Saving your work: GitHub, and putting it online
Two things that sound technical but are not, once someone explains them plainly. How to make sure you never lose hours of work, and what it really costs to let other people use what you built.
You have made something and it works. Now two questions come up next, and both have a reputation for being scary jargon. The first is how to save your work properly so a stray mistake can never wipe it out. The second is how, and whether, to put it online for other people. Here is the plain version of both.
What GitHub actually is
GitHub is a free place on the internet to keep a copy of your project files. That alone is useful, it is a backup. But it does something cleverer too: it remembers every version of your project, every time you save. So if you make a change today that breaks everything, you can go back to how it was yesterday, or last week. Think of it as a safety net and an undo button for your whole project at once.
You do not have to understand how it works under the bonnet. Claude can do the saving for you when you ask. What matters is knowing it is there and getting into the habit of using it.
Two words you will hear
People throw these two words around as if everyone knows them. They are simple.
Commit
Saving a snapshot of your work as it is right now, with a short note about what changed. It is the moment you press save.
Push
Sending that saved snapshot up to GitHub on the internet, so the backup is safe even if something happens to your computer.
You can simply say to Claude, "commit and push my work," and it will do both. You do not need to type anything technical yourself.
Move, don't delete. Save often. If you are unsure whether you will need a file again, move it to a "spare" folder rather than deleting it. And commit your work regularly, especially before you try something risky. The whole point is that you can always get back to a version that worked.
Private or public
A project on GitHub lives in a "repository," which everyone shortens to "repo." It is just the folder that holds your project and its history. A repo can be one of two things:
- Private means only you can see it. This is the right default for almost everything.
- Public means anyone on the internet can see your files. Fine for things you want to share openly, not fine for anything personal.
There is also a small file you might hear about called .gitignore. Despite the odd name, it is simply a "do not include this" list. You write down the names of files you never want sent up to GitHub, and they get left behind. Handy for keeping passwords and private notes out of your backup.
If your website or app is hosted from a repo (meaning the live site is served straight from those files), then anything in that repo can be fetched from the public site, even when the repo itself is set to private. Private protects who can see your code on GitHub. It does not hide files that the live site is built to serve. So keep passwords, private notes, and any personal data out of anything you publish online. When in doubt, do not put it in the project at all.
What it costs to put something online
This is where people expect a big bill and freeze. The honest answer is that you can start for nothing. Costs only appear when your thing grows up. Here is the plain breakdown.
On your own computer: free. Your app or tool runs on your machine, for you, and costs nothing. The catch is that only you can use it, and only when your computer is on. For a lot of personal tools, this is genuinely all you need.
Putting it online for others: often still free to start. To let other people reach your thing, it needs "hosting," which just means a computer somewhere on the internet that keeps it running. Plenty of services have a free tier that is perfectly fine for a small, simple website. You can be live and shareable without paying anything.
Costs creep in when you want more. A custom web address of your own, a "domain," is usually a few pounds a year. Then it climbs if you get a lot of visitors, need to store and run a database, or want a server that is always on and ready. That is typically from a few pounds a month upward, depending on how much you are asking it to do.
The honest takeaway: you can start completely free, and stay free for a long time if your thing is small and simple. Real costs appear once other people are using it heavily or it needs to run around the clock. That is firmly next-level territory, and you do not need to go there to build something you are proud of.
The short version
- 1GitHub is a free backup of your project plus an undo button for every change you make.
- 2"Commit" means save a snapshot. "Push" means send it up to GitHub. Claude can do both for you.
- 3Move, don't delete. Save often. That is how you never lose hours of work.
- 4Repos can be private or public. A .gitignore is just a "do not include this" list.
- 5If a site is hosted from a repo, its files can be fetched publicly even when the repo is private. Keep secrets and personal data out.
- 6Start free. Costs only appear with a custom address, heavy use, a database, or an always-on server.
That is the whole of it. None of this should put you off. Save your work properly, keep anything private out of anything you publish, and remember that "it works on my computer, for me" is a perfectly good place to stop. Putting it online is a choice, not a requirement.