Now that you know the basics of the GitHub platform, this section covers platform management topics.

In this unit, we’ll cover:

• Managing notifications and subscriptions.
• Subscribing to threads and finding threads where you’re mentioned.
• Publicizing your project or organization on GitHub pages.

Managing notifications and subscriptions

Notifications help you stay up to date on important activity across your repositories and teams. Managing your subscriptions ensures you only get updates for the work that matters most to you.

You can subscribe to notifications for:

• Specific issues, pull requests, or gists
• Repository activity like issues, pull requests, releases, or discussions
• Workflow statuses for repositories using GitHub Actions
• All activity across a repository

You’re automatically subscribed when you interact with conversations (commenting, opening an issue, being assigned), but you can also manually manage subscriptions as needed.

If you’re no longer interested in receiving updates, you can unsubscribe, unwatch, or customize the types of notifications you receive.

Subscribing to threads and finding threads where you’re mentioned

You can also access detailed notification settings by navigating to your GitHub user settings and choosing ‘Notifications’ to configure delivery channels such as email, web, and mobile.

If you want to keep an eye on issues or pull requests that mention a specific user, use the search qualifier mentions: followed by the username.

To make sure you get updates about a particular thread (like an issue or pull request), you can subscribe to it—even if you weren’t originally part of the conversation.

You can subscribe to a thread by:

• Selecting Subscribe on the right-hand sidebar of an issue, pull request, or discussion.

To find conversations where you’re mentioned:

• Use the search qualifier mentions:<username> in the GitHub search bar to locate issues and pull requests where you were @mentioned.

This way, you won’t miss any conversations that need your attention.

Filter notifications

GitHub allows you to filter notifications using watch settings:

• Watching: Receive notifications for all activity.
• Not watching: Receive notifications only when you’re participating or @mentioned.
• Ignore: No notifications at all for a repository.
• Custom: Fine-tune what types of activity (like pull requests, issues, or discussions) trigger notifications.

You can manage watch settings by selecting Watch at the top of a repository page.

Configure notification settings

You can configure where you receive notifications:

• Email: Notifications delivered to your registered email address.
• Web: Notifications viewed directly in your GitHub dashboard.
• Mobile: Push notifications using the GitHub mobile app.
• Custom notifications: Configure specific event types for different channels.

Notification settings are managed under your GitHub account settings in Notifications.

What are GitHub Pages?

Now let’s take a look at GitHub Pages. You can use GitHub Pages to publicize and host a website about yourself, your organization, or your project directly from a repository on GitHub.com.

GitHub Pages is a static site-hosting service that takes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files straight from a repository on GitHub. Optionally, you can run the files through a build process and publish a website. You can specify a source branch and folder (e.g., /docs) for your Pages site, and GitHub will host the content publicly.

Next, you’ll complete a hands-on activity to reinforce key GitHub skills. In the next exercise, you’ll:

• Create a new repository.
• Create a new branch.
• Commit a file.
• Open a pull request.
• And merge a pull request.