How to add your new project to GitHub in 10 easy steps

Okay, I am fairly new to GitHub. And initially, I used to struggle a lot with adding my local projects to GitHub.
I created a cheat sheet, so here it goes.

0. Pre-requisites:

Git on your local machine
Here is a neat article to help with that.

1. Create new repository on github.

Do not initialize .gitignore or readme at this point.

2. In your project root folder, create a .gitignore file.

In this file, add all the folder and the file extensions that you wouldn't want in the remote repository.
The following is an example .gitignore for a java project.

*.class

# Mobile Tools for Java (J2ME)
.mtj.tmp/

# Package Files #
*.jar
*.war
*.ear

# virtual machine crash logs, see http://www.java.com/en/download/help/error_hotspot.xml
hs_err_pid*

#folders
logs/
target/

#other
*.classpath
*.project
*.settings
*.pdf

3. Initialize local repo

In your local, navigate to the project folder from your favorite command prompt
git init -b main

4. Add all files from your project to your local

git add .

5. See the status of changes in local

git status

6. Commit to local

git commit -m "commit message"
On a side note, it's a great practice to keep committing to your local in small increments. That way, if you see that a code change is breaking and don't know which line did that, it's easy to revert back to a stable version.

7. Specify the remote repo for current local repo

git remote add origin https://github.com/username/repo

8. Add files from local to remote

git push origin main

9. Add a README.md file in github repo.

10. In case you want to update local from remote

git pull origin main

That's it, you did it :)