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General Discussion

Posted by Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith
2,672 Points

GitHub and Wordpress?

I develop on a few different computers a desktop PC, a Laptop PC, and a Mac Mini. I have just been using Dropbox for my files currently but I am wondering if I should use github instead at least for Wordpress development. I'm just wondering what everyone thinks about this? The reason I am wondering is that I'm planning to develop locally until I am ready to push it out to the web.

Thanks, Jon

2 Answers

James Richards
James Richards
2,976 Points
James Richards
James Richards
2,976 Points

Hi Jonathan,

I think how developers store and edit there code is entirely personal preference, but one thing I will say is that version control is very, very important.

Being able to roll back your code at any time to a version that was stable is very important, if at some point your developing your site and you find yourself neck deep in code and your drowning in bugs and problems fast, being able to roll back using version control is a life saver. As far as I'm aware, Drop Box doesn't allow you to roll back a version of a file, but I may be wrong, I haven't used it for a while.

Another potential issue is if you have multiple developers collaborating on the same project, keeping track of code, versions and bugs can be troublesome with something like Drop Box. Version control is also managed on a developer profile basis, meaning everyone developing the site will have their own signatures whenever they push new work to GitHub, so its much easier to see who's doing what, and what exactly they did.

Lastly, it's important to remember that Github is very much the industry standard for version control and code management. If you ever find yourself applying for a developer job, having a good understanding of version control and GitHub is a must - you need to know how to use it.

So to summarise:

  • Version control is important, GitHub will give you all the version control you could need and more.
  • If you have multiple developers working on the site, Drop Box probably isn't going to cut it.
  • It's the industry standard, almost all developers use it and if you evey apply for a job it's a great plus to have on your resume.

The bottom line, get off Drop Box and just use GitHub all the time!

This Treehouse course is a great start to using Git. When you're ready, start looking at Github : http://teamtreehouse.com/library/git-basics

Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith
2,672 Points
Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith
2,672 Points

Thank you for the info! I did know about the git basics link and have been leaning toward that anyway. I think I have been putting it off as I haven't done a lot of coding or HTML since the mid 90's and I was trying to just learn some more of the basics before I dove into the deep end with github! I really want to get my blog up and running so I started on that section of wordpress to do just that. You are right it does seem to be the standard of the community and I will go through the github section as soon as I finish the wordpress blog section. I'll head back to design and develop after I know how to use github! I guess I was a little intimidated by it but you have definitely help sway my decision.

Thank you James!! -Jon