I just set up my GitHub account and I’m having trouble figuring out how to upload my project files. I managed to get my readme.md file added to the repo. Now I need to upload 3 JavaScript files plus a directory that contains CSS stylesheets.
What’s the correct process for adding both individual files and entire folders to my repository? I attempted using git fetch first but when I tried git push origin main it gave me some kind of error message. I’m pretty new to Git so I might be doing the steps in the wrong order.
You need to initialize your local repo first. Go to your project folder in terminal and run git init if you haven’t done it yet. Then connect it to your remote repo: git remote add origin [your-repo-url]. Sounds like your local repo doesn’t know about the remote changes. Pull the existing readme file first with git pull origin main, then stage your JavaScript files and CSS directory with git add and the file paths. When you add directories, Git grabs all the files inside automatically. I spent hours debugging the same push errors when I started with Git - learned this lesson the hard way.
This happens all the time when you’re starting out. Your local repo is out of sync because you’ve got that readme on GitHub but not locally. Just run git pull origin main first to grab what’s already there. Then you can add your files - either git add filename.js for specific files or git add . to grab everything including your CSS folder. Commit with a good message and push. That error you got? Your local branch was behind the remote one. I made this same mistake when I started - always pull before pushing or you’ll get conflicts.
You’re confusing git fetch with uploading files. Here’s what you need to do:
Go to your project directory and run git add . to stage everything - your JS files and CSS folder.
Commit it: git commit -m "Add project files"
Push it: git push origin main
Your error happened because you didn’t stage and commit first. Git fetch pulls changes down; it doesn’t upload anything.
If you’re juggling multiple projects and hate doing this manually every time, just automate it. I use Latenode to auto-sync my local changes to GitHub whenever I save files. No more remembering to add, commit, push.
You can set up workflows that watch your folders and auto-commit with decent messages. Way easier than typing Git commands constantly.
the github web interface is honestly easier when ur learning. Just drag and drop ur js files straight into the repo on github.com, then commit. for css, create a new folder and upload files there. it’s not as ‘proper’ as command line, but it works nd u won’t mess up ur branches.