Setup

In order to get this working, you'll need to have Git installed, and have a GitHub account. If this is your first time setting up Git, we'd recommend checking out Code School's video on How to Setup Git for Code School Projects in 5 Minutes to learn what you need to know.

To get started, fork this repository to your account and clone it down locally. If you want, you can also try doing this completely from GitHub!

Once Git is installed on your machine, be sure to clone down the forked repository by running on your terminal window:

git clone <forked git url>

Start working on our solution

Once you have cloned the forked repository, go into the directory containing the project and look for the /src directory. This is the directory where you will be making changes when you start following the step-by-step instructions. You can simply open those files in a text editor and get started.

You can always open the index.html file directly in your browser and work through the Step-by-Step that way. For a more sophisticated way of doing that, just keep on reading... :)

Optional step: running a local web server like a "real developer"

If you want feel more like a "real developer", head over to the Node.js website and follow the instructions to get Node.js installed on your machine.

Once you have Node.js installed, open your command line and follow these instructions:

1. cd into project-jquery-badges
2. run npm install
3. run npm start

Step #2 is only needed the first time you are getting the project set up. Once everything is ready you will be able to cd into the directory and run npm start (steps 1 and 3).

Running step #3 should open a browser window pointing to http://localhost:3000. Now once you make changes to the files under the /src directory, your browser will refresh automatically displaying the newest changes made to the files. This will save you the round trip of saving files and clicking refresh on your browser.

If you're curious to know how this stuff works, feel free to check out the Browsersync project. It's built on top of Node.js (that's why you had to install Node.js before running the commands above) and you can use it with any other projects you may be working on.