SimplyEdit and Github

Gthub is a source code repository, made for programmers. But it appears that the same tools are also useful for content editors. Using github you can keep track of alle changes in the content of your website. Who made what change when. You can rollback changes. You can also create one or more staging versions of your website. When ready the changes can be discussed and verified before publishing them.

But Github is not a Content Management System (CMS). It has no database or concept of templates. Luckily SimplyEdit doesn't need that. SimplyEdit allows for a full CMS experience using Github. Best of all, SimplyEdit is free for use on github.io.

To start using SimplyEdit on Github, first make a Github account. Then go to this url:

https://github.com/SimplyEdit/spectral

You'll see something like this:

Press the 'Fork' button on the top right. Github will ask where to fork this project to. Select your personal account. Now you have your own copy of a SimplyEdit project. To make it official, edit the README.txt. Select the file, in your personal copy, and then press the edit icon. It's right next to the buttons 'Raw','Blame','History'. Change the first line to 'my SimplyEdit demo' or something like that. Then scroll down, enter a commit message and press 'Commit Changes'.

Github will then publish the website to your personal URL, something like 'https://myaccount.github.io/myproject/'.

Next you'll need a personal access token. So go to your settings page and select 'Personal access tokens', or follow this link: https://github.com/settings/tokens. Press 'Generate new token'. Github will ask for a name, this is just a reminder for you. Next it asks for a Scope. Select 'repo' and press 'generate token'.

The important part is the generated string. It is only shown immediately after creating it, so make sure you copy it and save it somewhere safe. Also copy it to your clipboard, SimplyEdit will ask for it later.

Now go to your new SimplyEdit website on github.io, e.g. https://myaccount.github.io/myproject/. Either press the 'Edit me' button, or add #simply-edit to the URL. SimplyEdit now asks for your Github personal access token. Enter it and press enter.

Congratulations, you can now edit your site and commit those changes using SimplyEdit. You won't need to enter the personal access token again, unless you logout.

To create a staging setup, just fork your own project again with a different name. Then change the first version untill you are happy and create a pull request to merge these changes with the forked project. Github will take care of the rest.