A Beginner's Guide to GitHub: What You Need To Know

This guide breaks down how GitHub works, how it compares to GitLab and how to get started with it -- as well as valuable GitHub best practices for IT pros.

GitHub calls itself "the complete developer platform to build, scale, and deliver secure software." And the numbers are backing up that claim — more than 83 million developers (and 90% of the Fortune 500) are currently using GitHub, making it the most popular hosting service for storing and sharing software.

If you're a programmer new to GitHub (or a GitHub user wanting to learn more tips and tricks to get the most out of the hosting service), this special report breaks down how GitHub works, how to get started with it, and its benefits — as well as valuable GitHub best practices.

For those already well-versed in GitHub, the report offers expert advice to enhance even further your experience with the platform, such as how to delete — and undelete — both local and remote branches on GitHub, as well as use Personal Access Tokens as a more secure way of managing access to GitHub resources than passwords.

Despite its popularity, however, GitHub isn't the only hosting service for developers. For some, GitLab may be a better option. In this report, we also compare GitHub to GitLab to help you choose which best suits your needs — especially if you're an enterprise that needs to manage software source code on a large scale.