Skip to content
bidsmith

Set up GitHub

bidsmith stores your campaign configuration in plain text files. You keep those files in a Git repository on GitHub so that every change is reviewable, revertable, and visible to your team.

If you’re new to Git and GitHub, this page is the 10-minute version. If you’re already comfortable with git clone, skip to the bottom section.

Step 1 — Create a GitHub account

Go to github.com and sign up. Free is fine.

If your team already has a GitHub organization, ask your admin to invite you to it before continuing.

Step 2 — Install a Git client

You have two choices. Pick one.

Download GitHub Desktop and install it. Sign in with the GitHub account from step 1. The app handles authentication, cloning, branching, committing, and pushing through a point-and-click UI.

The official GitHub Desktop documentation covers everything else: creating a branch, committing changes, opening a pull request. You only need the first few pages.

Command line (if you’re comfortable in a terminal)

macOS and Linux usually have git pre-installed. Check:

Terminal window
git --version

If not, install it:

Terminal window
brew install git

Then authenticate with GitHub. The easiest way is to install GitHub CLI:

Terminal window
brew install gh
gh auth login

Follow the prompts. After this, git will use your GitHub credentials automatically.

Step 3 — Get a .bid repository

You need a Git repository where your .bid files will live. Two common situations:

Your team already has one

Get the URL from a teammate (it looks like https://github.com/your-team/bidsmith-config) and clone it.

In GitHub Desktop: File → Clone repository → URL, paste the URL, pick a folder, click Clone.

In a terminal:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/your-team/bidsmith-config.git
cd bidsmith-config

You’re starting fresh

Create a new repository on GitHub:

  1. Click the + in the top-right of github.com → New repository.

  2. Pick a name like bidsmith-config. Mark it Private unless you have a reason to make it public — Google Ads account IDs aren’t secret, but most teams prefer to keep them out of the public internet anyway.

  3. Tick “Add a README file” so the repo isn’t empty.

  4. Click Create repository.

  5. Clone it to your laptop using GitHub Desktop or git clone as above.

You now have a folder on your laptop that’s tracked by Git. Anything you put in it can be committed, pushed, reviewed, and reverted.

Step 4 — The PR workflow, in 30 seconds

When you want to make a change to a .bid file, the rhythm is always the same:

  1. Make a branch. In GitHub Desktop: Branch → New branch. Name it something like add-summer-search-campaign. (Branches are safe scratchpads — nothing you do on a branch affects anyone else until you merge it.)

  2. Edit files. Open the cloned folder in your editor, change what you want.

  3. Commit. In GitHub Desktop: write a short summary in the “Summary” box (e.g. “Add summer search campaign”) and click Commit to add-summer-search-campaign.

  4. Push. Click Push origin. Your branch now exists on GitHub.

  5. Open a pull request. GitHub Desktop offers a button; or visit github.com, click the Pull requests tab, and create one from your branch.

  6. Get reviewed. A teammate looks at the diff, leaves comments or approves.

  7. Merge. Click the green Merge button on the PR page.

GitHub’s Hello World tutorial walks through this same flow with screenshots, on a toy repository, in about ten minutes. Worth doing once before you start editing real .bid files.

Next up

Connect to Google Ads — the one-time OAuth setup so bidsmith can read and write your account.

Skipping ahead

Already comfortable with Git and GitHub? You only need:

  1. A repository with read+write access.
  2. It cloned locally where you can cd into it.
  3. A clean working tree (git status reports nothing to commit).

That’s enough to follow the rest of the docs.