Course Overview

Welcome to the GitHub Actions: Beginner to Pro course by DevOps Directive!

This course is designed for Software Engineers and Devops Practitioners who have familiarity with web applications and want to level up their ability to use GitHub Actions within their teams and organizations.

The course is comprised of:

• A video walkthrough hosted on YouTube (the section for each lesson is embedded on the corresponding page here)
• A companion GitHub repository, sidpalas/devops-directive-github-actions-course, contains all sample workflows so you can follow along in your own editor.
• Written modules like this one at (https://courses.devopsdirective.com).
• A Discord community at https://discord.devopsdirective.com to ask questions, compare approaches, and get help if you get stuck.

Sponsor Spotlight: Namespace 🎉

This free course is made possible by the generous support of Namespace (https://namespace.so/)! I'm thrilled to partner with them because their platform elevates the GitHub Actions experience for any team that needs faster, more observable pipelines.

Namespace provides:

• Drop-in hosted runners that accelerate jobs while reducing cost (often by changing just a single line in your configuration).
• Blazing-fast caching layers that keep dependency installs snappy.
• Remote Docker builders for dramatically quicker container image builds.
• Deep observability with insights into job timing and resource utilization you simply can't get in GitHub's native UI.

Full Disclosure: These links are affiliate links, so I will get some payment if you end up using Namespace. Because of this, if you do use them, I would appreciate if you use the link and let them know that you learned about them from me! 🙏

Prerequisites

To get the most out of the course, you should feel comfortable with:

• Git and GitHub fundamentals (cloning repositories, creating branches, committing, and opening pull requests).
• Navigating a Linux shell and editing YAML files.
• Reading and writing code in at least one language such as JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, or Python.
• (Optional) Docker and container basics. We'll touch on containerized actions, and familiarity with Docker will help. If you need a refresher, check out my 🐳 Docker: Beginner to Pro course.

Part 1 (Platform Foundations)

We'll build a mental model for GitHub Actions as a platform by covering:

1. History and Motivation
2. Why GitHub Actions?
3. Core Features
4. Advanced Features
5. Marketplace Actions
6. Authoring Actions

Part 2 (Workflow Engineering)

Next, we'll apply that foundation to solve real engineering problems:

7. Common workflows
8. Developer Experience
9. Best Practices

Part 3 (End-to-End Implementation)

Finally, we'll put everything into practice with a capstone project that implements six workflows to build, test, and deploy a microservice-based application with GitHub Actions.

Prerequisites

While I do my best to explain things as simply as possible, it will be helpful if you have the following:

• Git & GitHub basics (clone → commit → PR) 🐙
• Comfort with the shell and writing/editing YAML 🔧
• Ability to code in one language (JS, Go, Python, etc.) 💻
• (Optional) Docker know‑how for containerized actions 🐳