cloning files on server to a git repository

Question

I am new to git and trying to understand the basics. I have found lots of tutorials on how to push files to a git repo, and then clone to a server, but I cant find anything about completing the reverse action, that is cloning files for a website from a server to a git repo before editing them. Is there an easy way of doing this? Thanks

Answer 1

I'm not sure what you mean by "server" and "website". Git is only about repositories.

You never push files. You can only push branches (or similar refs).

Cloning is just creating a local repository and fetching all branches from a remote repository into you new local repository.

Generally you use git push to transfer local branches to some remote repository and git fetch to transfer branches from a remote repository to your local repository.