Master OTTR Course Repository Settings

Welcome, aspiring course creators and instructors! Setting up a new Open-Source Textbook and Teaching Resources (OTTR) course involves a few crucial steps to ensure everything runs smoothly. This guide will walk you through the essential repository settings you need to configure, making your new course accessible, secure, and ready for your students. We'll cover everything from making your repository public to protecting your main branch and customizing GitHub actions. Let's dive in and get your OTTR course off to a stellar start!

Ensuring Your Course Repository is Publicly Accessible

To make your OTTR course discoverable and accessible to a wider audience, the first fundamental step is to ensure your course repository settings are configured for public access. This means anyone, anywhere, can view your course materials without needing special permissions. Think of it as opening the doors to your virtual classroom. When you create a new repository on GitHub, you'll have the option to make it public or private. For an OTTR course, which aims to be openly accessible, selecting 'public' is key. This setting is usually found during the repository creation process, but it can also be modified later within your repository's settings. By making your repository public, you're embracing the spirit of open education and allowing for broader engagement and collaboration. This setting is the bedrock upon which the rest of your course setup will be built, so it's essential to get it right from the beginning. A public repository ensures that your valuable educational content can be shared freely, fostering a community of learners and educators. Remember, the goal of OTTR is to promote open learning, and a public repository is the most direct way to achieve this. So, before you move on to more complex configurations, double-check that your repository is indeed set to public. This simple step opens up a world of possibilities for your course's reach and impact.

Setting Up Your GitHub Personal Access Token (GH_PAT)

In the world of GitHub and automated workflows, a Personal Access Token (PAT) acts like a secure key, granting specific permissions to applications or scripts to interact with your repository on your behalf. For your OTTR course, you'll need to set up a GitHub secret named GH_PAT. This secret will store your personal access token, which is crucial for enabling certain GitHub Actions that automate tasks like building and deploying your course website. To create a GH_PAT, you'll need to navigate to your GitHub account's security settings. Follow the provided instructions to generate a new token. It's critically important that when you select the scopes for this token, you check both repo and workflow. The repo scope allows the token to access your repositories, while the workflow scope enables it to interact with GitHub Actions. Once generated, copy this token immediately and store it securely. You will then add this token as the value for the GH_PAT secret within your OTTR course repository's settings. This process might seem a bit technical, but it's a standard security practice on GitHub. By using a PAT stored as a secret, you avoid hardcoding sensitive credentials directly into your code or workflow files, which is a major security no-no. This ensures that your personal access credentials remain private and are only used by authorized actions. Properly setting up your GH_PAT is a vital step in enabling the automated processes that keep your OTTR course website up-to-date and functional. It’s a small setup step that has a big impact on the smooth operation of your course.

Enabling and Configuring GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages is a fantastic feature that allows you to host your static website directly from your GitHub repository. For your OTTR course, this means your course materials, documentation, and website can be automatically published and accessible via a URL. To enable GitHub Pages, navigate to your repository's Settings menu. Within the settings, you'll find a section labeled Pages. Here, you need to specify the source for your website. Under the Source option, you'll typically choose the main branch (or your primary branch) and then select the docs folder. This tells GitHub Pages to build your website using the files located in the docs folder of your main branch. Once you've made these selections, click Save. After saving, it's also highly recommended to Enforce HTTPS. This crucial step ensures that all traffic to your GitHub Pages site is encrypted, providing a secure connection for your users. This not only enhances security but also improves your site's credibility. Enabling and correctly configuring GitHub Pages ensures that your OTTR course website is readily available to your students and the public, providing a central hub for all course-related information. It’s a powerful tool that transforms your repository into a live, accessible website with minimal effort. Properly configuring this setting is key to making your course content easily consumable and professional-looking.

Implementing Branch Protection Rules for a Stable main Branch

Protecting your main branch is paramount for maintaining the integrity and stability of your OTTR course content. When your course is live and students are actively using it, you don't want accidental pushes or incomplete changes to disrupt the main version. Branch protection settings allow you to enforce rules that govern how changes can be made to specific branches, with the main branch being the most critical. To set this up, go to your repository's Settings and find the Branches section. You'll need to set up rules for your main branch. The most important rules to enable are: Require pull request reviews before merging and Require status checks to pass before merging. Checking the first box means that any changes intended for the main branch must first be submitted as a pull request and approved by at least one reviewer (or as many as you configure). This ensures that code or content changes are vetted before being integrated. The second box, Require status checks to pass before merging, is equally vital. This integrates with GitHub Actions and ensures that automated tests or checks (like building your course website to ensure it renders correctly) must pass successfully before a pull request can be merged. Underneath this, make sure to also check Require branches to be up to date before merging. This prevents merging outdated code, ensuring that the main branch always reflects the latest changes from the base branch. Finally, remember to click Save at the bottom of the page to apply these essential protections. These rules create a safety net, safeguarding your course's core content and ensuring a polished, error-free experience for your learners.

Customizing GitHub Actions for Your OTTR Course

GitHub Actions are the powerhouse behind automation in your repository, allowing you to automate workflows such as building your course website, running tests, and deploying content. To tailor these automation capabilities to your specific OTTR course needs, you'll want to customize GitHub Actions. You can find more detailed information and guidance on customizing robots and workflows in the OTTR documentation. Typically, you'll be working with workflow files written in YAML, located in the .github/workflows directory of your repository. These files define the triggers for your actions (e.g., when a push occurs to the main branch) and the sequence of jobs to be executed. For an OTTR course, common actions include building the website using OTTR's tools, checking for broken links, and deploying the built site to GitHub Pages. You might also want to set up actions that automatically check the quality or formatting of content submissions. By customizing these actions, you can streamline the development and maintenance of your course, ensuring consistency and reducing manual effort. For example, you can configure actions to automatically run a linter on any submitted content to ensure it adheres to specific style guidelines. Or, you can set up an action that triggers a build and preview of your course website whenever changes are made to the main branch, allowing you to easily preview updates before they go live. Thoroughly understanding and customizing your GitHub Actions is key to unlocking the full potential of automation for your OTTR course, making the entire process more efficient and robust. Investing time in this step will pay dividends in the long run by saving you time and reducing the likelihood of errors.

Conclusion: Your Foundation for a Successful OTTR Course

Setting up your OTTR course repository correctly is the first, and arguably one of the most important, steps towards creating a successful and engaging educational experience. By ensuring your repository is public, configuring your GitHub Personal Access Token securely, enabling and optimizing GitHub Pages, implementing robust branch protection rules, and customizing your GitHub Actions, you are laying a solid foundation. These settings not only streamline the development and deployment of your course materials but also enhance security, accessibility, and maintainability. A well-configured repository means less time spent on technical hurdles and more time focusing on what truly matters: creating high-quality educational content and supporting your learners. Remember, the OTTR project is built on principles of open access and collaboration, and these repository settings are designed to facilitate just that. Take the time to meticulously follow each step, and don't hesitate to refer to the official OTTR documentation for more in-depth explanations and troubleshooting. A little effort upfront in configuring your repository settings will go a long way in ensuring your OTTR course is a resounding success.

For further exploration into best practices for open educational resources and digital publishing, you might find these resources valuable:

• The Open Education Consortium: A global network of open education institutions and individuals. Their website offers a wealth of information on open education principles and practices.
• Creative Commons: Learn about the different types of open licenses that allow you to share your work legally and flexibly. Their site provides essential guidance for anyone publishing open content.