The Topbar

The Topbar on the top of your repo's page let's you quickly navigate to features related to your project. By default, you're on the Code page where you can see your files and information from the most recent commit to affect each of them.

The second option takes you to the Issues section. GitHub issues are a very useful feature for keeping track of errors to fix, new features to create, etc. Think of it like your project's to-do list. You and your collaborators can create issues, discuss them in comments, and close them when they've been resolved. You can also add tags to issues, so you can choose to only view errors or only planned features. Issues also lets you define project milestones that you can also use like tags, letting you track tasks to complete toward broader goals. We'll explore how issues work in-depth later in this guide.

The third option lets you review requests from your collaborators to merge their changes into the larger project. These requests to merge changes are called Pull Requests. When a collaborator has made changes they want accepted into the larger project, they should submit a pull request for review rather than directly merge changes into the project. For programming projects, this review helps prevent sloppy code from making it into an otherwise stable piece of software. When someone with the rights to merge changes into the main project has reviewed the pull request and decided that it's acceptable, they can click a button to combine the changes into the rest of the project. We'll explore how pull requests work in-depth later in this guide.

The fourth option takes you to the project Wiki. The wiki is an optional area where you can document your project. For code, this might be an explanation of how to use the software. Depending on the scope of your project, you may or may not want to maintain a wiki to instruct collaborators and users about the project.

The next two options, Pulse and Graphs, show you statistics about the project. You can get a sense of who is contributing and how much, how popular the project is, etc. You may or may not find this information helpful.

The final option is Settings. This takes you to the repository settings where you can add collaborators, set whether the repo is public or private, transfer ownership to another user, and even delete the repository from GitHub.