GitHub Help - User Documentation

The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20141213213031/https://help.github.com/

Sometimes you just need a little help.

Common Issues

Bootcamp
- Set Up Git
- Create A Repo
- Fork A Repo
- Be Social
- GitHub Glossary
- Good Resources for Learning Git and GitHub
Setup
- Signing up for a new GitHub account
- Setting your email in Git
- Setting your username in Git
- Dealing with line endings
- Keeping your email address private
- How do I set up my profile picture?
Using Git
- Git cheatsheet
- Ignoring files
- Associating text editors with Git
- What is a good Git workflow?
- Using Git blame to trace changes in a file
- Resolving a merge conflict from the command line
User Accounts
- Adding an email address to your GitHub account
- Reviewing your security log
- Discounted private accounts
- Changing your primary email address
- Changing your GitHub username
- Merging multiple user accounts
- Deleting your user account
- What's the difference between user and organization accounts?
- Publicizing or concealing organization membership
- Permission levels for a user account repository
- What happens when I change my username?
- Remembering your GitHub username or email
- What happens if my repository is locked?
- Blocking a user
- Unblocking a user
- Best practices for leaving your company
- What does the 'Available for hire' checkbox do?
- Verifying your email address
- Preventing Unauthorized Access
- Sudo Mode
- Connecting with third-party applications
- What is a strong password?
Organizations
- Creating a new organization account
- Creating a new organization from scratch
- Converting a user into an organization
- How do I access my organization account?
- Can I create accounts for people in my organization?
- Managing an organization's settings
- Adding or inviting members to a team in an organization
- Removing a member from a team in your organization
- Removing a user from your organization
- What are the different access permissions?
- Permission levels for an organization repository
- Keeping your organization secure
- Deleting a private fork of a private organization repository
- Reviewing the audit log for your organization
- Renaming an organization
- Converting an organization into a user
- What happens when I change my organization's name?
- Transferring organization ownership
- Removing yourself from an organization
- Deleting an organization account
- Can an organization be added to a different organization account?
Security
- Why do my images have strange URLs?
- How can I reset my password?
- Updating your GitHub access credentials
Two-factor Authentication (2FA)
- About Two-Factor Authentication
- Changing two-factor authentication delivery methods
- Downloading your two-factor authentication recovery codes
- Setting a fallback authentication number
- Configuring two-factor authentication via text message
- Configuring two-factor authentication via a TOTP mobile app
- Providing your 2FA authentication code
- Recovering your account if you lost your 2FA credentials
- Countries where SMS authentication is supported
Billing
- What plan should I choose?
- Do you have custom plans?
- What do I do if my card is declined?
- Does GitHub provide invoicing?
- How do I cancel my account?
- 500 error while upgrading
- If my account is locked and I upgrade it, do I owe anything for previous time?
- How does upgrading or downgrading affect the billing process?
- Monthly and Yearly Billing
Paying for User Accounts
- Switching payment methods for your personal account
- Removing a credit card associated with your user account
- Paying for your GitHub user account
- Upgrading your personal account from free to paid with PayPal
- Updating your personal account's PayPal information
- Upgrading your personal account from free to paid with a credit card
- Updating your personal account's credit card
- Downloading receipts for personal accounts
- Redeeming a coupon for your personal account
- How can I add extra information to my personal account's receipts?
- Finding your personal account's next billing date
- Downgrading a user account to free
- Setting your personal account's billing email
- Unlocking a locked personal account
Paying for Organization Accounts
- Switching payment methods for your organization
- Removing a credit card associated with your organization
- Paying for your GitHub organization account
- Setting your organization's billing email
- Upgrading your organization account from free to paid with PayPal
- Updating your organization's PayPal information
- Upgrading your organization account from free to paid with a credit card
- Updating your organization's credit card
- Finding your organization's next billing date
- Downloading receipts for organizations
- How can I add extra information to my organization's receipts?
- Redeeming a coupon for organizations
- Downgrading an organization account to free
- Unlocking a locked organization account
Repositories
- Integrating JIRA with your projects
- Creating a new repository
- Setting the default branch
- Making a public repository private
- Making a private repository public
- Transferring a repository
- Renaming a repository
- Duplicating a repository
- Deleting a repository
- About Webhooks
- What is my disk quota?
- Working with large files
- My repository is marked as the wrong language
- Viewing branches in your repository
- Can I archive a repository?
- HTTPS cloning errors
- Deleting a private fork of a private user repository
- Issues-only access permissions
- Getting permanent links to files
- Distributing large binaries
- Creating and deleting branches within your repository
- Relative links in READMEs
- Section links on READMEs and blob pages
- What are the limits for viewing content and diffs in my repository?
- Open source licensing
- About GitHub mirrors
- Adding an existing project to GitHub using the command line
- Error: Repository not found
- Error: Remote HEAD refers to nonexistent ref, unable to checkout
Search
- Searching GitHub
- Advanced Search
- Search Syntax
- Searching repositories
- Searching code
- Searching issues
- Searching users
Notifications
- About notifications
- Watching repositories
- Configuring notification emails
- Configuring notification emails for organizations
- Viewing your feeds
- Receiving email notifications for pushes to a repository
- News Feed
- Unsubscribing from conversations
- Configuring notification delivery methods
- Subscribing to conversations
- Listing watched repositories
- Unwatching repositories
- Managing notifications
Stars
- About Stars
- Finding interesting projects on GitHub
- Managing your stars
Keyboard Shortcuts
- Using keyboard shortcuts
Collaborating
- Using pull requests
- Creating a pull request
- Merging a pull request
- Closing a pull request
- Reverting a pull request
- Syncing a fork
- Commenting on the diff of a pull request
- Checking out pull requests locally
- What happens to forks when a repository is deleted or changes visibility?
- Merging an upstream repository into your fork
- Configuring a remote for a fork
- About issues
- Disabling issues
- Creating an issue
- Issue attachments
- Viewing all of your issues and pull requests
- Deleting unused branches
- Where can I find Open Source projects to work on?
- Locking conversations
Managing projects
- Filtering issues and pull requests
- Sorting issues and pull requests
- Assigning issues and pull requests to other GitHub users
- Filtering issues and pull requests by assignees
- Applying labels to issues and pull requests
- Creating and editing labels for issues and pull requests
- Filtering issues and pull requests by labels
- Associating milestones with issues and pull requests
- Creating and editing milestones for issues and pull requests
- Filtering issues and pull requests by milestone
- Viewing your milestone's progress
- Using search to filter issues and pull requests
- Sharing filters
Managing Repository Collaborators
- Adding collaborators to a personal repository
- Removing a collaborator from a personal repository
- Removing yourself from a collaborator's repository
Managing Remotes
- About remote repositories
- Adding a remote
- Changing a remote's URL
- Renaming a remote
- Removing a remote
- Which remote URL should I use?
- Why is Git always asking for my password?
- Dealing with non-fast-forward errors
- Fetching a remote
- Pushing to a remote
- Updating credentials from the OSX Keychain
- Caching your GitHub password in Git
SSH
- Generating SSH keys
- Keeping your SSH keys and application access tokens safe
- What are GitHub's SSH key fingerprints?
- Working with SSH key passphrases
- Using SSH over the HTTPS port
- How do I recover my SSH key passphrase?
- Error: Permission denied (publickey)
- Error: Bad file number
- Error: Key already in use
- Error: Permission to user/repo denied to other-user
- Error: Permission to user/repo denied to user/other-repo
- Error: Agent admitted failure to sign
- Error: SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK
GitHub Pages Basics
- What are GitHub Pages?
- User, Organization, and Project Pages
- Creating Pages with the automatic generator
- Creating Project Pages manually
- Using Jekyll with Pages
- About custom domains for GitHub Pages sites
- Setting up a custom domain with GitHub Pages
- Tips for configuring a CNAME record with your DNS provider
- Adding a CNAME file to your repository
- Tips for configuring an A record with your DNS provider
- Further reading on GitHub Pages
GitHub Pages Features
- Using Jekyll Plugins with GitHub Pages
- Repository metadata on GitHub Pages
- Sitemaps for GitHub Pages
- Redirects on GitHub Pages
- Emoji on GitHub Pages
- @Mentions on GitHub Pages
- Custom 404 Pages
GitHub Pages Troubleshooting
- Troubleshooting GitHub Pages build failures
- My custom domain isn't working
- Unpublishing a Project Pages site
- Unpublishing a User Pages site
- Should I rename <username.github.com> repositories to <username.github.io>?
- Using submodules with Pages
- Migrating your Pages site from Maruku
- Page build failed: Invalid submodule
- Page build failed: Missing submodule
- Page build failed: Markdown errors
- Page build failed: Config file error
- Page build failed: Unknown tag error
- Page build failed: Tag not properly terminated
- Page build failed: Tag not properly closed
- Page build failed: File does not exist in includes directory
- Page build failed: File is a symlink
- Page build failed: Symlink does not exist within your site's repository
- Page build failed: File is not properly UTF-8 encoded
- Page build failed: Invalid post date
- Files that start with an underscore are missing
Writing on GitHub
- Markdown Basics
- GitHub Flavored Markdown
- Writing on GitHub
Manipulating Files
- Creating new files
- Renaming a file
- Moving a file to a new location
- Deleting files
- GitHub Flow in the Browser
- Editing files in your repository
- Editing files in another user's repository
Working with non-code files
- Rendering and diffing images
- Mapping geoJSON files on GitHub
- 3D File Viewer
- Rendering CSV and TSV data
- Rendering differences in prose documents
Commits
- Changing a commit message
- Closing issues via commit messages
- Commit exists on GitHub but not in my local clone
- Commit branch and tag labels
- Why are my commits linked to the wrong user?
- Why are my commits in the wrong order?
- Comparing commits across time
- Differences between commit views
Gists
- About gists
- Creating gists
- Forking and cloning gists
- Deleting an anonymous gist
Advanced Git
- Remove sensitive data
- About Git rebase
- Using Git rebase
- Resolving merge conflicts after a Git rebase
- Changing author info
- Splitting a subfolder out into a new repository
- About Git subtree merges
Releases
- About Releases
- Creating Releases
- Working with Tags
- Editing and deleting releases
- Getting the download count for your releases
- Linking to releases
GitHub for Mac
- First launch
- How do I add repositories?
- Working with repositories
- Making changes
- Viewing previous commits
- Branching out
- How can I push or pull?
- Merging branches
- Resolving merge conflicts
- How do I remove a repository?
- Is there a way to see what Git commands the GitHub for Mac app is executing?
- Does GitHub for Mac support multiple Git remotes or non-GitHub remotes?
- Which versions of OS X are supported by GitHub for Mac?
- Why did my changes disappear when switching branches?
- GitHub Conduit
- Error: GitHub Enterprise version is too old
GitHub for Windows
- Using CAS with GitHub for Windows
- Getting Started with GitHub for Windows
- Do I need to install anything extra?
- Do I need SSH keys to use GitHub for Windows?
- Adding repositories with GitHub for Windows
- Accessing the GitHub for Windows log
- Getting a crash dump
- Synchronizing repositories
- How do I work with branches in GitHub for Windows?
- Does GitHub for Windows support multiple Git remotes or non-GitHub remotes?
- Uninstalling GitHub for Windows
- Windows XP is not supported
Graphs and Contributions
- About Repository Graphs
- Viewing contributions on your profile page
- Why are my contributions not showing up on my profile?
- I don't see myself in the repository contributors graph
- Setting guidelines for repository contributors
- About Pulse
- Why don't graphs work with IE8?
Automation
- Getting started with the API
- Creating an access token for command-line use
- Git automation with OAuth tokens
Wiki
- About GitHub Wikis
- Adding wiki pages via the online interface
- Editing wiki pages via the online interface
- Creating a footer
- Creating a sidebar
- Adding and editing wiki pages locally
- Viewing a wiki's history of changes
- Adding images to wikis
- Adding links to wikis
- Supported MediaWiki formats
- Changing access permissions for wikis
- Disabling wikis
Importing
- Importing your project to GitHub
- Importing a Git repository using the command line
- Importing from Subversion
- What are the differences between SVN and Git?
- Importing from other version control systems to GitHub
- Support for Subversion clients
Jobs
- How to write a great job post
Administration
- What IP addresses does GitHub use that I should whitelist?
- Why did I get redirected to this page?
About GitHub
- Using an Octocat to link to GitHub or your GitHub profile
Site Policy
- Supported Browsers
- Name Squatting Policy
- DMCA Takedown Policy
- Guide to Submitting a DMCA Takedown Notice
- Guide to Submitting a DMCA Counter Notice
- GitHub Trademark Policy
- GitHub Privacy Policy
- GitHub Security
- Responsible Disclosure of Security Vulnerabilities
- GitHub Terms of Service
- Amendment to GitHub Terms of Service Applicable to Government Users
- EU Safe Harbor
- GitHub Registered Developer Agreement