Github is a free online provider you can use to host your code.
You never need to worry about your code messing up your site when you host it in a Github Gist.
You can also use Github to host theme files with version control. This enables you to go back to an older version if the latest modifications you make to a file isn’t working for you.
Other benefits of using Github are as follows:
- You can link from each Gist back to any URL on your site.
- You can offer secure downloads of themes and plugins
- Choose to hide your Gists from the search engines
- When you update a Gist, it updates everywhere it has been embedded
There’s nothing worse than landing on a page with messed up code you can’t use which looks very unprofessional.
Note: The 1 drawback hosting externally is that you have to trust them becaue you’ve lost complete control of your code. Hosting the code on your own site using a good syntax highlighter plugin gives you complete control.
Learn more about the benefits of using Github and Gists for hosting your code.