So now that you've seen the power of Git and GitHub, it's time to put our blog project under version control. We're going to see how you can do this within PyCharm.

1. You can either use the final version of your blog project, or download a fresh, completed copy here.

https://repl.it/@appbrewery/blog-with-users-end.zip

2. Open the project in Pycharm and run it to make sure that everything is working as expected. If you downloaded my version from above, then make sure you install all the required packages.

Admin account email: angela@email.com

Admin account password: 123456

Local Version Control with PyCharm

3. Let's put our project under version control. We can do this in PyCharm by simply going to VCS -> Enable Version Control Integration.

This is the same as what we did before with

git init

Make sure that you select Git when asked which version control system to use:

If successful, you should now have a new Git Pane where you can see the Git Console and Git Logs.

All the files in our project will turn red because they are not yet added to the staging area to be tracked by git.

4. Add all the files in the project to the staging area by selecting the parent folder and going to VSC -> Git -> Add

All the files should now turn green.

5. Make your initial commit by going to VCS ->  Commit

Type the commit message in the commit pane:

If you see a popup about TODOs, just simply click on Commit.

If successful, you should now be able to see your first commit in the Git Log pane:

Push to Git Remote on GitHub

6. Sign up for a GitHub account if you haven't already and have your login details handy.

Before we upload our code to GitHub, we should be careful that we are not uploading any secret information. e.g. personal emails or API keys.

It's quite painful to review all the code for these things, so by convention, developers tend to put the top-secret information in an environment .env file.

NOTE: Make sure that you don't have any sensitive information in your project, if you do, create a .env file and store them there. We covered environment variables on Day 35.

Then we can add a .gitignore file to tell our version control system to ignore those files when pushing to a remote.

7. Go to gitignore.io and search for a Flask gitignore template. Copy all the text in the resulting page and create a new file at the top level of your project with the name .gitignore notice the dot at the beginning of the name, this is important, it makes it a hidden file. Paste everything from the gitignore page to this file. See the walkthrough below if you're unsure:

8. Add your GitHub details to PyCharm by going to the Version Control settings.

Windows: File -> Settings -> Version Control -> GitHub

Mac: PyCharm -> Preferences -> Version Control -> GitHub

Then click on the "+" button and select Login via GitHub:

Note: in Windows the "+" button is on the top right.

It should now take you to log in to GitHub, if successful, you should see your account added:

9. Next, create a new GitHub repo by going to VCS -> Import into Version Control -> Share Project on GitHub

In the pop-up, fill in the details for your new Github repository, e.g.

Now, PyCharm will create a new remote repository on GitHub in your account and push all the local commits to the remote.

If successful, you should see a popup with a link to your new repository. But you can also go to your GitHub account and find the new repository:

That's it, you've now added version control to your project and pushed it to GitHub.