Setting up WordPress GitHub Integration Simplified: 5 Easy Steps

The experience of creating WordPress Themes and Plugins can be both fun and lucrative. While there are numerous methods for managing your Workflow, Version Control, and Storage, focusing on the best available tools can help you take your projects to the next level. If you’ve spent any time researching WordPress, most likely you would have come across the term Github. It is one of the most popular platforms for developers to host and collaborate on projects. It’s well worth learning how to use GitHub as it’s an excellent platform for Tracking, Managing, and Collaborating on development projects. It allows you to host projects online and use Git’s powerful Version Control to track every change.

Upon a complete walkthrough of this article, you will gain a decent understanding of WordPress and GitHub. This article will also provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to set up WordPress GitHub Integration in a seamless manner. Read along to learn more about WordPress GitHub Integration!

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• What is WordPress?
• Key Features of WordPress
• What is GitHub?
• Understanding Git
• How to Build the WordPress GitHub Integration?
  • Step 1: Create a Local WordPress Environment
  • Step 2: Install Git on your Workstation
  • Step 3: Create a Local Repository for your Project
  • Step 4: Create a Repository on GitHub
  • Step 5: Commit your Project to GitHub
• Conclusion

Prerequisites

• Hands-on experience with WordPress.
• An active GitHub account.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a Free and Open-Source platform for Building, Publishing and Managing websites. It is a simple and easy-to-use solution that makes it easier for Bloggers and Publishers to publish their content online. It was designed to be a Blog Content Management System (CMS), therefore it contains a lot of capabilities specialized for that use case.

One of the most appealing aspects of WordPress is that it does not necessarily require any prior coding knowledge in order to create and maintain a website. It includes drag-and-drop tools for creating a website from the ground up, as well as a large collection of commercial and free themes covering almost every field. WordPress is Search Engine friendly, which means the users may develop content that appeals to both visitors and Search Engines. It can be used to create Blogging Websites, Corporate Portfolios, E-Commerce Websites, and much more.

Key Features of WordPress

Some of the key features of WordPress are as follows:

• Efficient SEO Optimization: WordPress ensures that your content is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) optimized and automatically generates various SEO Signals for your content.
• Ease of Use: You do not need any technical knowledge to create and maintain a WordPress website. The platform is easy to use and saves you the trouble of building a website from scratch.
• Multiple Staff Editors: You can add multiple editors to WordPress and grant them access to the website. In this manner, you can distribute responsibilities and allow different team members to produce content at the same time.
• Themes: WordPress offers a wide range of intuitive themes using which you can give your website the perfect look and feel, all without knowing how to code.
• Easy Integrations: Plugins help WordPress users integrate third-party tools and other administrative services into their websites quickly and effortlessly.

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a web-based interface that uses Git, an Open-Source Version Control software that allows multiple people to make separate changes to web pages at the same time. GitHub has a number of useful features that enable development teams to collaborate on the same project and easily create new versions of software without meddling with existing versions, but it doesn’t stop there. Once new additions to a program, for example, are finished, they can be easily incorporated into existing programs. GitHub also makes it extremely simple to collaborate on code strings in order to fine-tune and perfect even the smallest parts of a program.

Understanding Git

Git is a Version Control System that helps keep track of the changes that you generally make in the codebase of a project. The main purpose of Git is to manage all the changes made to one or more projects during a given period of time. It helps coordinate work between members of a team and tracks the progress of a team over time. Git also helps programming professionals and non-technical users by monitoring their project files. It can handle projects of any size and enable multiple users to contribute to the same project simultaneously.

How to Build the WordPress GitHub Integration?

Follow the steps listed below to build the WordPress GitHub Integration:

Step 1: Create a Local WordPress Environment

While creating websites using WordPress, you should always consider using a Local Staging Environment. When you develop locally, you can create an environment that is similar to your Production Server. You can develop and test your code offline without disrupting anything that is already live & running. For setting up the WordPress GitHub Integration, you’ll need to install WordPress on your computer to create a local staging environment. You can do this in a variety of ways, but we recommend using DesktopServer, which allows you to quickly create a free local version of WordPress. Follow the steps given below to do so:

• Click here to get redirected to the Desktop Server Homepage.
• Navigate to the right section of the homepage and click on Free Download to download the .zip file.

• Now, head over to the Download tab of your browser and install the downloaded .zip file after extracting it.
• The installation process will take a moment to work and once it is done, you’ll be able to create and configure a new local WordPress site.

Step 2: Install Git on your Workstation

• Click here and install Git for your preferred operating system.
• You can check it by opening your Terminal/Command Line Interface by entering the following command:

 git --version

• If Git is successfully installed, this command will return a number representing the current Git version that you have installed.

Step 3: Create a Local Repository for your Project

You can now start working on your project by creating a local Git Repository. We’ll use the default Twenty Twenty One theme in this example, which should already be installed on your local WordPress installation.

• To begin, use the following command to navigate to the theme’s folder:

cd /Users/you/Documents/Websites/website/wp-content/themes/twentytwentyone

Note: Do not forget to replace you and website with your folder’s name and website name respectively.

• Next, initialize this directory as a repository by using the following command:

  git init

• Now, to add your files to the folder, use the following command:

           git add

• You are now ready to commit your changes. The following command will commit all files in the index and include a message to assist you in keeping track of your versions:

  git commit -m "The first commit"

Step 4: Create a Repository on GitHub

Once you have successfully created a local repository for your project, you’ll be required to create a GitHub repository for the same. Follow the steps listed below to do so:

• Log in to your GitHub account using the appropriate credentials.
• Click on the Create Repository button.

• Next, give a unique and concise name to your repository. You can also add a description for your project so that it becomes easier for other developers to get the gist of it.

• Finally, at the bottom of this screen, you’ll notice two drop-down menus with additional options. The first allows you to specify a gitignore option if you want Git to ignore certain files when tracking them.
• The second option allows you to specify the license for your repository. When working on a real project, it’s critical to carefully consider which license to use. WordPress has very specific license rules that you should be aware of if you plan on developing for the platform.
• For the time being, you can simply select None from that menu and then click on Create Repository to finish configuring things. This will redirect you to your new project where you can add the new WordPress theme.

Step 5: Commit your Project to GitHub

You are now ready to publish your theme to GitHub. Enter the following command into Git, replacing the URL with a link to the repository you just created:

git remote add origin https://github.com/yourusername/my-git-theme.git
git push -u origin master

You will then be prompted to enter your GitHub credentials. Once you have done that, all files committed to your local repository will be pushed to your GitHub project and WordPress GitHub Integration will be complete.

Once you follow all the above steps in the correct sequence, you will be able to set up WordPress GitHub Integration in no time!

Conclusion

With WordPress GitHub Integration, you gain complete control over every single aspect of your projects. You gain access to each change by using Git’s powerful Version Control features, allowing you to easily revert to earlier versions of your projects. This article provided a brief introduction to WordPress and Github along with their salient features. It discussed the steps using which you can easily build the WordPress Github Integration. Integrating and analyzing your data from a diverse set of data sources such as GitHub & WordPress can be challenging and this is where Hevo Data comes into the picture.

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