Using GitHub

We use GitHub to manage our workflow and keep track of our updates to the website. While it might be a new tool for you, it helps us to organize and manage our work. You can always see requests you've made and who is assigned to work on your issue. Please reach out to any team member if you need assistance working with GitHub via GitHub or by email at onrrweb@onrr.gov.

Setting up a GitHub account

Create an account

Follow the directions on github to create an account.

Sign up for email notifications

Once you set up your account, sign up for email notifications so you will receive notification of anything related to an issue you created or if someone else needs your help or review of an issue.

Submitting GitHub requests to onrr.gov

When you need to make an update to the site, go into GitHub and create a new issue. GitHub has instructions on creating issues if you need more help.

ODDD's process once a request is received

• The request is submitted through GitHub
• ODDD’s supervisor assigns the issue to someone in our team
• The assignee checks details of the request and checks accessibility if any documents are included
• If the document contains accessibility errors, we ask that it gets corrected
• If the document is accessible, we make the update in the development website
• We tag you in the issue with a link to the dev site to request your approval
• Once we receive approval, we publish the update to the live site
• Once the update is live, we notify the requestor
• We make sure the update looks accurate on the live site before closing the issue

Best practices for writing your GitHub requests

When you are typing out your GitHub request, please keep in mind that the ODDD team completes requests from every group within ONRR. We might not be as immediately familiar with the content you want updated/added as you, the Subject Matter Expert, are. Here are some guidelines to help make your instructions to us as clear as possible. Our goal here is to foster better communication!

For a request's timeline, we will work on your request as soon as possible. We ask that you allow 24 hours for your request to be completed to account for other work priorities and staffing resources on our team.

Make sure your content is 508-compliant:

• Any content you want added/updated to the site needs to be Section 508 Compliant.
• Please do accessibility checks and make sure your content passes those checks BEFORE submitting a GitHub request.
• Here are our instructions for checking PDF accessibility.
• If your content is not accessible, you are required to make it accessible before we can post it on the website. Please refer to our accessibility policy.

Direct us to the exact webpage you want updated:

• Please give us the url of the webpage you want updated.
• After the url, please detail where the content you want updated is located within the webpage.

When requesting existing content to be replaced/updated:

• Please be very clear which existing files/documentation/language/other content should be updated.
• Please reference the filename and/or hyperlink language currently on the webpage for that existing file.
• If the updated file name is different than the current file name on the website, please specify by giving clear instructions such as "Please replace [oldfilename] with [newfilename]"
• Please be sure to do this with every file that needs to be updated, so that we can easily match what new files are replacing what old files. We want to make sure that there are no duplicate documents or old/outdated documents on the website.

When requesting new content be added to the site:

• Please be very clear on the location for where this new content should be added.
• Please give the exact language you want us to add to the site.
• If you are adding a new file or external url, please give the exact language for the hyperlink.
• Please provide detail for any formatting changes (bulleted lists, tables, etc). You can do a mock-up in a word document for us to show any specific formatting you want.

Examples of GitHub requests

Example - clear request to update an existing document

Why is the request easy for us to understand?

• Detailed issue title
• Gives the webpage url where the update needs to be made
• Directs us to the exact file that needs updating
• Specifies that this is an update and not a new document that needs to be added
• Document file names match

Example - clear request to add new content

Why is the request easy for us to understand?

• Detailed issue title
• Gives exact URL web location for where the update should go
• Gives exact language that needs to be added
• Gives the hyperlink with the exact language that should go to that hyperlink url