Creating your Git Repo

Create a new repository on GitHub. This could be performed using GitHub Desktop however, for the purposes of this guide, we will utilise the command line.

To avoid errors, do not initialize the new repository with README, license, or gitignore files. You can add these files after your project has been pushed to GitHub.

Open Terminal (for Mac users) or the command prompt (for Windows and Linux users).

For our purposes, let’s call your new repo “jekyll”.

In the terminal, whilst in your site directory, initialize the directory as a Git repository:

$ git init

Add the files in your new local repository. This stages them for the first commit:

$ git add .

Commit the files that you’ve staged in your local repository:

$ git commit -m 'First commit'

At the top of your GitHub repository’s Quick Setup page, click the clipboard icon to copy the remote repository URL.

In Terminal, add the URL for the remote repository where your local repository will be pushed.

git remote add origin [your_Git_repository_URL]

Now, it’s time to push the changes in your local repository to GitHub:

git push -u origin master

Now that your assets are up and running on GitHub, let’s connect them to Netlify.

Connecting to Netlify

Once you log in to Netlify, you’ll be taken to https://app.netlify.com/. From here, select ‘New site from Git’:

Clicking “New Site” brings you to this screen:

Whenever you push an update to GitHub (or GitLab/BitBucket), Netlify will automatically deploy your updates and changes!
Since your assets are hosted on your Git provider, you’ll need to link Netlify to that provider. Follow the steps within the UI to link your account.

It’s time to allow Netlify and GitHub to talk to each other. Clicking the “Authorize Application” button will do just that. Netlify doesn’t store your GitHub access token on our servers. If you’d like to know more about the permissions Netlify requests and why we need them, you can visit https://www.netlify.com/docs/github-permissions/.

Now that you’ve connected Netlify and GitHub, you can see a list of your Git repos. There’s the “jekyll” repo you just pushed to GitHub. Let’s select it.

You now have the option to configure your deploy settings. For the purposes of this tutorial, the default parameters gathered by Netlify are appropriate. Click “Save”.

That’s almost it! Now, you can kick back and wait a couple of moments until Netlify does its thing.

And there we have it! That’s it. Done. Your site has now been deployed to Netlify along with a Netlify subdomain. From here, you’re free to add your own custom domain and explore what else Netlify can do!