How to Create a Progress Tracker with WordPress & GitHub (for FREE) [Guide]
Learn how to use WordPress and GitHub to create a public (or private) progress tracker like the ones below. Creating (or updating) posts on your WordPress site will automatically create commits on the associated GitHub tracker color-coded based on how many commits (updates) were made that day.
What Can You Do With It?
You can track anything with this, but it works best for things that are already in WordPress. For example, if you want to write on your blog or add content to your site every day, you can easily track your progress. Another great example is if you want to journal every day. This works well even if the site is private (not publicly viewable).
This also works to track project progress. For example, if you want to write an update every day on what you accomplished for your side project.
Difficulty / Setup Time
If you’re familiar with WordPress and GitHub you can finish in 30 minutes. It’s even faster if you already have a website. If you’re unfamiliar with WordPress or GitHub this could take a bit longer, but don’t worry–I’ll walk you through it step-by-step.
How to Do It
1. Setup Your WordPress Website
You need to host your WordPress website somewhere. Any hosting will do–even a cheap one. If you already have a blog, journal or other site that you want to use then you can just use that one and skip this step.
If you need a host, we offer some of the cheapest hosting you’ll find. Why? Because we don’t sell products to make money. Instead we sell them exclusively to ProfitPress members at the lowest prices our partners allow us to sell at. We’ve partnered with the largest host and domain registrar in the world to offer these products at rock bottom prices. See our discounted products here.
Once you have Hosting you can setup your WordPress website. Some hosts have WordPress setup wizards (like our $5.99/mo Managed WordPress product), which make setting up WordPress much easier.
2. Setup Your WordPress Theme
Next, you need a WordPress theme for your site. If this is a journal, blog or something else that’ll be shared publicly, then pick a nice theme you’re happy with (any theme will do). We recommend using a free theme to start off. Once WordPress is setup you can find free themes in the dashboard under Appearance > Themes then click the “Add New” button.
If don’t care about the appearance of your site, then feel free to use the default WordPress theme or the free Primer theme.
3. Connect Your Site to GitHub
The next step is to connect your site to GitHub so new posts and updates can create commits, which show up as blocks on the chart. You can do this with a free plugin called WordPress GitHub Sync. Just install it and follow the instructions to connect it to your WordPress site.
If you don’t already have a GitHub profile or want to use a separate account for your tracker, you can create a free GitHub profile here.
4. Show Off Your Commits
If you want to keep your progress tracker private you can. But if you want to publicly show your progress you can do it in two primary ways. Just remember that if your contributions are private you’ll have to update your contribution settings (above your contributions calendar) so they are visible.
- Profile: Share a link directly to your GitHub Profile.
- Embed: Directly embed your contributions chart by using the below HTML image code, just replace username with your GitHub username (e.g. from https://github.com/username)
<img src="http://ghchart.rshah.org/username" alt="Name Your GitHub chart" />If you want to use a custom color, you can include your hex code in the URL.
<img src="http://ghchart.rshah.org/HEXCOLORCODE/username" alt="Name Your GitHub chart" />That’s it! Now you have a free progress tracker built with WordPress and Github.
How Can We Make This Better?
How can we make this how-to guide better? What wasn’t clear? Please let us know in the comments!