GitHub built also for not developers, like me!

What am I doing here?

When you open GitHub you read the clear message: "Built for developers".

It's right! GitHub is built for developers.

But wait for a moment: I'm not a developer. I'm a lawyer.

Then what am I doing on GitHub?

I'm not writing source codes but only blog posts.

GitHub is built also for everybody that would have a simple and fast environment for sharing ideas with the rest of the world.

I know: it's not the first place you probably have thought to publish a post.

There are other nice blogging environments such as WordPress, Joomla, Medium, Blogger and many others.

I like them all. I use some of them.

But a GitHub account has something special: it makes possible to publish every post using static HTML code without knowing it and without writing a single HTML tag.

How is it possible? We'll see it later.

By now I want to put in evidence another advantage of GitHub: there are no databases under the hood.

No databases, no problems

No databases under the hood? What does it mean?

If you use or have used a typical CMS you know what does it mean!

A PHP database is an engine for dynamic web environments.

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal live in databases.

Databases are wonderful tools to create awesome websites.

But if you've got a block on your website, as I got after the upgrade from 5.6 to 7.0 PHP database, then you'll not be so sure for the real advantage of that tools and you could ask if exist a web sphere without databases.

In GitHub, there's only a simple HTML code. No databases, no problems.

Now let's go to build a site

The simplest way to create a site for not developers is using the Jekyll Now tool and following the simple steps explained in it.

You only just must fork (remember the two commands above described) the original project, edit some changes and in a few keystrokes, you'll have a working essential website for writes and images.

Every modify can be done inside GitHub itself just like in a typical CMS environment.

In the Jekyll Now tool, you can find every explanation.

It's now time to write your content.

Write your contents

One of the fantastic characteristics of GitHub and Jekyll is that you can write your post in Markdown language and have the post directly translated in HTML without any manual conversion: you write in Markdown and have an HTML content.

There's a similar function in Tumblr but here you are in a personal environment.

For a simple explanation of Markdown, you can read this page.

The fundamentals of Markdown are really for everyone. Markdown is created for writers without programming bits of knowledge.

You write something including some special characters and you get something else on your web page.

Here some basic examples:

You write	You get
**This text is bold**	This text is bold
_This text is italic_	This text is italic
_**This text is bold and italic**_	This text is bold and italic

And so on.

You can easily continue by yourself following a tutorial like the one above.

When you finished writing your contents, you only have to press the Commit button and your work goes online all over the world.

Isn't it nice?