My First GitHub Project: From a Local Folder to GitHub Using Git and SSH

PRUDENCE KORIR — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 02:50:10 +0000

⭐🚀⭐🚀
When I first walked through the gates of LuxDevHq, my first thought was "endless possibilities". However, I was intimidated. I did not think I would measure up. But when I attended my first class, I learned that building something great starts with a great foundation and at LuxDevHq, that means mastering all the basics.

In the last week, I worked on setting up a local project on my desktop which I then pushed to a live repository on GitHub using the command line.

I was working with a "Kenya_Hospital_Health_Records" csv dataset which was to be stored in a sub-folder called "data" within the main folder on the desktop which is named after the file.

These are the steps I took😄:

1. Local Project Set Up

Open the bash terminal and navigate to the desktop using the cd command and create the main folder along with the sub-folder.

cd Desktop
mkdir -p Kenya_Hospital_Health_Records_Project/Data
cd Kenya_Hospital_Health_Records_Project

Copy and paste the file into the sub-folder.

Creating the README.md File

echo "# KENYA HEALTH RECORDS ANALYSIS" > README.md
echo "##Project Overview" >> README.md
echo "This is a project analysis for a hospital health records" >> README.md
cat README.md

> operator adds new text to the file.
>> operator adds text to already written text.
cat README.md prints the contents of the file for review.
nano README.md edits the file.

2. Creating a Tracked Git Repository

git init creates and empty repository.
git status checks the status of the repository.
git add . adds everything to the current repository.
git commit -m "Kenya Hospital Records Project the commit message helps to remember whatever it entails.
git remote add origin https://github.com/prudencejeronokorir-code/Git-Commands-Class.git this is the SSH key that links the local repository to the empty GitHub repository.
ssh -T git@github.com to confirm that the SSH key works
git push -u origin main pushes the local main branch to the remote origin on GitHub
*-u command helps avoid typing out the branch name upon every update.

And with that you are done!!!
🚀🚀🚀

DEV Community: PRUDENCE KORIR

My First GitHub Project: From a Local Folder to GitHub Using Git and SSH

1. Local Project Set Up

Creating the README.md File

2. Creating a Tracked Git Repository