Private phpBB development

[Mess]

I'm new to Version control/Git and Github. So this might be a noob question.

Would it be possible to use Github to update a phpBB installation?

If yes:
1) Would I be able to push private modifications to the server to update. And that way allow others to help update/modify our installation?

2) Would it be possible to update from one version of phpBB to another, and keep existing private modification?

[jsebean]

This question doesn't make sense?

Are you referring to updates *you* make to phpBB? Or using the ones of the official phpBB project from github? I ask because of the topic title "Private phpBB Development". It's probably not suggested to use the "raw" development code for a live website from the official phpBB git repo, that's only good if you want to hack around the code. If you want a live site stick to stable releases.

Git keeps revisions so it makes it easier to revert back and merge changes, etc. Great for keeping tack of multiple developers as well and to know whose code is whose. It's not really meant for making edits to a live website, that would just add one more unnecessary step, instead you could use it to do edits to files in your repository and then you can later upload them to a live site but I guess anything is possible.

Github just hosts git repositories basically (among other things). It costs for private repos (such as private projects/proprietary projects) but free (gratis) for Free (libre)/Open source projects.

There are some really good tutorials on YouTube regarding git you definitely should check out if you want to learn more.

[Mess]

Thanks for you're answer Jsebean. I ask because of lack of knowledge.

We have members who can code different languages. And I would like to be able to give them easy access to help contribute to the development of our forum/website.
But I don't want to give them access through ftp. I thought maybe someone here had the same challenge.

One of my members said he would like to help but preferred if the code was on github, so I figured I would ask here.

[EXreaction]

You definitely could host it on github if you wish. the phpbb.com website is all on github (however it is private). You'd maybe just want to write a script that only you can call on your server to pull the latest changes from the repository and update your website with them.

Updating is another issue entirely. If you use Git it can attempt to merge things and resolves some conflicts for you, but from time to time you will probably have to manually resolve conflicts if you've made a lot of changes to your code.