GitHub Day 1 — Exact Commands (Beginner Class)

Goal: First repo + first push Level: Absolute Beginner Time: 60–75 minutes

Teacher line (say this)

“Today you’ll stop coding like a beginner and start working like a professional — because your code will now have history.”

Open Terminal / Git Bash / VS Code Terminal and type these commands exactly.

Step 0 — Check Git

git --version

Step 1 — Configure Git (one-time)

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "your@email.com"
git config --list

Step 2 — Create project folder

mkdir pp-day1
cd pp-day1

Step 3 — Initialize Git

git init

Step 4 — Create a file (Windows)

echo Hello GitHub > index.html

Step 4 — Create a file (Mac/Linux)

touch index.html

Step 5 — Status

git status

Step 6 — Add to staging

git add index.html
# OR (all files)
git add .

Step 7 — Commit

git commit -m "Initial commit"

Step 8 — Do this on GitHub website

Create a repository named pp-day1 and do NOT create README on GitHub for this repo. Copy the repository URL.

Step 9 — Connect to GitHub

git remote add origin https://github.com/username/pp-day1.git
git remote -v

Step 10 — Push to GitHub

git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

Now students will change the file again, commit again, and push again.

Modify → status → add → commit → push

echo Learning Git is powerful >> index.html
git status
git add .
git commit -m "Updated index file"
git push

What students must memorize

git status → git add . → git commit -m "msg" → git push

1) “Author identity unknown”

Fix by configuring your name/email:

Fix

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "your@email.com"

2) “remote origin already exists”

Fix by removing and adding again:

Fix

git remote remove origin
git remote add origin https://github.com/username/pp-day1.git