Join GitHub

If you haven't already, sign up for a free GitHub account (or sign in to yours if you already have one):

In this example screenshot, I chose a username of demolearner1 — remember yours. Also, don't forget to check your email and verify the address you entered.

For now, think of GitHub like Dropbox-for-programmers; it's where we're going to store all of our code.

Create GitHub organization

To keep things organized, we're going to create a separate GitHub organization account for you to store your AppDev projects under (to keep them separate from the personal projects that you'll hopefully be building soon!).

Click the + on the right side of the navbar and select "New organization":

Choose any name for the organization; most students choose [YOUR USERNAME]-appdev. In this example screenshot, I chose demolearner1-appdev:

You can "Skip" or "Finish" the rest of the screens:

Join Cloud9

I have emailed everyone invitations to join our team on Cloud9, which is the online tool we'll be using to write and run all of our code. In your inbox, you should see something like this:

If you don't have an invitation, let me know.

Click on the link in the email and you should arrive at a welcome page. Click "Create new account":

Answer the next few questions:

When it asks you to tell them about yourself, say that you are a student and that you'll be using Cloud9 for coursework:

And you should arrive at a screen with a "Join Team" button. Click it:

You should wind up at your Cloud9 Dashboard. You now have everything you need to develop applications!

Connect your GitHub account to Cloud9

Let's connect your Cloud9 account to your GitHub account to make it easy to download projects.

Click on the gear icon in the top-right:

Then, click on "Connected Services" in the left sidebar, and then click "Connect" next to "GitHub":

It will send you to GitHub.com to give your permission to Cloud9 to access things. Be sure to click "Grant" next to the name of the organization that you created in an earlier step:

Then click "Authorize C9":

Your Cloud9 and GitHub accounts are now linked, and you'll end up back at Cloud9.

That's it for the initial setup of your Cloud9 account!