This is your guide to editing and contributing to the Galaxy Hub Website, the community and documentation hub for the Galaxy Project
The site content resides in the GitHub repository that you are in right now. Content is formatted using (mostly) GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) and the web site itself is rendered using the metalsmith static site generator.
Anyone can update and add content to the site using "standard" GitHub and Git practices, and contributions are strongly encouraged. If you are already adept at Markdown, Git, and GitHub, you may want to skip to the Deploying the site locally section. If you are unfamiliar with any of those items, then start with the Basics.
Table of Contents
- Basics
- Submitting your first edit through the GitHub web interface
- General Guidelines, Structure, and The Details
- Edit a local copy on your laptop
The text that becomes the website at https://galaxyproject.org is in this GitHub repository (the repo you are looking at right now) under the /content
directory.
Every page in the Galaxy Hub has a corresponding directory in GitHub. For example, the contents of the GitHub directory at /content/community/ become the web pages at https://galaxyproject.org/community/.
Every directory contains an index.md
file that contains the Markdown text for that directory. For example, the file in GitHub at /content/community/index.md becomes https://galaxyproject.org/community/.
When you update content on the Galaxy Hub you will mostly be updating index.md
files.
Markdown is a language for generating web content. It's meant to support the most common web page formatting (paragraphs of text, section headings, bold, italics, lists, and so on) without requiring you to learn the complications of HTML.
The Galaxy Hub uses a dialect of Markdown known as GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM). GFM adds a few things, like table support, to the Markdown standard. GFM pages also render nicely in GitHub. GFM is limited (by design) in comparison to HTML. However, it is easy to learn and use, and if you ever need something more, GFM supports that too (see below).
If you aren't already familiar with Git and GitHub then the easiest way to update the site is using the GitHub web interface in your web browser.
If you don't already have a GitHub account, you will need to create one to contribute any edits. Once you are logged in to GitHub, navigate to the page you want to update within GitHub. There are two ways to do this.
1. Navigate to the page from within GitHub
Start at the root of the content tree (the /content
directory) and navigate down to the page you want to edit. For example, if you want to edit the page at https://galaxyproject.org/community/ you would navigate:
/content
β /content/community
Within the community
directory you will see a few image files, and a file named index.md
. Click on it.
2. Use the Edit link on any Galaxy Hub page.
You can jump from any page in the Galaxy Hub directly to its source index.md
file in GitHub. Every Galaxy Hub web page has an Edit link in the upper right hand corner, that goes to that web page's index.md
file in GitHub.
To edit an index.md
file in GitHub, click the pencil icon (the icon only appears if you are logged in). When you hover over the icon, GitHub displays
Fork this project and edit the file.
More on that in a bit. Clicking the pencil icon takes you to a web form where you can edit the page text. The top of the edit page says:
Youβre editing a file in a project you donβt have write access to. Weβve created a fork of this project for you to commit your proposed changes to. Submitting a change to this file will write it to a new branch in your fork, so you can send a pull request.
GitHub has now given you your own copy of the galaxy-hub
repository and you are now editing that copy under your account. Edit the text of the page in the web form. There is a Preview Changes tab you can use to review your edits before you commit them.
Once your edits are in good shape commit them by providing a short (and optionally, a longer) description of the change at the bottom of the form.
Click Propose file change at the bottom of the form. The commits the changes to your copy of the galaxy-hub
repo ("repo" = "repository" in GitSpeak).
Thanks for your concern! But, we got this:
- Until you get the hang of this ( see What happens next and becoming an Editor below) all of your edits will be reviewed by an experienced editor before they go to the web site.
- There are guidelines below, but don't worry about them too much when you start. Just focus on the content you are fixing or adding. If you really want to "do the right thing" focus on the basic guidelines first, and then expand out as you need to.
- Be bold. We mean it.
Guidelines are distributed throughout this document. Each is tagged with one of these icons:
Icon | Level | Guidance |
---|---|---|
π£ | A basic guideline. | Try to follow these from the start. |
π₯ | A more than basic guideline. | Once you get used to the basic guidelines, try to incorporate these into your edits. |
π | An advanced guideline. | Only worry about these if you are doing something, well, advanced. |
You may notice, even before you make any edits, that the page doesn't quite render correctly on the GitHub web site: images are in the wrong place or missing, some links don't work, and anything, well, fancy is rendered poorly.
This happens because the GitHub web site, and the galaxyproject.org web site use different tools to render the web site, and because galaxyproject.org uses tools that GitHub does not support.
Don't worry about these differences. Once you have become an experienced editor, you will switch to making edits in a locally installed copy and then you'll see the pages as they are actually rendered (and you can start making fancier edits).
In the meantime, there is one thing you can do to not make things worse for yourself and others using the GitHub web site to edits:
π£ Format links to other pages within the Galaxy hub with a leading /content
and a trailing index.md
.
Links with both of these things will work in the GitHub web site. For example, links should be
/content/community/index.md
instead of just
/community
Clicking Propose file change takes you to a Comparing Changes page that highlights your changes to the file.
It also has a Create pull request button near the top of the page. If you are ready to submit your changes to be included in the hub web site then click this button.
If you have more changes you want to make before you submit, you can make more changes and then submit all the changes as a unit.
Clicking Create pull request (see What is a Pull Request?) takes you to the Open a Pull Request form.
Click Create pull request. You're ready.
This form has a space for comments that will be sent along with the pull request. The comments tell the pull request reviewers what these changes achieve.
Once you have added comments, click the Create pull request button. This sends your pull request to the @galaxyproject copy of the galaxy-hub
repo, and then shows you the pull request you just submitted.
Congratulations. You have submitted your first web site edit.
You can track the progress of the pull request here. When the pull request is approved it will be merged into the main repo and then appear on the Galaxy Hub shortly thereafter.
Furthermore, after a pull request or two, the reviewer will add you to the @galaxyproject galaxy-hub
Editors group. From that point on you can edit pages directly in the root repo. That is, clicking the pencil icon on a page under https://github.com/galaxyproject/galaxy-hub/content will no longer fork the repo, and submitted changes will go directly to the repo and to the web site. Our goal with this protocol is to encourage treating this like a wiki where folks are free to just edit (Galaxy is community).
In the meantime, you can continue to do edits in your copy of the repo and then submitting pull requests.
You can edit anything in the /content
directory through the GitHub Web Editor and this is a good way to become more familiar with the process and how things are set up. Eventually you may want to switch to a local installation, but you don't need to. There are only a few things that require special explanation.
Every page in the Galaxy Hub is stored in a directory and matching index.md
file. To create a new page, you need to create a new directory.
To create a new page, navigate to the directory you want to create the new page under. For example, if you want to create a /community/galaxy-south-africa/
page (just an idea!) then navigate to the the /content/community
directory.
Click the Create new file button near the top and on the right of the directory listing page. This brings up an empty web form for naming the new file and providing the page content.
Remember "To create a new web page, you need to create a new directory." To do that, in the "Name your file..." box enter
your-page-name/index.md
When you save your new file, this will create a new directory under the current directory named your-page-name
and your new file will be in that directory and named index.md
.
When you specify a new page name / path there are two guidelines:
- π£ Use all lower case letters.
- π£ Separate words with hyphens.
In our example, the page name / path should be
/community/galaxy-south-africa/
not
/community/GalaxySouthAfrica/
Note: You can upload images and attachments through the GitHub editor, but by the time you get to this level of editing you should consider editing a local install instead.
To add an image or attachment to the repo, navigate to the directory you want to place it in, and then click the Upload Files button, near the top and on the right. This launches a standard file upload form. Any uploaded files are added to the directory you are in and can now be referenced from pages within the hub.
There are standard image and attachment directories.
These are at /content/images/
and /content/document
.
- π£ Before uploading a file, please make sure it is not already in one of these directories.
- π£ If it makes sense, please consider uploading the file to one of the standard directories. This encourages reuse.
- π₯ If the file is bigger than 1 meg then don't upload it. Email it to outreach@galaxyproject.org instead. We'll put it in the Galaxy Depot and then mail you a URL you can link to (keeping large files in GitHub is not a good use of GitHub).
- π₯ Consider renaming your files to be all lower case and hyphen separated before uploading them.
This section describes the hub structure and guidelines. This section is useful if you are updating the site through the GitHub web editor, or in a local install.
The Galaxy Hub website (galaxyproject.org) supports GitHub Flavored Markdown, Bootstrap markup, the FontAwesome library, and a smattering of items from Metalsmith. That's a lot of ways to do things.
What's the preferred way?
Anything that can be rendered with Markdown can also be rendered with HTML, but don't.
π£ Whenever possible use GFM, even if it means things are less pretty than they could be. Markdown is much easier to edit and to make site-wide changes to how it is rendered.
Note: We use "Markdown" and "GFM" interchangeably to mean "GitHub Flavored Markdown".
Anything can be rendered with custom HTML styling, but don't.
π₯ Whenever possible use Bootstrap HTML classes for styling. Bootstrap automatically handles rendering on small devices and it is much easier to make site-wide changes to how it is rendered.
Font Awesome is a standard collection of icons that cover a huge spectrum of what you need icons for on a web site. As of 2020, there are around 1500 free icons to choose from.
π₯ If there is a Font Awesome icon for your situation, then use it.
Font Awesome icons can be rendered in multiple sizes, shown with or without borders, floated left or right, animated (spin them!), rotated, and integrated with Bootstrap. See the Font Awesome Examples page for how.
One advantage of using metalsmith is that the site can support predefined metadata tags on pages. These can then be rendered / processed in special ways when the final web site is generated.
Metadata appears at the top of the file in this format:
---
autotoc: false
title: "Galaxy Hub-Bub"
---
Tags are written using YAML syntax and have the form
tag: value
or tag: "value"
or tag: 'value'
There are general tags that can be used on any page, and there are also specific sets of tags that can be used on specific sets of pages.
If you add tags to a page, and the tags aren't reflected on the generated web site, then the most likely problem is one of these:
- Special characters in unquoted tag value. A lot of things, including hyphens can cause problems. If in doubt, quote it.
- Missing a space after the colon. That space matters.
These tags can be used on any page.
- Optional
- Meaning
- Title of the page.
- Use
- Becomes the value of
<title>
HTML tag in the page and first page heading.
- Becomes the value of
- Format
- Free text all on one line. Should be wrapped in quotes.
- Optional
- Default is
true
on most pages,false
on news and events items.
- Default is
- Meaning
- Whether to include table of contents in the right side.
- Use
- Causes a table of contents to be displayed on the right on not.
- Format
- Boolean: either
true
orfalse
.
- Boolean: either
Many sections of the web site use custom metadata tags that enable advanced handling of pages in those sections. Usually, these custom metadata tag sets are used to generate section indexes at the root of those sections. For example, the in News and Events directory hierarchies every news item and event item starts with custom metadata tags for news and events respectively. These are then used to generate the news item and events lists on the web site.
News items root:
- GitHub source: /content/news/index.md
- As rendered on web site: galaxyproject.org/news/
News item indexes displayed:
To add a news item, you'll need to create a directory for the item under /content/news/
and then create an index.md
file in the new directory. The index.md
file should contain the news item text, and start with these metadata:
- Required
- Meaning
- Short title for news item.
- Use
- Becomes the news item page title.
- Shown in news indexes / lists as the name of the news item.
- Format
- Free text all on one line. Should be wrapped in quotes.
- Optional
- Meaning
- Short bit of additional text about the news item.
- Meant to complement
title
.
- Use
- Display with the event title, when space allows.
- Format
- Free text all on one line. Should be wrapped in quotes.
- Required
- Meaning
- Date the news item was posted, or last modified.
- Use
- Determines where in the news list the item shows up.
- Format
'YYYY-MM-DD'
- Must be wrapped in quotes.
From /content/news/2017-09-galaxy-update/index.md
---
title: 'September 2017 Galaxy News'
tease: 'New events, pubs, openings, tools, ...'
date: '2017-09-06'
---
Events root:
- GitHub source: /tree/master/content/events/index.md
- Rendered on web site: galaxyproject.org/events/
News item indexes displayed:
To add an event, you'll need to create a directory for the item under /tree/master/content/events/
and then create an index.md
file in the new directory.
The index.md
file needs to have at least the event metadata. Optionally, it can also have additional text about the event in the body of the page. How an event page is indexed depends of several things:
- If the metadata includes an
external_url
tag then the main event link in the index will point to that URL. - If the metadata does not include an
external_url
tag then the main event link in the index will point to the event's hub page. - If the metadata includes an
external_url
tag and has additional text in the body of the event page, then main event link in the index will point to the external URL, but it will be followed by an additional link to the event's hub page.
Thus you can control what links are used by setting or not setting external_url
and by providing or not providing additional text in the body of the event page.
- Required
- Meaning
- Name of the event or presentation.
- Use
- Becomes the event page title.
- Shown in the event list as the name of the event.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Required
- Meaning
- Date the event starts.
- Use
- Determines where in events lists the item shows up.
- Displayed as start date for the event.
- Format
'YYYY-MM-DD'
- Needs to be wrapped in quotes.
- Optional
- If not provided then event is assumed to be one day long.
- Meaning
- How many days does this event last?
- Use
- Displayed end date for the event.
- Format
- An integer.
- Optional
- Meaning
- Short bit of additional text about the event.
- Meant to complement
title
.
- Use
- Display with the event title, when space allows.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Required
- Meaning
- What continent this event is being held on.
- Use
- An icon showing the continent is typically displayed with the event.
- Format
- Must be one of the following two letter values:
AF
,AS
,AU
,EU
,GL
,NA
,SA
GL
stands for global and is typically used for online events.
- Must be one of the following two letter values:
- Required
- but can be "online" or "to be determined" or ...
- Meaning
- Where in the world is this event being held.
- Use
- Displayed wherever location is displayed.
- Format
- A location in however much detail you want to provide.
- There should be enough information that someday we could feed the location to a mapping service and have a reasonable expectation of it guessing at least the right city.
- π₯ Prefer longer region and national names to shorter ones. For example, California over CA, and United States over USA.
- It's easier for people not from that country to read.
- If the event's
title
refers to a specific event within a larger event, then include larger event's name in the location.
- A location in however much detail you want to provide.
- Examples
- Iowa City, Iowa, United States
- University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, United States
- Plant and Animal Genome XXV, San Diego, California, United States
- Optional
- Meaning
- URL to link
location
to. - This can be a conference URL, or a host UR, or a facility URL, or ...
- URL to link
- Use
- If provided then the location text (all of it) will link to this URL.
- Format
- A URL.
- Optional
- If it is not present, the
title
text in the index will link to the event's Hub page.
- If it is not present, the
- Meaning
- Where the
title
text links to when it is displayed in an index.
- Where the
- Use
- If present then title in the index links to this location.
- Format
- URL
- Should be an external URL.
- URL
- Optional
- Meaning
- image / logo for this event.
- Use
- Displayed on the event's hub page.
- Display this image anywhere that events are summarized and images are included.
- Format
- a URL, preferably an internal hub path, usually point into to the
/content/images/
directory.
- a URL, preferably an internal hub path, usually point into to the
- Optional
- If not present then defaults to
false
.
- If not present then defaults to
- Meaning
- Is this a training event presented by a GTN member?
- Use
- Display a GTN icon (that links to the GTN trainer directory page) in the index.
- Format
true|false
- Optional
- Meaning
- Name or email address of who to contact about this event.
- Use
- Display in events index.
- Format
- All on one line, and wrapped in quotes. Can be a list of names.
- Optional??
- Meaning
- Type of event.
- Use
- ??
- Format
- ??
- Optional??
- Meaning
- ??
- Use
- ??
- Format
- ??
---
title: "RNA-Seq analysis using Galaxy"
date: '2017-09-13'
days: 2
tease:
continent: AU
location:
name: "QFAB, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia"
url: "http://qfab.org/"
external_url: "http://qfab.org/workshops/rna-seq-analysis-using-galaxy-13-14-sep-2017"
gtn: true
contact: 'training@qfab.org'
tags:
subsites:
---
The Galactic Blog includes anything that is related to Galaxy and is longer than a news item.
Blog root:
- GitHub source: /content/blog/index.md
- Rendered on web site: galaxyproject.org/blog/
There are two types of blog entries:
- External: These blog entries were created outside the Hub, on some other platform. Typically, hub pages for external blog posts contain only enough information to populate the blog index page and link to the blog post. Everything is in the metadata.
- Native: The content of these blog posts exists in the Hub. That is, the blog posts were first created in the Galaxy Community Hub. These posts have metadata, but also content below the metadata. The index points to the post's hub page.
To add a blog post, you'll need to create a directory for the post under /content/blog/
and then create an index.md
file in the new directory.
π New directories (and thus blog post URLs) are named with this convention:
YYYY-MM-topic-in-one-or-more-words
Blog posts have this metadata:
- Required
- Meaning
- Title of the blog post.
- Use
- Becomes the blog page title.
- Shown in the blog post list as the name of the entry.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Optional
- Meaning
- Short bit of additional text about the blog post.
- Meant to complement
title
.
- Use
- display with the event title, when space allows.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Required
- Meaning
- Date the blog post was posted.
- Use
- Determines where in blog index the item shows up.
- Format
'YYYY-MM-DD'
- Needs to be wrapped in quotes.
- Required
- Meaning
- Who wrote the blog post.
- Use
- Displayed in blog index and on blog post.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Optional
- If present, the
title
text in the index will link to theexternal_url
.
- If present, the
- Meaning
- If a post has an
external_url
it means the post was created outside the Hub.
- If a post has an
- Use
- If present then title in the index links to this location.
- Format
- URL
- Should be an external URL.
- URL
- Optional
- Only present if the post is external.
- Meaning
- The name of the blog / place where it was posted.
- Use
- Displayed in blog index and in blog entry.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Optional
- Only present if the post is external.
- Meaning
- The URL of the blog / place where it was posted.
- Use
- Whenever
source_blog
is shown, it links to here.
- Whenever
- Format
- An external URL.
---
date: '2017-07-25'
title: "Elixir, CLIMB, Sanger and the Galaxy Community Conference"
tease: "UK, UK, UK, and France"
authors: "Simon Gladman"
external_url: "https://www.melbournebioinformatics.org.au/projects-blog/uk-tour-2017-blog2/"
source_blog_url: "https://www.melbournebioinformatics.org.au/projects-blog/"
source_blog: "Melbourne Bioinformatics Projects Blog"
---
Use Galaxy Resource Directory:
- GitHub source: /content/use/index.md
- Rendered on web site: galaxyproject.org/use/
The Use Galaxy resource directory lists:
- all know Galaxy servers that are publicly accessible.
- cloud services that support ready to launch Galaxy instances.
- Galaxy containers and virtual machines.
To add a new resource, you'll need to create a directory for the resource under /content/use/
and then create an index.md
file in the new directory.
Resource entries have this metadata:
- Required
- Meaning
- Name of the resource.
- Use
- Becomes the resource page title.
- Shown in the directory as the name of the resource.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and should be wrapped in quotes.
- Short is good.
- Required
- Meaning
- URL of the project the resource is for. If the resource is available on only one platform, then this can be a link to the resource itself.
- Use
- Displayed on the resource page as the title.
- Format
- URL.
- Required
- Meaning
- Why does the resource exist? See Format below for options.
- Use
- Becomes a keyword for the resource.
- Format
- Must be one of these three values:
"general"
- This a general purpose genomics server providing tools useful across a wide range of domains.
"domain"
- The server specializes in a particular domain, often a methodology (e.g. RNA-Seq), or a branch of the tree of life.
"tool-publishing"
- Primary purpose of the server is to make a group's tools easy to use by publishing them here.
- Must be one of these three values:
- Required
- Meaning
- an array that describes each platform the resource is available on. This array must have at least one entry.
- Use
- Just brackets the list of platforms.
- Format
- Nothing on
platforms
line. Array following it must be well-formed.
- Nothing on
Each platforms
array entry has 3 items in it.
- Required
- Meaning
- What type of platform is this.
- Use
- Used to group resource with other resources of same type.
- Format
- Options are
public-server
,academic-cloud
,commercial-cloud
,container
andvm
.
- Options are
- Required
- Meaning
- Link to this resource for this platform. This can link to a page that describes the resource, or directly to the resource.
- Use
- Used with
platform-text
to link to resource on this platform.
- Used with
- Format
- URL, should be quoted.
- Required
- Meaning
- Name of this resource on this platform.
- Use
- Will appear in the link to the resource on this platform.
- Format
- Text, quoted.
- Required
- Meaning
- A brief description of the resource.
- Use
- Displayed in resource directory index page, and on the resource's page.
- Format
- Free text all on one line, and wrapped in quotes. Can contain Markdown.
- Optional
- Path to an image for this resource.
- Meaning
- The single image most likely to succinctly communicate what this resource is about.
- At some point in the future a thumbnail of this image might be displayed in the server index too.
- Use
- If present then this is displayed in the upper right of the resource page.
- Format
- URL
- an internal hub path is prefered, as those images don't disappear.
- Small images, around 300px wide or less work best.
- URL
- Optional
- All are optional.
- Meaning
user_support
: options for getting help; can include tutorials.quotas
: any limitations on using the system: disk, execution, is an account required, ...citations
: One or two publications that are about this resource.sponsors
: Who is behind this resource?
- Use
- Displayed on the resource page, each in it's own section.
- Format
- Each is a YAML bullet list with 0, 1, or more entries.
- Each bullet item is quoted and can contain markdown.
- Optional
- Meaning
- This is the tag used to identify papers in the Galaxy Publication Library that use/reference/implement this resource.
- Use
- Causes a link to those papers to be displayed in the Citations section.
- Format
- Bullet list (some resources have more than one tag).
- Each bullet item is quoted plain text.
---
title: "A-Game"
url: "http://beaconlab.it/agame"
scope: "domain"
platforms:
- platform_group: "public-server"
platform_url: "http://beaconlab.it/agame"
platform_text: "A-Game server"
summary: "A Galaxy suite for tArgeted MEtagenomics"
image: "/content/use/a-game/agame-logo.png"
comments:
- "A web service incorporating state of the art tools and workflows for the analysis of eDNA sequence data."
user_support:
- "[A-Game Manual](http://159.149.160.68/galaxy/static/manual/)"
- "[Example workflows](http://159.149.160.68/galaxy/workflow/list_published)"
quotas:
citations:
- "[A-GAME: improving the assembly of pooled functional metagenomics sequence data](https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-017-4369-z), Matteo Chiara, Antonio Placido, Ernesto Picardi, Luigi Ruggiero Ceci, David Stephen Horner and Graziano Pesole. *BMC Genomics* 201819:44, doi:10.1186/s12864-017-4369-z"
pub_libraries:
- "A-Game"
sponsors:
- "[BEACON](https://bioscienzebio.unimi.it/gruppo.php?id=26), [Dipartimento di Bioscienze](https://bioscienzebio.unimi.it/), [University of Milan](http://www.unimi.it/ENG/)"
---
-
π£ To automatically redirect an existing hub page to another URL,
-
replace the header with
--- redirect: "new-url" ---
-
new-url
can be either an internal relative URL ("/admin/config/tool-dependencies/", note the missingcontent
at the front and the missingindex.md
at the end) or point outside the hub. -
You are encouraged to also drop all text from the page. Optionally, you can include something like:
This tutorials index page has been merged with the new [Learn Galaxy](/learn/) hub page, please check there for up-to-date references to tutorials.
-
-
-
π When deleting, consolidating, or renaming pages, please save the urls by adding redirects to the rewrite file in the infrastructure playbook.
Using the GitHub web editor either edits your local copy of the Galaxy Hub repo, or edits the Galaxy Hub repo directly (once you are an editor). The GitHub web editor is fine for "one page at a time" edits, but as you start doing more advanced editing or using page metadata, Bootstrap, and Font Awesome, you'll want to move towards editing and then previewing a copy of the Galaxy Hub repo on your laptop. Unlike viewing in GitHub (which approximates the view), previewing your edits locally will show your edits as they will be rendered on the actual Galaxy Hub web site. Once you are happy with your edits, you'll submit them to the repo at GitHub from your laptop.
π To edit and preview the site on your laptop, you will need a much better understanding of Git, GitHub, and know how to use the Linux / Unix shell. You will also need to install software.
Note: Git, GitHub, and the shell (a.k.a. command line interface) are valuable things to know, and as a working bioinformatician or researcher you'll want to learn them. If now is a good time to learn this then set aside a couple of days and dig in. However, if you don't have time now, then you may want to use the GitHub web interface until you do. If you want to learn these things in a short, intense workshop then we recommend Software Carpentry which teaches these items to scientists.