Your GitHub account
Your site's code lives here. We run this stack by default; if you want to hold the account yourself, it is yours, not a studio login we share, and the transfer is documented.
READ THIS FIRST · THE MISTAKES THAT COST THE MOST
Where this goes wrong
- Do not use an email address that belongs to someone else in the business. The day they leave, the site goes with them.
- Do not make a new address just for this project. If you cannot answer 'where is that email account' in three years, the account is gone and the code goes with it.
- If GitHub offers you a paid plan, skip it. We will tell you before a project ever needs one.
- Keep the recovery codes somewhere that is not the same phone you will lose. Two-step verification with no saved codes is a locked account.
Before you start
If one of these is missing, get it sorted first. It is faster than stalling halfway through.
- An email address you will still control in five years. A free webmail address is fine if it is genuinely the one you use and check.
- Your phone. GitHub will want it for the security code.
- A password you have not used on any other site. If you use a password manager, this is the moment to open it.
- The name you want on the account — your own, or the business. It appears on a public profile page.
Do it in this order
Go to github.com/join. Leave the organisation or enterprise tab alone — you want a personal account. Enter the email address, pick a username you can spell, set a password, and take the free plan if it offers you one.
Open the email GitHub just sent you and click the verification link. Nothing works until you do this, and the verification email is the one that gets buried.
Click your avatar in the top right, then Settings, then Password and authentication, and turn on two-step verification. Save the recovery codes it shows you somewhere you will find them again — a screenshot in your camera roll is fine.
On the same settings page, check what is public. Your profile is visible to anyone, and your email address may be showing on it. If you would rather it were not, hide it.
Send us the username you chose. The code is built inside your account from the first commit, not moved into it at the end.