective, and while it differs in key areas from GitHub, they are similarly useful code-sharing platforms. There is a free GitLab option for individuals or smaller enterprises. There is also a Premium version for $19/user per month or an Ultimate version for $99/user per month. There are tons of GitLab alternatives you can use if it is pricey for you.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket is a platform that is based on its integration with Jira, an issue and project tracking software. It is a native git tool intended to help teams share and develop together. It is a project management platform with several core features that make it one of the better GitHub alternatives on the market. Bitbucket offers an array of CI/CD tools that make it easy to automate processes. In this video lesson, you can learn how to create your pipeline in Bitbucket.

Because it is based around its Jira integration, Bitbucket is a strong platform for testing, which can be automated. It also has an array of collaboration tools that make team-based development an easier proposition, with a Slack integration and end-to-end visibility through Jira, so teams can see what’s happening in real-time. There is a free Bitbucket plan, making it a great free GitHub alternative. There also are premium plans that cost money, including the $6/ user Premium option.

TaraVault

TaraVault is a source code management platform. It is a platform most notable for its security and capability to host both Git and Subversion repositories. It has Git hosting at an enterprise scale, making it valuable for teams looking to store and share their code. TaraVault also offers enterprise Subversion features, including image file storage and fine-grained access control. 

TaraVault is integrated with multiple application lifecycle management platforms that make it easy to oversee the development of a complex project in one environment. Managers can link revisions, comment on changes, and ensure that everything is being developed promptly and efficiently. TaraVault is a costly option that is better for large enterprises. Generally, it costs between $33 and $10 per user per month, with the cost per user lower the more users there are. The billing options range between three and 500 users. It is similar to GitHub but with key differences that make it useful to enterprises.

Gogs

Gogs brands itself as a “painless self-hosted Git service.” It is an open-source tool that is simple and stable and can be used alongside GitHub. It has several features that make it a viable alternative to GitHub. Some of these features include the ability to customize templates, including overriding HTML templates and static files, external source authentication, and the ability to switch the interface language with a single click.

It is a valuable tool that can be downloaded from binary, source, or packages. It can run cross-platform, including Mac, Windows, Linux, and more. Gogs is also free to download and takes up very little computer room. It is an easy solution best for individuals rather than enterprises and is a strong alternative to GitHub or can be used along with it.

Gitea

Gitea is an open-source forge platform that uses Git to host software version control. It is a major hub for development and is a fork of Gogs, so it is a multi-layered tool. There are a lot of different aspects of Gitea that make it a useful extension of what GitHub can offer. It is less of an alternative to GitHub and more of an additional layer that enhances the offering. Gitea has features like code review and bug tracking and is cross-platform, lightweight, and easy to install.

Because it is a git repository, the Gitea website is free to download and easy to use. It is written in Go and can be used anywhere Go can compile. It is a great solution to enhance the GitHub service and host code. Gitea is best for individuals rather than enterprises.

Beanstalk

Beanstalk is a collaborative development platform that hosts Git and SVN. It is a significant platform used by major brands worldwide and has several differentiating features that make it a valuable part of many teams’ tech stacks. Like GitHub, people can edit and alter code based on set permissions. That means managers can fully control who can change what and ensure that the right people work on the right aspects of the project.

Beanstalk also has code review features that help teams stay on track and take care of key issues. It is also an effective solution for code deployment, making it one of the more multi-dimensional offerings. It has several pricing options, good for individuals and enterprises. The prices range from $15 to $200 a month, with different features and user options available for each plan.

Launchpad

Launchpad is a software collaboration platform with an array of powerful features that make it one of the GitHub alternatives to which users are flocking. It has several standout options for developers. These include bug tracking, translation, code hosting using Bazaar and Git, and specification tracking. It is one of the websites like GitHub that is offering a similar experience. Launchpad has hosted over 45,000 projects and is completely open-source. 

It has an extremely simple user interface, but don’t let that fool you. This collaboration platform is free to use yet extremely powerful. It is a great tool for code review and bug tracking that is designed for individual users rather than enterprises. However, enterprises can make use of the offerings on Launchpad as well.

Apache Allura

Apache Allura is an open-source forge software that serves as a project hosting platform. It has several main value adds for businesses or individuals. It manages source code repositories, bug reports, discussions, and blogs. Its numerous features make it a standout option and a great addition to any developer’s toolbox. Apache Allura has issue tracking, threaded discussion forums, documentation, and feedback on an open-source platform.

One of the standout aspects of Apache Allura is that it has an easy downloading process and is entirely free to download. So for those operating on a limited budget, Apache Allura is a wide-ranging tool that can be an asset to companies or individuals. It also has a very open management style, allowing users to email their team if there is a feature they think needs improvement.

Google Cloud Source Repositories

We are all familiar with Google, one of the world’s most significant tech giants. They offer features that are directly similar to the ones available on GitHub. The Google Cloud Source Repositories are private Git repositories that are hosted on the Google Cloud. These repositories are spaces where users can develop an app and deploy it once it is good to go. It is a platform that encourages collaboration and enables rapid development.

Several features make Google Cloud Source Repositories one of the primary GitHub alternatives. Users can debug and deploy their products with built-in integrations and GCP tools. They can have unlimited private repositories, and it is an intuitive platform with fast code search. Cloud source repositories are free for up to 50 GB of monthly storage. This means it is a free GitHub alternative.

RhodeCode

RhodeCode is a major open-source enterprise code management platform for Hg, Git, and SVN. It is a secure and unified platform that gives teams the tools they need to collaborate for higher-quality code. RhodeCode is also particularly useful because it has workflow automation features. This means teams can get the most out of their time for a more efficient development process. There are also permission management features for more secure collaboration. It is a fast and highly effective platform that teams across the country are utilizing.

RhodeCode is a platform that is particularly useful on an enterprise scale. It claims to have some significant benefits for companies, including faster time to market, increased ROI, and improved collaboration and communication. There are two primary options for pricing. The first is the Community features, which are free and open-source but limit what you can do. The Enterprise offerings cost $75 per user a month, with a minimum of ten users. This premium offering gives enterprises the entire range of features RhodeCode provides.

👍 Conclusion

Whether for individuals or enterprises, GitHub offerings are important. It is one of the most critical software platforms available. But while GitHub is an excellent platform, it isn’t the only website of its kind that is available.

There are many alternatives to GitHub that can be found online. These include downloadable apps and browser-accessible websites, offering features like a time clock app, open source development, and employee time tracking. From GitLab to BitBucket, each of these offerings provides something different for users. Finding the one that is best suited to your needs is dependent on a variety of things, like your budget, targeted features, and unique business needs.

Whether you are using GitHub or one of the GitHub alternatives, these high-powered tools have the potential to completely transform your development process with better collaboration and a more rapid speed.

If you wish to know more about alternatives to other tools, you can check out our series of articles about different tools: Basecamp alternatives, ClickUp alternatives, Monday.com alternatives, and Asana alternatives.

The post Diversifying Your Options: 10 Top GitHub Alternatives for Developers appeared first on Everhour Blog.

GitHub Actions enables developers to automate workflows across issues, pull requests, and more, all within GitHub. Unlike other automation features, GitHub Actions goes well beyond the usual applications of testing, building, and deploying code. But that’s not all—it also brings continuous integration/continuous deployment to GitHub. The feature brings automation into the software development lifecycle using event-driven triggers, ranging from creating pull requests to building a new brand in a repository.

GitHub Actions offers several benefits, including automating various steps and phases in the software development cycle, such as creating pull requests, adding a new joiner to a repository, merging pull requests, and many more. Additionally, the feature allows users to set organization rules, for example, assigning developer permissions. 

In this GitHub Actions tutorial, we will cover how to set up GitHub actions in your repository, how to set up your first GitHub Action, outline best practices to follow, and explore examples of how to use GitHub Actions.

Getting Started With GitHub Actions

Before we explore how to set up GitHub Actions, we need to understand how it works. All GitHub Actions automations are handled using workflows. Every workflow consists of several core concepts: events, jobs, steps, actions, and runners. Let’s explore them in detail.

Workflows

A workflow is an automated process made up of several jobs that are carried out when triggered by events. Workflows are defined in YAML files and stored in a .githubworkflows directory in the repository.

Events

Events are defined triggers that start a workflow, such as creating a branch, opening a pull request, or commenting on an issue.

Jobs

Jobs are tasks that are executed in a workflow when an event is triggered. A workflow can have multiple jobs running in parallel. 

Actions

Actions are used to perform complex tasks that you may import into workflows, such as sending a notification email. You can build your own actions or reuse open-source actions available on the GitHub marketplace.

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Runner

A runner is a series of tasks that are executed in a workflow when triggered by an event. Each runner is responsible for executing a single job.

To summarize, GitHub Actions uses workflows, which are automated processes that are made up of jobs, events, actions and runners. Events are triggers that start a workflow, jobs are tasks executed in a workflow, when an event is triggered, actions are used to perform complex tasks that are imported into workflows, and runners execute a single job. Now that we’ve explored the components of a GitHub Action, let’s go through the set-up process.

Setting Up GitHub Actions

To set up GitHub Actions, you will need to create a GitHub account and a new repository where you want to create workflows. Now, it’s time to create a workflow:

1. Create a .github/workflows directory in an existing repository or create a new one.

2. In the .github/workflows directory, create a file and name it github-actions-demo.yml.

3. Copy the following code into the github-actions-demo.yml file:

4. Go to the bottom of the page and click ‘Create a new branch for this commit and start a pull request.’ To create a pull request, click ‘Propose new file.’ Committing the workflow file to a specific branch in your repository will trigger the push event and your workflow will start.

GitHub Actions Examples

GitHub Actions is used to automate aspects of the software development lifecycle. There are almost endless GitHub Actions available to users, but here are some useful examples from GitHub documentation and the GitHub marketplace:

1. Read contents of a file

Below is the code for reading the contents of a file:

Learn more about this GitHub Action here.

2. Preventing a failing matrix job for failing a workflow run

This GitHub Action allows specific jobs in a matrix to fail without failing the entire workflow run. Set to true to allow a workflow run to pass, even when a job fails:

You can learn more about this GitHub Action here.

3. Return fromJSON for value

This GitHub Action returns a JSON object or JSON data type for value. This function can be used to provide a JSON object as an evaluated expression or to convert environment variables from a string.

For example, the workflow below sets a JSON matrix in one job and then passes it to the next job using an output and fromJSON:

You can learn more about the fromJSON GitHub Action here.

4. Filtering first-time contributors’ pull requests and issues 

Here is the code for filtering pull requests and issues from first-time contributors:

You can find this GitHub Action here.

5. Create releases via the GitHub Release API

Below is the code for creating releases via the GitHub Release API. On every push to a tag matching the pattern v*, create a release:

Doing this will create a Release and a release event.

You can find this GitHub Action here.

GitHub Actions Best Practices

When using GitHub Actions in your workflows, there are several best practices you should follow to ensure they run efficiently and securely:

🕵️‍♀️ Monitor workflows

First and foremost, to ensure workflows are running correctly, make sure to monitor them as they run, and make changes if required. 

💁‍♀️ Keep Actions minimal

Actions’ have high bandwidth but are fast to complete. However, the longer an action takes to set up and then run, the more time you have to wait. For this reason, it’s best to keep Actions minimal.

🔁 Make sure every repository contains a CI/CD workflow

Every repository in your organization should have a GitHub Actions workflow in place if you’re relying on it as a CI/CD pipeline. It’s not too difficult to manually check a handful of repositories. However, doing this across many repositories will increase the chance of human error and give you significantly less visibility into which repositories are properly integrated and which need fixing.

⌛ Set workflow timeouts

GitHub Actions kills workflows by default if they have not finished within six hours. While most workflows do not need that much time to complete, sometimes errors mean the job is killed after six hours have elapsed. It’s best to set a shorter timeout, somewhere around 30 minutes should be enough time.

🔐 Use Secrets to store sensitive information

Tokens or passwords should be stored using GitHub Secrets to ensure they stay secure. Secrets are encrypted variables created in an organization, repository, or repository environment to ensure sensitive information stays encrypted until it is used in a workflow.

😎 Use descriptive names

To ensure you understand your workflows fully, use descriptive names for jobs and steps to make the process easier to understand and modify if needed, as this will help you reduce the number of errors.

🤝 Use the GitHub Actions marketplace

Use the GitHub Actions marketplace to discover hundreds of Actions created and published by other developers. You’ll find a wide selection of pre-built Actions that will save you time and effort when it comes to building efficient workflows.

GitHub Actions Tutorial: In Summary

GitHub Actions is a powerful tool that allows developers to automate workflows across pull requests, issues, and much more. The tool brings CI/CD to GitHub, making automation a key part of the software development lifecycle. 

In this article, we explored how to set up GitHub Actions in your chosen repository, how to set up your first ever GitHub Action in a workflow, some examples of commonly used GitHub Actions, and several best practices for you to follow to reduce the likelihood that you’ll run into problems. We hope this GitHub Actions Tutorial helps you make the most of the tool, as it makes software development faster and more reliable. 

To learn more about GitHub Actions, we recommend reading through the GitHub Actions Docs page. There, you’ll find more information about how to use GitHub Actions to accelerate development workflows, continuous integration, deploying with GitHub Actions, and example workflows that demonstrate the CI/CD features of the tool.

Integrate GitHub with Everhour

If you’d benefit from tracking the time you spend on GitHub, consider integrating the platform with Everhour. The platform has many valuable features suitable for organizations of all kinds, including GitHub time tracking, billing and budgeting, task management, team management, expenses tracking and reporting tools. 

The time tracker is perfect for organizations looking to implement employee time tracking to boost efficiency and productivity. For example, platform has a handy time clock app that takes all of the hard work out of team management. But that’s not all—Everhour also provides a timesheet app, an attendance tracker and a work hours tracker, so you can keep an eye on team progress.

The post GitHub Actions: Enhance Your Projects with Powerful Automation appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Let’s take a look at how GitHub works in more detail!

What Is GitHub?

GitHub is as a platform for hosting code, facilitating version control and collaborative efforts. It enables seamless project collaboration regardless of location. This guide instructs you in fundamental GitHub concepts such as repositories, branches, commits, and pull requests, offering a comprehensive understanding of these essential elements.

Programmers can pick source codes in many different languages and use Git, the command-line interface, to make and keep track of any changes. As a result, every team member receives help to work together on multiple projects from any location, thanks to top-notch collaboration. As a token of its flexibility, GitHub lets users review previous projects created at an earlier point in time.

With the meaning of GitHub explained and out of the way, you can’t help but wonder why it is so important to developers. Firstly, GitHub offers a unique, user-friendly interface that allows a novice coder to take advantage of Git. That’s great since, without GitHub, it would take more technical knowledge and use of the command line. 

GitHub’s interface is easy enough to help individuals manage other projects, such as journals. Also, anybody can sign up and host a GitHub public code repository at no cost. That is why GitHub is especially popular with open-source projects. Further, GitHub helps organizations manage team members and security and develop internal projects.

Everhour is the top choice for small businesses and small to mid-size teams of 5 to 50 members, including professionals like software developers, marketers, designers, consultants, lawyers, you name it!

Seamlessly integrating with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, its user-friendly interface and customizable reports make it the ultimate time tracking solution for small and mid-size teams.

With dedicated support ensuring you receive timely assistance, our team is here to help you promptly and with a smile!

Understanding GitHub 

It’s not as straightforward to define GitHub or give such a platform a specific meaning. However, it is a web-based version control and collaboration platform for software developers. GitHub was founded on Git, an open-source code management system designed to help build software faster. 

You can learn more about Git and how go about it in this video.

Further, Git stores the source code for a project while tracking the complete history of all changes to that code. With that, developers can collaborate effectively on projects through tools built for managing potential conflicting changes from multiple developers. 

❓ GitHub explained: how it works

With GitHub, users can create accounts, upload files, and create coding projects. However, the major work of GitHub begins when users collaborate during projects. Teams are vital to the process because a group of people ultimately build many development projects, as opposed to coding individuals. 

Sometimes, such teams work in a single location, working asynchronously. This gives birth to different challenges when creating collaborative projects with distributed teams. However, this process can be made simpler with GitHub meaning it is the game changer.

1️⃣ Firstly, every code and documentation are in one place to limit issues with access for anyone who wants to contribute to a project. Also, each repository comes with instructions and other details to help outline project goals and rules.

2️⃣ Secondly, coding gets more creative and abstract when two or more team members work on different code pieces. Since one part of the code can make the other fail, GitHub works to solve potential problems. It does so by showing how both files will change the main branch and identifying errors you can fix along the way. 

❓ What is GitHub used for?

Now that you know how GitHub works, what can you use it for? After reading this section, you should be able to give a valid explanation when asked, “what is GitHub used for?” Software developers use GitHub to create remote, public, or private repositories on the cloud. A repository is a coding project’s files and the revision history for each file.

After setting up a repository on GitHub, you can copy it to your device, then add and modify files locally and “push” your changes back to the repository. These changes are then displayed to the public or team members. There are also lots of additional platforms and tools, with lots of tutorials available, for example, GitHub Actions tutorial.

❓ What sets GitHub apart from other version control systems?

When you come across other version control systems like Mercurial and Apache Subversion, it’s easy to see why GitHub stands at the top. GitHub holds a commanding market share over other software and stands apart from other systems because of its robust platform and built-in user base. 

Further, GitHub allows developers to collaborate more effectively and efficiently via tools that are easy to understand and tweak. Instead of starting from scratch, GitHub makes it easy to find and clone the perfect repositories for your project. You don’t need to hack solutions from scratch, thanks to simple actions. 

GitHub Basics 

❓ What is a repository on GitHub?

When you think, “what is a repository GitHub,” it is a storage space or directory that holds all your project’s files and each file’s revision history. The repository helps you communicate and manage your project’s work inside it. Also called “repo,” it can be local to a folder on your computer or a storage space on GitHub. Whatever the case, you can keep code files, text, images, and more inside a repository. 

❓ How to create, clone, and fork a GitHub repository 

GitHub uses its capabilities to help users create, clone, and fork a GitHub repository. 

How to create a GitHub repository 

Are you still wondering, “what is a GitHub repository?” Follow the steps below to create one.

1. Click the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of any page, then select ‘new repository.’ 
2. Write a short, memorable name for your repository, such as “Human-ox.” 
3. Also, you can add a description of your repository. For example, “My new repository on GitHub.”
4. Choose repository visibility. 
5. Select ‘Initialize this repository using README.’ 
6. Now, click ‘create repository.’

After these steps, you have successfully created your first repository with a README file.

How to clone a GitHub repository

Cloning a repository is just as easy. Follow these steps: 

1. On GitHub.com, head to the main page of the repository. 
2. Check the list of files for “Code” above and click it. 
3. Copy the URL and use it for the repository. 
4. Open Terminal 
5. Change the current working directory to your preferred location where you want the cloned directory. 
6. Now, Type Git clone, then paste the URL copied earlier. 
7. Press Enter to create your local clone. 

How to fork a GitHub repository 

These steps will help you: 

1. Go to GitHub.com and navigate to the octocat/Spoon-Knife repository. 
2. At the top-right side of the page, click on ‘fork.’ 
3. Choose an owner for the forked repository.
4. By default, forks get named the same as their upstream repositories. However, to distinguish it, you can change the fork’s name. 
5. Conversely, you can add a description of your fork.
6. Choose whether to copy the default branch or all branches to the new fork. Multiple forking scenarios exist where you only need to copy the default branch, such as contributing to open-source projects. In such scenarios, you only need to copy the default branch. But by default, only the default branch gets copied. 
7. Now, click ‘create fork.’ 

🔧 What does GitHub do: GitHub features and functionalities

1. Smooth project management

GitHub project management features are vast. It provides a place where project managers and developers can collaborate to coordinate, track, and update their work. With this, projects are fast, timely, and transparent. 

2. Safe packages

Thanks to the GitHub introduction, you can publish packages privately, within the team, or publicly to the open-source community. You can then use or reuse the packages by downloading them from GitHub.

3. Improved code writing 

GitHub enables team members to review, develop, and propose new codes. They can also discuss any implementation and proposals before changing the source code. 

4. Unique code safety

GitHub is packed with dedicated tools to help individuals and teams identify and analyze vulnerabilities in the code that other tools tend to miss. Development teams everywhere can collaborate to secure the software supply chain from beginning to end.

5. Effective team management

With GitHub, teams carry the same mindset, which makes them organized. Also, moderation tools, such as Issue and Pull Request Locking, help the team to focus on the code.

6. Code hosting is easy 

Code hosting is another area that shows how functional GitHub is. You have all the code and documentation in one place. With the millions of repositories on GitHub, you have various tools to help you host and release code. 

Collaborating with GitHub

There are several reasons why GitHub is used among teams and organizations, but how does it facilitate developer collaboration?

Further, every team member can access the database simultaneously to view previous versions. As a result, it is easier for them to work simultaneously as a team, regardless of their location. Through version control, developers can also store the history of changes and who made them. This enables them to revert or look back to previous versions of documents and understand how contributions by different contributors have changed the project over time.

🔁 Working with branches, pull requests, and commits on GitHub

Branches, commits, and pull requests are some of the features that will make you ask yourself how does Git Hub work? A branch represents a parallel version of a repository. It remains in the repository without affecting the primary branch. This way, you can improve the code without altering the ‘live’ version. 

A pull request flows from a branch and lets you inform other team members about changes you pushed to a branch in a repository. Once you open a pull request, you can discuss and review the potential changes with collaborators before adding follow-up commits (more on commits coming soon) before your changes merge into the base branch. For example, if a person has edited the remote file you’re both working on, you can pull the changes to your local copy and keep it updated. 

As for commits, they let individuals and teams keep a record of the specific changes committed, who made them, and when. In addition, commits convey a brief description of what changes were made. Simply put, a commit is an individual change to a file or set of files.

🕵️‍♀️ Using GitHub for project management 

It’s no secret that many organizations use GitHub for project management via GitHub Issues. So how does GitHub work for project managers? You can use it to track progress and encourage transparent communication among teams, especially when GitHub is integrated with first-class GitHub time-tracking software like Everhour. With this innovative integration, you can analyze reports, track time, automate payroll, and boost project management right from your GitHub page. The process is straightforward as well.

Use the following setup steps to use GitHub for project management.

1. Click on your repository’s ‘Projects’ tab and select ‘create a new project.’
2. Give your project a name and description (you can do that from some templates available). Note that the templates offer a quick way to set up the columns representing the workflow’s different stages. For example, ‘To-Do,’ ‘In Review,’ and ‘Done.’ Additionally, you can choose no template to begin with a blank board and customize every aspect of your project without sacrificing functionality.
3. You’re all set to start creating categories and adding issues/tasks for your project. 

The features of project management on GitHub include the following: 

– Automated triggers to move tasks around. 
– Milestones to help you track progress on a collection of issues or pull requests in a project. 
– Wikis provide documentation and detailed information about the project, including its design, purpose, and goals. 
– Integrations with tools like Everhour and Asana to aid project management. 

GitHub Pricing and Options 

Is GitHub free? With all the resources and qualities available, this question is inevitable. GitHub is free to an extent. For example, there’s free GitHub for personal accounts. You can use it to collaborate with an infinite number of people on an unlimited number of public repositories with a full feature set. That includes an unlimited number of private repositories with a limited feature set. 

💰 Different pricing tiers for GitHub

GitHub has the following pricing tiers: 

1️⃣ Free tier

For individuals and organizations. 
Cost: $0 per year forever

2️⃣ Team tier

Advanced collaboration and support for multiple teams. 
Cost: $4 monthly per user 

3️⃣ Enterprise tier

A wide range of features covering security, compliance, integrations, and everything in between. 
Cost: $21 monthly per user

🆚 Features available for free vs paid accounts 

GitHub comes with many features, and if you’re starting, you can use the free tier to figure things out first. But the real deal begins with the paid accounts. 

On the free version, individuals and organizations can use unlimited public and private repositories. That gives them some functionalities to perform actions on public repositories with some limits. Additionally, GitHub provides small storage of about 500MB for public repositories and allows unlimited collaborators.

The paid versions include the Team and Enterprise plans, with the former being the most popular version for developer teams. In the paid versions, users enjoy everything included in the Free tier plus protected branches, providing more security leverage for companies and individuals over their projects. 

Further, you can expect 2GB of storage for public repositories on the Team tier. The Enterprise tier offers up to 50GB of GitHub package storage. Also, GitHub Connect is available on the Enterprise tier.

Advantages of GitHub

The uses of GitHub span many scopes and levels of application. That’s why it’s no wonder that it packs many advantages. Some of the advantages of GitHub are as follows: 

✅ GitHub makes it easy for users to contribute to open-source projects. Whether that’s a wiki and issue tracker, or something else, you can contribute by forking a project, making changes, and sending a pull request via the GitHub web interface. 

✅ GitHub provides exceptional documentation through the help section and guide for almost any topic you can think of. 

✅ As one of the largest platforms for software developers, GitHub helps you get exposure to your work. 

✅ Tracking changes in your code across versions is an advantage GitHub provides. It’s challenging to keep track of versions, such as changes in files, storage, etc. GitHub takes care of that and more. Everything gets noticed when you have a version history of your code. 

✅ Multiple integration options make it easier to work on different projects. For example, you can have integrations with several platforms, such as Amazon, Google Cloud, Everhour, and Code Climate. Most importantly, GitHub integrates smoothly with Visual Studio Code—a popular code editor among software developers. And this integration eliminates the need to worry about VS Code font. 

❓ Why is GitHub so widely used among developers?

Now that we’re done answering the question “what is Git Hub?”, let’s discuss the reasons behind its popularity. Thanks to the sheer number of users it commands, GitHub can be likened to a den of developers. But why is that?

Firstly, GitHub is an affordable resource featuring a great open-source community. Secondly, as a cloud-based tool, codes and VS Code fonts are easily visible across the organization, facilitating every participant’s contributions. 

Further, GitHub is widely used among developers because it allows collaboration with other developers around the globe. Developers can contribute and share their knowledge with the world. 

👩‍💻 Use cases for GitHub

You’re wondering what’s GitHub designed for. You don’t have to go far to find numerous use cases. GitHub is used to perform a variety of functions. The use cases span areas such as the following: 

• Open-source projects: Share projects with individuals who want to use your software, collaborate on it, and network with developers on different levels. The networking capabilities, in particular, have earned GitHub a classification as a social media site. Also, you can link it to other community sites like Reddit via the repository notes. 
• Enterprise solutions: Businesses use GitHub as a version control system, with their development team members tracking changes to source codes while others collaborate. As a result, multiple coders work on the latest code version, simplifying project management. The Enterprise tier helps with this by providing regulatory support and compliance. 
• Instructing tool: Not everyone understands GitHub at first, but with programming instructors and students around, they can apply GitHub in several ways. Interested users will be guided on how to use GitHub via many low-cost resources. 
• Thanks to intuitive control tools for collaboration in different niches, GitHub is also available to nonprogrammers to work on document-based and multimedia projects. 

Generally, GitHub has changed the software development landscape, thanks to an incredibly efficient and easy-to-use tool. That has only seen it grow as one of the most widely used source code management systems. Further, GitHub has made it possible to work collaboratively with others while maintaining a usable history. 

GitHub appeared built for experienced developers from the onset, but that notion has changed drastically. Improvements on the facade have made it simpler to use, even in complex situations. However, the best part is that there’s a lower barrier to entry and education needed for more junior or inexperienced developers. 

Getting Started with GitHub

🧠 Introduction to GitHub for beginners 

By way of an introduction to GitHub for beginners, you can follow these steps to get started: 

• Download and Install Git on your PC. 
• Next, create a GitHub account. Provide some details required before proceeding. 
• Connect your GitHub account to your Git account. You can do that from your terminal and use your email to confirm your account. 
• Create and edit your code files locally. 
• Create a repository on GitHub. Do that by clicking the + sign at the top-right corner of your screen. 
• Lastly, you can push your local code to GitHub. 

Watch this video to see how GitHub works in a nutshell.

💡 Tips for using GitHub effectively 

Apply the following tips to use GitHub Effectively 

1. Use GitHub for code collaboration on all your projects. This will help you track what needs doing and those responsible for it. 
2. Use the ‘Git blame’ command to trace changes in a file, especially if you need to track down an individual that changed a particular line of code in an existing project and why. 
3. GitHubARM is perfect for quick and efficient prototyping. It’s the beer option when you want to quickly test ideas without writing any code. 
4. Write comments on commits. The comments written will provide context and details about the changes made to a particular project and why. 
5. GitHub pages are ideal for simple web development. The platform lets you create a web page without worrying about the underlying code base. 
6. Use keyboard tags and shortcuts to locate areas quickly and perform project tasks. 

Additional resources for learning and using GitHub include the following:

📚 An introduction and guide on how to use GitHub
📚 A simple guide and resource to GitHub for Non-developers
📚 Getting started with GitHub on desktop computers
📚 GitHub training kit

Conclusion

What is GitHub? This article has answered the question in many ways. You learned more about GitHub, including these key takeaways:

• GitHub is a website with many developers and programmers working collaboratively on codes.
• It has many significant benefits, including seamless collaborations, templates, integrations, and repositories that give your work and project the exposure it needs.
• GitHub has multiple uses, including for enterprises, open-source codes, etc.
• It is quite straightforward; beginners will learn to navigate its easy interface quickly!

Finally, understanding GitHub is essential for developers, especially those just starting. GitHub will help you find source codes in many languages and use the command-line interface, Git, to make and keep track of any changes. Further, understanding GitHub allows every team to collaborate on projects remotely. 

You can also take a look at the list of GitHub alternatives to see how it fares against them, along with GitLab vs GitHub comparison.

The post What Is GitHub? Understanding the Hub of Open Source Projects appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Nevertheless, those unfamiliar with these things will undoubtedly be confused.  What is the difference between GitLab vs GitHub? Are GitLab and GitHub the same? How can you use either of these for your team? In this article, we’re going to answer all of your questions regarding these two excellent platforms.

GitLab vs GitHub

If you want to be a good developer, know more about coding, or just want to take a peek at the development community, it’s important to know the difference between GitLab and GitHub – two tools that you can use in your development projects. But to accurately illustrate the difference between these two, we must also know about Git.

Git vs GitHub vs GitLab

This section will discuss in detail Git vs GitHub vs Gitlab and compare their characteristics, properties, and uses.

What is GitLab

You might have heard of some GitLab alternatives but where to begin with Gitlab, exactly? GitLab is a free, open-source platform that holds a repository of Git systems – the basic unit of these collaboration systems.

It’s a complete Development Operations platform where teams can collaborate on multiple projects, share codes, and work on solving the same problem without affecting each other’s work. 

The primary value that it presents lies in how developers make software solutions. DevOps is a relatively young field, and each part of its life cycle has evolved to need its specific tools and platforms. However, even the most advanced workflows are highly inefficient if they rely on multiple separate coding tools to conduct the entire complex life cycle of development.

That clunky workflow is what GitLab revolutionizes. Instead of hopping from tool to tool to code, solve issues, or collaborate, this platform provides an all-in-one space for developers to work for the entire life cycle of a DevOps project.

Everhour is the top choice for small businesses and small to mid-size teams of 5 to 50 members, including professionals like software developers, marketers, designers, consultants, lawyers, you name it!

Seamlessly integrating with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, its user-friendly interface and customizable reports make it the ultimate time tracking solution for small and mid-size teams.

With dedicated support ensuring you receive timely assistance, our team is here to help you promptly and with a smile!

❓ Is Gitlab Open Source?

GitLab is an open-source platform, and there are both free and premium versions. Developers all over the world can collaborate in the development of a software solution, allowing users access to unparalleled efficiency that is incredibly valuable in the cutting-edge world of tech.

❓ Does GitLab own GitHub?

GitLab does not own GitHub; these two are separate competing companies with distinct differences and use cases. GitHub was acquired by Microsoft last 2018, while GitLab remains independent but is funded by Alphabet.

What is GitHub

Now we know what GitLab is, but what is GitHub? GitHub is another code hosting platform and is a direct competitor to GitLab. It’s larger than GitLab and some other GitHub alternatives in valuation, although it seems that users are increasingly switching over to GitLab for reasons we will discuss later in the article.

GitHub’s main functionalities are similar to GitLab. With this platform, teams can collaborate on their development work with the same system that GitLab offers. GitHub can be used to host websites.

Both platforms use Git technology to give developers the ability to track and merge changes to the source code, allows seamless integration throughout all of the DevOps life cycles, and lets team collaborate without impeding each other.

However, the two platforms still have distinct differences regarding several aspects of user experience, which we’ll discuss later.

What is Git

Before we proceed to the direct comparison between these two platforms, we should learn about the technology that both GitHub and GitLab use: Git.

First and foremost, Git is a technology, while both GitHub and GitLab are services. Those two platforms use Git, but they are not the only ones that can use this system, and other solutions and platforms also use this technology.

But just what exactly does Git allow users to do? It’s what we call a “version control system.” Essentially, it’s a flexible way to let teams of developers work on the same source code without affecting other aspects of the project.

Software development is a continuous process, and when a project becomes too big, there will come a time when certain parts of it will have to be modified or improved while other parts remain the same.

However, it is both dangerous and impractical for multiple coders to edit the same source code simultaneously, so Git provides a great way to let developers work on the same developing project simultaneously —while keeping a protected version of the source code intact. 

It’s a type of work process referred to as Trunk-based Development. This property is what makes Git an ideal system.

Difference Between GitHub and GitLab

Now, you have an idea of what Git is and how it can be hosted in both GitLab and GitHub. But to truly understand how these platforms work for DevOps and other workflows, you’ll need to understand the difference between GitHub and GitLab.

Both of these platforms are workflow platforms that can help users use Git to work on projects simultaneously, so they offer roughly the same use cases. However, there are certain key aspects where they differ, such as the following.

🔨 Hosting service type

Both services have different levels that have varying degrees of open accessibility for their users. GitLab has three subscription versions: Community, Professional, and Enterprise editions. The Community Edition is both free and open-source, while both the Professional and Enterprise Editions are paid services that can host closed-source repositories.

Meanwhile, GitHub also has three pricing categories; Free, Team, and Enterprise. However, GitHub doesn’t have open-source accessibility, although the Free version does offer free repositories. If you want private repositories, though, you’re going to have to pay a premium.

🔄 Inner sourcing

Inner sourcing allows teams to use open-sourcing within their organization, allowing everyone in the organization the ability to see and potentially modify internal projects according to their roles. GitLab facilitates this type of functionality, but GitHub does not.

🔁 Data import and export

GitLab offers a comprehensive set of tools for importing and exporting data, especially when it involves third parties. This is critical for several parts of the development life cycle, as it allows coders to move essential data such as repositories, projects, webhooks, etc.

On the other hand, GitHub is more restrictive, mostly limited by the GitHub Imported tool. It also doesn’t provide clear instructions on how you can do this with native tools.

✅ Deployment

GitLab presents a built-in solution for deployment, utilizing Kubernetes or K8s to automate this process. This feature is built-in and can be accessed directly from the platform, streamlining the deployment experience with a few clicks.

On the other hand, GitHub doesn’t offer any built-in deployment features, although third-party platforms can be integrated.

❗ Milestone

Milestones is a tracking methodology that GitLab uses to keep track of development projects. Teams can set milestones to track problems, merge requests, etc., to see their progress towards a certain milestone over time. This feature can be set at any stage of the DevOps lifecycle, giving teams easier estimation processes.

Unfortunately, GitHub currently doesn’t support milestone features for their workflow, which can be a significant disadvantage to teams who want to track their development.

📢 Comment tracking functionality

Teams need to be able to track each other’s input on certain different versions of the repository that they’re editing. Thus, features such as tracking comments are critical for overall collaboration across the platform, a view that GitHub supports.

GitHub also allows users to view and delete certain details from an edit history to remove confidential details.

⭕ CI/CD support

Part of the software development lifecycle is to continuously test the code for errors and bugs. CI/CD is a method that allows for continuous integration, delivery, and deployment through the use of automation tools. GitLab has CI/CD support, making this process much easier on the developers, and avoiding the dreaded “automation hell.”

On the other hand, GitHub provides no means for built-in commands such support, although they rely on third-party technologies to accomplish the same effect.

👌 Permissions and confidentiality

On GitLab, high-level users and team managers can assign different authentication levels to different contributors, depending on their roles. This is ideal for organizations that rely on role-based contributions.

Confidentiality can also be triggered in this same platform based on access levels. Managers can grant confidential access only to project participants from a certain role. Every other role can then be excluded from certain data.

Meanwhile, GitHub can only grant read or write access to repositories that the team can access or invite individuals to a private repository with no role-based distinctions. It also doesn’t support any confidentiality features.

📚 Knowledge bank and guides

Since both GitHub and GitLab are relatively new inventions for the field, new users are expected to have certain periods where productivity is minimized as they are onboarding to the platform and learning how everything fits into their work.

Knowledge banks and guides make this process easier. When users have basic information at their fingertips, they will likely learn faster. What’s more, they are also less likely to call other people for assistance, reducing the overall burden that your team will face.

Thus, a development platform must have comprehensive and accessible interface guides, which GitHub has optimized for. Everything can be easily accessed on the GitHub dashboard, and they have plenty of guides and tutorials for specific platform-specific operations to help ease user onboarding.

On the other hand, GitLab offers only the most minimal support in this area. They do have a knowledge bank, but it’s not as comprehensive as GitHub’s.

👨🏽‍🤝‍👨🏼 Community

Sometimes, problems simply can’t be solved by your in-house team and require the input of millions of professionals across the globe. You could be asking for input about a very specific issue regarding the way you use your platform. Or, you might even just need the insight that a dedicated group of people on the internet can put out. That’s when teams need the community behind the Git hosting services. In this aspect, both services do things differently.

On one hand, GitHub boasts the largest community of developers and enthusiasts across the globe. The community behind this platform is highly active and highly connective and was even an instrumental factor in its success.

On the other hand, GitLab might have a lesser scale, but it engages its community directly by hosting gatherings and events.

🤔 Design philosophies

Lastly, we come into the design philosophies of both brands. GitHub and GitLab might have similar use-cases and even similar-sounding names, but the ideals behind their creation remain vastly different.

GitHub was created for high availability and infrastructure performance. It might not have a comprehensive tool for all of the DevOps lifecycle, but it makes up for it with a robust framework that never fails, an easily-accessible and in-depth knowledge bank, and an engaged community.

GitLab, in turn, was made to accommodate the entire DevOps process. Its features cater more towards lifecycle-specific tools made as a specific solution to problems faced by a part in this process.

Are Github and Gitlab the Same?

GitHub and GitLab are services that both host Git, a system made to keep track of changes to a repository throughout all its versions. These two platforms both optimize to use Git for projects, but they differ on many points regarding its implementation and philosophies.

However, despite this, these two platforms still do have some similarities, such as the following.

🚜 Issue tracking

Both platforms provide features that allow teams to monitor the status of problems, assignees for each task, and goals that the team may have for a certain time period. Managers can also easily search through this information through the various filter and sorting features that these views have.

⚡ Integrations

Both platforms offer comprehensive integration solutions for various user experience aspects of their platform. For example, although GitLab has more features for DevOps, users can also get those same features in GitHub through the use of third-party integrations.

Another area in which this is also frequently applied is time tracking. Both platforms keep track of coding versions, changes, etc., but it doesn’t present sufficient capabilities from a management standpoint.

Users of either platform can easily solve that by integrating with a powerful time tracker such as Everhour. Everhour is a timekeeping tool that will function seamlessly as a GitLab time tracking integration or as one for GitHub. You can set up your GitLab time tracking or GitHub time tracking easily and swiftly.

It will integrate with your GitHub or GitLab workflows, allowing managers to track, get time tracking reports and manage workflows more effectively.

🔍 Tracking

Both platforms give users the ability to track a team’s progress regarding their respective projects. Plus, some features allow leaders to appoint members to do specific tasks or solve certain issues as required by the overall task.

There are also bug trackers available for either of these two platforms. Lastly, either of the two provides instant user reviews and bug reports for better tracking.

Pricing: GitLab vs GitHub

Both GitHub and GitLab have free and paid versions. In this section, we’re going to look at either brand’s pricing strategy.

GitLab

GitHub

GitLab vs GitHub in 2023

As you can see, GitLab vs GitHub are both excellent resources that might sound very similar but have vastly different work cases. 

When should you choose GitHub over GitLab?

• Whether you’re engaged in an open-source project or seeking to contribute to such initiatives, GitHub could be your preferred platform. It boasts a larger community of open-source developers and stands as the prominent choice for open-source development.
• Should financial considerations weigh on your decision, GitLab could align better with your needs due to its offering of limitless free private repositories. Furthermore, GitLab comes with a richer set of built-in functionalities, encompassing continuous integration, continuous deployment, project management, and issue tracking. Thus, if your requirements include advanced capabilities, GitLab presents itself as the optimal solution.
• In terms of security attributes, GitLab excels with its robust features like mandatory code reviews and heightened access controls. Therefore, if your objective is to implement stringent security protocols, GitLab emerges as the more preferable alternative.

When should you choose GitLab over GitHub?

• If you’re engaged in a private project, GitLab proves more suitable due to its provision of robust tools for private repositories and a heightened level of control over user access.
• GitLab offers the option of self-hosting on your personal servers, whereas GitHub operates as a cloud-based service. Hence, if you lean towards greater authority over your repositories and data, GitLab might offer more advantages.
• GitLab boasts an extensive array of features, encompassing built-in CI/CD, code review, issue tracking, and more. While GitHub offers similar features, some necessitate integration with third-party tools. If you’re seeking an all-encompassing solution, GitLab could be a more fitting choice.
• GitLab’s notable trait lies in its high level of customization, allowing tailoring to your precise requirements. In contrast, GitHub presents more restricted customization options. Should your version control platform necessitate specific adaptations, GitLab could present itself as a superior option.

The post GitLab vs GitHub: Understanding the Differences and Making an Informed Choice appeared first on Everhour Blog.

By using a GitHub integration with Jira, development teams can unlock a range of benefits, including real-time issue tracking, enhanced collaboration, and a streamlined development workflow. In this article, we will explore the intricacies of how to integrate Jira with GitHub, providing insights into the setup process, key features, and the significant advantages it brings to software development teams.

What You Need to Connect Jira to GitHub

Before diving into the integration process, it’s important to gather a few essential components. To successfully integrate Jira and GitHub, here’s what you’ll need:

1️⃣ GitHub account:

Ensure that you have an active GitHub account. If you don’t have one, sign up for free at github.com. Having a GitHub account will enable you to host your repositories and manage your codebase efficiently.

2️⃣ Jira account:

Obtain access to a Jira account. If you or your team doesn’t have one yet, sign up for Jira Cloud or set up a Jira Server instance, depending on your needs. Jira serves as the project management hub, allowing you to track issues, manage tasks, and organize your development projects effectively.

3️⃣ Repository in GitHub:

Identify the specific repository within GitHub that you want to integrate with Jira. This repository should contain the codebase or project you’re working on. If you don’t have it yet, create a repository in GitHub and populate it with your code or project files.

4️⃣ Jira project:

Set up a Jira project that corresponds to the GitHub repository. In Jira, a project represents the container for all your tasks, issues, and work items related to a specific development project. Create a new project or select an existing one that aligns with your GitHub repository.

5️⃣ Administrator access:

Ensure you have administrative access or the necessary permissions in both GitHub and Jira to configure the integration settings. Administrator privileges will allow you to set up the required configurations and manage the integration effectively.

6️⃣ Integration plugin/Addon:

Check for the availability of Jira integration plugins or add-ons. Depending on your chosen platform (Jira Cloud or Jira Server), different plugins or add-ons may be available to facilitate the integration. Look for trusted and compatible plugins that offer seamless integration between GitHub and Jira.

With these key components in place, you’ll be well-prepared to proceed with the integration process and harness the power of combining GitHub and Jira for efficient project management and collaboration.

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Seamlessly integrating with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, its user-friendly interface and customizable reports make it the ultimate time tracking solution for small and mid-size teams.

With dedicated support ensuring you receive timely assistance, our team is here to help you promptly and with a smile!

How to Install the GitHub Jira Integration

To integrate GitHub and Jira seamlessly, you’ll need to install the necessary integration plugin or add-on. Follow these steps to install the GitHub Jira integration:

3.1 Preparing GitHub and Jira:

Before you can integrate GitHub and Jira, it’s essential to configure your GitHub and Jira accounts and ensure they are ready for integration. Follow these step-by-step instructions:

Step 1: GitHub account preparation:

• If you don’t have a GitHub account, sign up for free at github.com.
• Create or identify the repository in GitHub that you want to integrate with Jira.
• Ensure you have the necessary permissions to manage the repository and configure integrations.

Step 2: Jira account preparation:

• If you don’t have a Jira account, sign up for Jira Cloud or set up a Jira Server instance, depending on your requirements.
• Create or select a Jira project that aligns with the GitHub repository you want to integrate.
• Ensure you have administrative access or the required permissions to configure integrations in Jira.

3.2 Configuring the Integration:

Once you have prepared your GitHub and Jira accounts, follow these steps to configure the integration between the two platforms:

Step 1: Authentication:

• In Jira, navigate to the integration plugin or add-on that facilitates the GitHub integration. This is typically found in the “Apps” or “Add-ons” section of the Jira Administration panel.
• Follow the plugin’s instructions to authenticate your GitHub account. This typically involves providing your GitHub credentials or generating an access token.

Step 2: Linking repositories:

• Within the integration plugin settings, locate the option to link or connect repositories.
• Specify the GitHub repository you want to integrate with your Jira project.
• Configure any additional settings related to repository synchronization, such as the frequency of updates or the direction of synchronization.

Step 3: Mapping issue types:

• In the integration plugin settings, find the option for issue type mapping.
• Define how Jira issue types should be mapped to GitHub issues or vice versa. For example, you can map a Jira “Bug” issue type to a GitHub “Bug” issue type.
• Ensure that the mapping aligns with your project’s requirements and reflects the desired synchronization of issue types between the platforms.

Step 4: Additional configuration:

• Depending on the integration plugin or add-on, there may be additional configuration options available. Explore these settings to customize the integration based on your project’s needs.
• Consider configuring other features such as smart commits, branch synchronization, or pull request linking, if supported by the integration plugin.

Step 5: Testing the integration:

• Once the configuration is complete, create test issues or make changes in both Jira and GitHub to verify that the synchronization is working as expected.
• Check if updates in one platform are reflected in the other, ensuring that the integration is properly set up and functioning seamlessly.

By following these steps, you can configure the integration between GitHub and Jira, ensuring that both platforms are ready to synchronize data and collaborate efficiently.

Leveraging Integration Features

4.1 Issue and branch synchronization

One of the key advantages of integrating GitHub and Jira is the automatic synchronization of issues and branches between the two platforms. Any changes made to issues or branches in GitHub or Jira are seamlessly reflected in both systems, ensuring consistency and eliminating the need for manual updates.

When an issue is created or updated in Jira, the corresponding issue is created or updated in the linked GitHub repository, and vice versa. This bidirectional synchronization allows teams to track and manage issues in their preferred platform while keeping everyone informed about the progress and status of the project. Developers can view and update issues in Jira, while seeing those changes reflected in the GitHub repository, making it easier to stay aligned and collaborate effectively.

Similarly, when branches are created or modified in GitHub, Jira automatically updates the linked issue with the branch information. This synchronization streamlines the development workflow by providing visibility into the branches associated with specific issues, making it easier to manage and track code changes within the context of the project.

4.2 Smart commits

Smart commits offer a powerful feature that allows developers to update Jira issues directly from their GitHub commit messages. By embedding special commands in the commit messages, developers can trigger actions within Jira without leaving their code editor.

For example, by including a smart commit command like “JIRA-123 #comment Fixed a critical bug,” developers can add comments to Jira issues, link commits to specific issues, transition issues to different workflow statuses or log time spent on an issue. These smart commits provide a seamless way to track and reference the progress and changes made in the codebase while keeping the associated Jira issues up to date.

Smart commits streamline the development process by eliminating the need to switch between GitHub and Jira interfaces, allowing developers to focus on their code while providing relevant updates to the project management side.

4.3 Agile boards and development workflows

The integration of GitHub and Jira empowers teams to leverage Jira’s agile boards for enhanced project planning, task management, and progress monitoring. Jira’s agile boards, such as Scrum or Kanban boards, can be created and customized to align with the development workflow and team preferences.

By linking GitHub repositories to Jira projects, teams can visualize their development tasks and issues on the agile boards, allowing for better planning, prioritization, and tracking of work. Development activities, including issues, branches, and pull requests, can be represented as cards on the agile board, providing a comprehensive overview of the project’s progress.

Teams can easily drag and drop cards across different columns representing various workflow statuses, ensuring transparency and a clear understanding of the current state of each task. This integration enables seamless collaboration between developers, project managers, and stakeholders, fostering efficient task management and accelerating the development lifecycle.

By utilizing Jira’s agile boards and integrating them with GitHub, teams can optimize their development workflows, improve visibility into project status, and ensure that everyone is aligned on the progress and priorities of the software development project.

Conclusion 

As mentioned above, integrating GitHub and Jira brings numerous benefits to software development teams. Teams can experience the power of bidirectional synchronization, ensuring that changes made to issues or branches in one platform are automatically reflected in the other. This synchronization fosters consistency, improves visibility, and enables teams to track and manage their development tasks seamlessly.

In conclusion, integrating GitHub and Jira empowers software development teams to work seamlessly across both platforms. By following the steps outlined here, you can harness the power of this integration and optimize your development processes. Consequently, this can lead to enhanced productivity, improved collaboration, and successful project outcomes.

The post Integrate Jira with GitHub: Collaboration & Project Management 101 appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Using GitHub Pages, you can create a website by simply publishing static HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files from GitHub’s repository. Among the many benefits of the GitHub web hosting service, a few of the main ones are how simple and easy it is to use. With all that in mind, let’s take a more detailed look at how to host a website on GitHub yourself.

Requirements to Host a Website on GitHub

Before you can host a website on GitHub, there are certain requirements that you need to meet. They are quite straightforward, but without them, you won’t have a smooth time hosting your site on GitHub.

💻 Create your GitHub account

The first thing you need to do is create your very own GitHub account. To do that, head to the GitHub website, enter your email address and all the other necessary information, and you’re done. The registration process shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes, and once it’s done, you can get started.

📩 Download the Git software

While you can do everything through GitHub’s official website, the whole process will be much easier if you have the Git and GitHub software installed on your computer.

💡 Have basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS

The last major requirement for GitHub hosting is basic HTML, JavaScript, and CSS knowledge. When developing or hosting a website, you need to learn code, even if it’s so that you understand the backbone of the website and how it’s actually running. And those are really all the requirements you need to start GitHub hosting. If you check all three boxes, it’s time to move on to the next step, which is creating your new repository.

Creating a Repository

Your GitHub repository (also known as “repo”) acts as the storage space on the GitHub platform where all of your project’s source code, files, and documentation will be hosted. Here is the step-by-step process for creating a new repository on GitHub:

• Open GitHub on your desktop
• On the upper-hand corner of any page and select the “new” icon
• On the drop-down menu, select the “new repository” option
• From there, you’ll be led to a new page where you can name the repository
• After naming the repository, click on the “create repository” option to start creating the new repository

After you’ve finished creating the repository, you’ll be brought to a new page. This new page will be the “homepage” of your repository, and it will look something like this:

Again, your GitHub repository is the main place where you can store your website’s files and folders. So, when you create a new repository, everything will be empty, and you can’t do much with it. But before you can start uploading website files, it’s best to create folders where you can store your website files and clone your repository into a local project folder. That way, you have a backup as well as folders for storing your files.

To create a new empty folder in your repository, you must open the command line and type in the following command:

“$ mkdir my-website”

This line of code should create a new folder in your repository. Then, you can open the command line again and enter this code to clone the folder:

“$ git clone https://github.com/[username]/[username].github.io”

Note that in this line of code, you must change the [username] portion with your username on GitHub to work. When you enter the code, GitHub will send a prompt saying that you’re cloning an empty repository. Don’t worry about this; the empty repository is because you haven’t added any files to the platform.

Once you’ve created the folder, you can start uploading your website files. And don’t worry, we’ll cover that in full detail in the next section.

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Uploading Website Files

The next step in the process of uploading your website files to your newly created repository on GitHub. If you’re familiar with basic coding, it should be easy to upload your website files. However, since we’re here to guide you through the process of GitHub web hosting, let’s see an example.

For this example, we’ll use HTML code in a Unix system to focus on an index.html file. It’s crucial to have an index file when using GitHub and to do so, you have to open the command line and enter the following:

Make sure to change the “My Website” portion to the actual name of your website. That way, you create a personalized file that’s specifically for your page. Additionally, feel free to add any other information you would need on your main page, typically found in an index.html file.

On top of that, if your file is lower than 25MB, you can drag and drop the files you want to add to the repository. This is a very simple process that takes no time at all. This is why it’s one of the most popular ways to start adding files to a GitHub repository folder.

If you want to upload files larger than 25MB, it’s possible. However, the maximum limit on GitHub is a 100MB file. And for files larger than 25MB, you need to use the command line to upload them.

Here are the steps you need to take to upload a larger file on GitHub using the command line.

• Start by going to your computer and moving the file you want to upload into the GitHub local directory
• Open working console
• Make sure your current working directory is your local repository
• Use the “$ git add“ command to stage the file for commit in your local repository
• Enter “$ git commit -m “Add existing file” to commit the file that was staged in your repository
• Enter “$ git push origin YOUR_BRANCH” to push the changes and upload the file

If you’ve made a mistake in the staging process, you can un-stage the file through the “$ git push origin YOUR_BRANCH” command. And if you want to remove the commit and modify the file first, enter “’git reset –soft HEAD~1’ and commit and add the file again.” Then, modify the file and add it again following the steps above.

When hosting a website on GitHub, you’ll likely have to upload many different files for your website. This is completely fine, considering that’s how GitHub works. However, you will have to learn quite a few different techniques for uploading different files.

Luckily, there are various guides available for uploading specific file types into your GitHub repository. And once you get the hang of it, rest assured that you’ll begin uploading all the files you need to your GitHub repository in no time at all.

Configuring GitHub Pages

The next aspect of the GitHub site hosting process is configuring your web pages. When you open your GitHub repository, you’ll have to select a publishing source for your website. It’s important to have this publishing source ready before you do anything else. Once you’ve decided and finalized a publishing source for your pages, you can use the following steps to configure your GitHub pages.

📁 Create your site’s entry file

Before anything can be published on GitHub, you must have an entry file. If you followed our guide step by step, you should already have one as an index.html counts as an entry file. If you don’t have one or don’t want to use index.html as your entry file, you can also use index.md or README.md file. But for a simpler process, stick to using the index.html as your entry file.

🔧 Configure your publishing source

There are multiple approaches to configuring your publishing source on the GitHub free hosting platform. However, the simplest way is to publish your website from a branch. To do this, follow these couple of steps:

• Go to the website repository
• Click the settings icon, then proceed to Code and Automation > Pages
• Under the Build and Deployment option, proceed to Source > Deploy from a branch
• Use the drop-down menu to select a publishing source for your page
• Save your publishing source

Once you do this, your publishing source on GitHub will be set, and the majority of your website will be configured. Once you’ve enabled your GitHub pages and have selected a source for your website, it’s time to start customizing it.

You can also watch this video to learn more on the topic.

Customizing Your Website

The goal of all websites is to attract visitors and help the owner achieve certain results (generate leads, make more sales, or other). And even if you’re hosting a static website on GitHub, it’s important to have an interesting and functional website that users genuinely enjoy using. That way, your website will help you achieve your goals much faster.

With that in mind, as every website has a unique set of goals and audiences, customizing it to make it suitable for the end user and for the goal it needs to achieve is crucial. And just like with all the other processes involved in hosting your very own GitHub website, customizing your website is also relatively easy to do.

If you’re looking to publish a unique website using GitHub, you can customize your website using Jekyll themes. Jekyll is a curated directory of various website themes and GitHub templates you can use with GitHub for an easier time developing your website. To start, you need to choose a Jekyll theme.

✨ Choosing and applying a Jekyll theme

On the website, you’ll find a variety of free and premium themes available for use. Though you can select and use any of the themes available, we recommend going for one that suits your site’s purpose, brand, and audience. Jekyll has themes for blogs, businesses, and more, making it much easier to find the exact theme for your needs.

There are quite a few things you need to consider, so don’t rush this step. Take your time when choosing a theme so that when you’ve explored all the options, you’ll know that you’ve made the right choice. Once you select a theme from Jekyll, it’s very easy to add the theme to your GitHub website.

Before doing this, you must go through the steps we mentioned earlier. But if you’ve followed our guide every step of the way, here’s how you can apply a Jekyll theme to your GitHub website:

• Open your website repository on GitHub
• Go to your website’s publishing source and look for “_config.yml.”
• Click the edit icon on the top-right corner to launch the file editor
• Go to the Jekyll theme’s repository, look for the README file, and note the name of your Jekyll theme
• Type in ”remote_theme: THEME-NAME”  but replace “THEME-NAME” with the name of the theme you found on the README file
• Add a commit message at the bottom of the page that details the changes made to the file
• Select your commit email address in the drop-down menu (only verified email addresses will appear on this menu)
• After the commit messages field, select the brand where you want to apply the change through the drop-down menu
• Click on the Propose File Change option

GitHub is a collaboration tool. So, major changes, such as the website’s theme must be approved by all the collaborators you work with on the platform. But once the changes have been approved, you’ll see them applied to your webpage in no time.

That said, even if the theme has been applied to your website and you believe you found the perfect theme for your needs, you still might want to customize the theme to make sure it resonated with your brand perfectly. You don’t want your website to look like all other sites that use the same theme, so a little customization goes a long way.

This is because if you want to customize how your website looks, including the theme and other parameters, you must use these coding languages.

😎 Customizing your website’s appearance

To customize your website theme using HTML, follow the steps below:

• Go to the repository of your theme’s source
• Go to the _layouts folder and find the default.html file
• Copy the file and proceed to your publishing source on the site’s repository
• Create a new file named _layouts/default.html and paste all the content you copied from the default file
• Customize and tweak the code to better fit your website’s needs

If you wish to use CSS to customize your website theme, follow the following five steps:

• Go to your site’s GitHub repository and open the publishing source
• Create a new file and name it /assets/css/style.scss.
• On top of the file, you can add all the content you want that suits your website
• Add custom imports after the @import line on the file
• Save all your changes to your website’s theme and enjoy the new look!

Website customization can take a long time, which is why it’s crucial that you understand the exact tweaks your website needs. Additionally, you won’t be able to apply any of these changes without basic coding knowledge, so it would be very beneficial if you have all of this information and knowledge before you start hosting your website on GitHub.

Publishing the Website

Publishing your website on GitHub is very simple. To do so, you must:

• Log in to GitHub and on your home dashboard select “New site from Git”
• Go to your site’s repository and set your publishing site
• Once you’ve set and saved your publishing source, your website will be online

That said, websites are constantly evolving and changing. And if you want to ensure that you’re always relevant and a step ahead of the competition, you’re going to have to push changes to your website.

If you would like to push changes to your website, these are the steps to accomplishing it:

• Select the push origin option which pushes the changes to your repository
• From there, GitHub may prompt you to get new commits from the remote, to do this, simply click on the Fetch option at the prompt

After that, your changes will be pushed. GitHub is easily one of the simplest and easiest ways to host a website on the internet. This is why pushing changes is very straightforward on the platform.

If you would like to view your GitHub website on the internet, proceed to the GitHub pages option. From there, you’ll see all your web pages and their visibility status. On this drop-down menu, you should also be able to see a View Website option. When you click on this option, it should lead you to your published webpage for viewing.

How to Host a Website on GitHub: Conclusion

There are quite a few steps to hosting and publishing a website on GitHub. And while it might seem intimidating at first, it’s actually very simple once you break everything down into separate steps. To break the entire process down, here’s what you need to do to host a website on GitHub:

First, you need to create a GitHub account and download the Git software. Then, you need to create your repository and upload your website files. Once that is done, you need to configure your GitHub pages, choose a Jekyll theme, and customize your website to your liking. The last step you need to take is to push your website to the internet and make it live for everyone to access.

In the past, publishing and hosting a website took a lot of time and resources. But with GitHub, teams can work much faster and more efficiently in creating and publishing a website to the internet.

That said, it can still be hard to navigate through all of GitHub’s features, especially if it’s your first time. So, before you start GitHub hosting yourself, make sure to go through all the details of this guide. And once you do that, rest assured that GitHub hosting will be much easier for you and your team. With all that in mind, here are a few useful links for further reading:

GitHub Pages: https://docs.github.com/en/pages
GitHub Repository: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories
GitHub Documentation: https://docs.github.com/en

For improving web development skills, here are some recommended reading resources:

Mozilla Developer Network: https://developer.mozilla.org/
W3Schools: https://www.w3schools.com/
CSS Tricks: https://css-tricks.com/
Smashing Magazine: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/

If you plan on hosting a website on GitHub and you need to seamlessly keep track of time (whether for your personal records or for invoicing a client), be sure to use Everhour. It’s the leading time tracker on the market right now and learning how to track time with Everhour on GitHub is extremely easy.

The post How to Host a Website on GitHub in 2024 appeared first on Everhour Blog.

These templates are features of GitHub that allow you to create a repository you can use as the starting point for other repositories. With GitHub templates, you can also build a personal profile and brand. Many programmers use it as a social network to collaborate on software and website development.

As a leading tool, GitHub offers many benefits via its templates, including enhanced workflow to perform routine tasks and easy version control. Further, users can concentrate on more important aspects of their projects and get much-needed help from the beginning of the project. These benefits showcase the importance of GitHub for project management. 

Commonly Used GitHub Templates

Depending on the project you’re working on, there are many GitHub templates for different software development scenarios. However, some are more popular than others. Here are some of the most common options out there. 

Visual studio code pull request

You can use this template to review and manage your GitHub pull requests and issues directly in VS Code. Further, the extension comes with wide-ranging support, such as: 

• List and browse PRs via VS Code. 
• Authenticating and connecting the code to GitHub and GitHub Enterprise. 
• There are completion suggestions for users and issues. 

FastAPI project template

This template is the base to start an open API project. It comes with SQL Model, Typer, FastAPI, and VueJS. The template contains other helpful features such as auto-generating change logs using gitchangelog to keep a HISTORY.md file automatically based on your commit history on every release.

Also, there’s a ‘Make file’ with useful commands to install, test, format, and release your project. A simple Container file will help users to build a container image for a project. Enjoy continuous integration using GitHub Actions with jobs to lint, test, and release your project on various platforms, including Linux, Mac, and Windows. 

Cveinnt LiveTerm

LiveTerm is popular for its pull requests and excellent for building or developing terminal-styled websites in minutes—thanks to its highly customizable and easy-to-use platform powered by Next.js.

As one of the most commonly used GitHub templates around, you only need to work with one file—config.json. After cloning the repository, run yarn install & yarn dev and edit config.json to build your website. 

Automationhacks/bug_template.md

Bug reporting is easy with this template because it provides a clear description of the bug. Also, you can obtain clear expectations for your development efforts. With that, you’ll know what to prioritize in your project. 

Azure DevOps 

This popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform provides DevOps practices and tools for the end-to-end software life cycle. However, Azure DevOps is not limited to internal tools because it can integrate with most other industry-leading DevOps tools. 

Customizing GitHub Templates

Customizing a GitHub template is easy because the templates are available for use when you open a template repository.

📃 For example, you can add a README file to your repository explaining why your project is useful, what it contains, and how developers can use it. Also, you might want your repository to be open-source. A license is handy and gives others the freedom to use, change, and distribute the software. 

🔳 It’s possible to add a sponsor button to your repository as well. This way, it enjoys increased visibility, especially for funding options for an open-source project. Customize the image displayed on platforms with users linking to your repository. 

© The structure, fields, and guidelines of the templates can also be customized. Classify the topics to help others find and add related topics to your repository. Further, the language for use is up to you, and when done, you can add a citation file that helps users correctly cite your software.

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Seamlessly integrating with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, its user-friendly interface and customizable reports make it the ultimate time tracking solution for small and mid-size teams.

With dedicated support ensuring you receive timely assistance, our team is here to help you promptly and with a smile!

Creating New GitHub Templates

Creating a new template is straightforward. With a GitHub repo template, you can begin any static project page. For example, an issue template is designed with the ability to create the template of the structure of every new issue, while a pull request template gives each team member information on what to check while making the pull request. A repository template is another option you can start with. 

Based on your specific project needs, you can create different templates. For issue templates, the following steps will help: 

• Head to Github.com and navigate to the main page of the repository.
• Click Settings under your repository name. If ‘Settings’ is unavailable, select the dropdown menu and click Settings. 

• Next up is the “Features” section under Issues. Click Set up Templates. However, you may need to enable Issues and refresh the page before the button appears. 
• Use the Add template dropdown menu to click on the template type you want to create. 

• Click on Preview and Edit to review the template before committing it to the repository. 
• Type in the fields to edit the template and its content. 

• To automatically set default issue titles, assign the issue to people that have read access to the repository, or apply labels to issues raised from the template. 
• When you finish editing and previewing your template, click on Propose changes in the upper right corner of the page.
• There’s a “Commit message” section after that. Input your commit description to highlight the changes you made.
• You can commit your template directly to the default branch or create a new branch before opening a pull request. 
• Click Commit changes, and the changes will merge into the default branch. There, it will be available for contributors to open new issues in the repository. 

Whether you want to create a pull request template for yourself or your organization, you can use the following steps: 

• Go to Github.com, then navigate to the main page of the repository.
• Select Add file dropdown menu above the list of files and click Create a new file. 
• Next is the name field, where you can use various custom options on your template. You can make the pull request visible, store files, create multiple templates, and more. 
• Add your pull request to the body of the new file. It can contain a reference to a related issue in your repository or a description of proposed changes in the pull request. 
• Click Commit Changes.
• Type a short, meaningful commit message to accompany the changes. 
• Below the commit message entry, you can add your commit to the existing branch or a new one. If the current branch is the default, create a new one for your commit. 

• Lastly, click Commit Changes or Propose Changes. 

A GitHub template repo is easy to create. Use the following steps to create one. 

• Go to Github.com and navigate to the main page of the repository.
• Under your repository name, hit Settings, or select the dropdown menu, then click Settings.
• Select Template repository.

Your GitHub template can be reusable and remain effective in the long run. As a result, you can copy and paste from one workflow to another, making it reusable. You and others with access to the reusable template can then call the template from another template. 

✨ Here are some tips and best practices for creating reusable and effective templates: 

• Ensure that the template workflow is accessible to team members and future creators looking to add to the template. 
• Avoid or limit duplication to make workflows easier to maintain, which allows you to quickly develop new workflows by building on other developers’ work. 
• Create templates using keywords that can be used in other workflows. 

Discovering GitHub Template Libraries

As part of its convenient capabilities, GitHub templates come with libraries. These are collections of preprogrammed templates that implement a behavior when invoked. In addition, libraries are well-defined and are designed for reuse throughout the implementation stage. For example, websites may have multiple web pages implementing the same navigation bar or text field; however, none of these objects are related. 

As for repositories, they enable developers to mark a repository as a template they can use later for creating new repositories. These new repositories can contain the template repository’s files, folders, configuration, etc. 

A template repository is also a convenient, valuable tool for building new projects with pre-configured starting templates. That means including all dependencies, structure, and customized automation processes predefined and ready for coding. However, using a template and forking a repository link to the original repository are two different things. 

Your new repository often has all the codes but none of the history, making it easier to keep track of your edits. Also, your project won’t get linked to every project forked from the repository. Many popular repositories and libraries offer a variety of templates. Here are some of them: 

Facebook/React

This is a library for web and native user interfaces. React lets users build user interfaces out of individual pieces called components. For example, you can build your unique React components and combine them in creative ways.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re working on an individual or team project. Using React feels the same. It lets you work with components written by independent people, teams, and organizations.

OCornut/ImGUI

This is a public GUI library for C++. It helps to produce optimized vertex buffers that developers can render in a 3D-pipeline-enabled application. Also, it is fast and portable, enabling rapid iterations that empower programmers to design content creation and visualization/debug tools. Contrast that with a UI designed for the average end-user. 

Generally, this library is simple and geared toward productivity. It is majorly suited to integration in game engines (for tooling), real-time 3D applications, embedded applications, full-screen applications, etc. 

Curl/curl

Curl is a library to transfer data via different programs, such as URL syntax, supporting DICT, File, LDAP, LDAPS, RTSP, etc. Libcurl is the library curl is using to do its job, and it is readily available for use by the user’s software. 

Awesome

This is one of the most popular repos curating all topics from software development to hardware and business. It has thousands of stars on GitHub, reaching more than 200,000. Depending on what you hope to learn, it’s a unique and all-encompassing tool capable of meeting almost any need you can imagine. 

Best Practices for Using GitHub Templates

Whenever you’re working with GitHub project templates, you want to ensure they are effectively managed. Here are tips and best practices you can adopt for different types of GitHub templates: 

🔨 Break down large issues 

With issues and pull requests, you get built-in features to easily communicate with collaborators. For example, you can use @mentions to alert team members. Assign tasks and links to related pull requests or issues to communicate how they are connected.

📄 Use the description and README

Another tip is to use your project’s description and README to share information with other users about the project. These processes help you explain the project’s purpose, describe the views and uses, and include relevant links and images.

📊 Apply views 

Views are necessary and a big way to look at your project from different angles. For example, views help you sort out information about the project, group them by custom priority or volume, and apply custom dates to fields, depending on user preferences. 

✨ Apply one source of truth

With multiple sources of truth, information can quickly get out of sync. For this reason, it’s best to apply and maintain a single source of truth. If there are related parts of your project, keep them in a single location, instead of spreading them across multiple fields. 

🤖 Automate tasks

Automation helps you save time on busy work and project schedules. Moreover, the fewer tasks you manually do, the more likely your project will stay up-to-date. Since projects offer built-in workflows, you can configure the workflows to archive items when they meet certain criteria automatically. Also, you can automatically add items from a repository when they match a filter. With GitHub Actions, you can automate routine tasks. You don’t have to perform or monitor the tasks manually. 

💁‍♀️ Use different field types 

There are different fields in GitHub templates, and you can take advantage of them, depending on your needs. For example, an iteration field can help you schedule work or create a timeline. You can also group by iteration to see whether items are balanced between iterations. 

Further, some fields can allow you to track information about certain tasks based on a preset list of values. That includes monitoring priority or project phase. 

🔁 Remain consistent 

With any project on GitHub, consistency is vital. For example, if you’re running an online code collaboration, there must be only one project management tool, one communication tool, and one way of automating. If you’re using Everhour as a time tracker, project management tool or time clock app, keep using it. Consistency is crucial to collaborative success. 

You can explore these strategies to improve versioning, updates, and community contributions. The following tips will help you: 

• Ensure that you communicate with your users. Let them know the kind of version and updates you’re applying. 
• Run an open-release schedule. Like other top tools, GitHub has published release schedules. 
• Be consistent and predictable by communicating changes regularly and transparently.

Integration with GitHub Workflow

Generally, GitHub workflow templates extend their config-as-code capabilities. Also, like issue templates, the workflow templates are defined in a GitHub repository, meaning you can leverage all of GitHub’s collaborative capabilities. Further, each GitHub repository template is defined through a YAML file that looks like similar files users are accustomed to. 

Templates can be used in conjunction with branches, pull requests, and code reviews by adding them to repositories. With that, project contributors automatically see the template’s contents in the pull request body. Additionally, you can create a pull request template subdirectory and add multiple pull request templates in it. You can then use the template query parameter to choose which template will fill the pull request body.

Software development is complex, but templates streamline the development and collaboration process.

Also, you can inject better efficiency into your project by integrating GitHub with industry-leading time tracking and project management software like Everhour. This way, you can boost workflow processes on your GitHub template repository, generate real-time reports, track your team’s performance, and enjoy many more features. 

Leveraging Community Templates

There are many vital advantages to community-contributed GitHub templates. Most projects started by one person or team get to have other developers contribute to the project’s success. For example, you might be unaware of bugs, but others can attend to this via the creation history. 

In addition, a community of users could suggest changes in the form of a new learning outcome, updates to the content, updates to the responses, or the logic of the course. With that, you can provide some solutions to problems on the template. When users spot an issue, they can check it out, submit suggestions, or make changes to open-source templates. 

Community-contributed GitHub templates drive innovation and creative problem-solving. A collaborative effort from beginners or experts enables them to learn and upgrade their skills. Even employers recognize this as a plus on their resumes.

You may be looking to find and leverage templates created by other developers. You can see developers that contributed commits to a repository and its dependencies on GitHub. The contributor’s graph will open templates and repositories to public and private users. For example, if there’s a project on Python, you can check a list of people who have contributed to the template and what they have contributed. 

1️⃣ Firstly, the project template will contain reusable code libraries that you can reference for the section of codes that can be reused for different applications. You can do this repeatedly with little or no modifications. It will boost the coding efficiency, allowing the code to be compiled faster and with less effort from your end. 

2️⃣ Secondly, it simplifies new project creations. Thanks to a predefined project template serving as a blueprint, you do not need to start from scratch. That gives developers an idea about the project’s structure or application from a previous one. 

3️⃣ In addition, you enjoy reduced cost of creation and future maintenance. Individuals and enterprises can save money and time on integration processes, resulting in faster onboarding. 

✅ Benefits of contributing back to the template community 

Contributing back to the template community has unique benefits for you and other developers. Here are some of them: 

• You can easily demonstrate your expertise and build a professional reputation in the developer community. 
• You will contribute to the open-source ecosystem’s growth whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting. 
• Saving many developers’ time and resources with prompt and effective solutions. 
• You also get to maintain your repositories on GitHub. That includes building a portfolio of your work. 
• By contributing to open-source projects and maintaining a GitHub repo template, you will be advancing your career. 

Final Thoughts

GitHub is a household name and has become an essential tool for many developers around the globe. Thanks to its collaborative features and properties, it continues transforming how developers create codes, host websites, and work together. 

GitHub templates remain helpful, making it easier for developers to showcase their skills and build a professional reputation while adding resources and ideas to collaborations. If you’re not using GitHub or GitLab or any of GitHub alternatives, it’s time to explore and utilize the templates to enhance your development workflows. 

You don’t have to start every project from scratch as a developer. Leverage the existing templates to draw from ideas effectively. Whether you’re just starting as a developer or an experienced professional, GitHub is a valuable tool in software development. Its range of tools, resources, and growing community will continue to impact the software development landscape for years. 

The post GitHub Templates: All You Need to Know appeared first on Everhour Blog.

Everhour handles this task nicely. This is proved by our today’s guest – Ryan Aker, a founder of RCA Web.

Hi Ryan, welcome,  let’s start by asking you to tell us what your company does.

RCA Web is a small business for Web Design/Development, Hosting, Management, and Consulting. All our contractors are remote-based but 100% US-based. We are a lean team, but efficient in what we do. Providing the best code and services is the number 1 priority.

And to achieve these tasks you need to be good at time tracking of what you do?

Absolutely! Time tracking is very important because we provide ourselves with being as transparent as possible with our customers for what they are paying for. They are paying for work that is getting done and nothing more.

What project management tool does your team use?

GitHub Issues is our PM tool. Having the ability for developers and customers to add and track issues for the different projects/applications on 1 location keeps workflow more streamlined. The icing on the cake is the Everhour integration to track time with Github to a PR or Issue.

Have you ever tried any other time tracking tool?

No other time tracking tools are used. Everhour integration to GitHub and the lightweight, not over-developed applications is perfect for our developers.

What are the Top 3 things you love most about Everhour?

As I mentioned before, the integration allows us to track time with Github which really makes this process a breeze. As a manager, I like your various types of reports, specifically a report based on date range and by each or all team members.

Besides, it is amazing that you can see a timer in multiple repos in Github and new repos always sync automatically.

Thanks, Ryan!

The post How Remote Teams Can Track Time with GitHub – RCA Web appeared first on Everhour Blog.