Sorry, it is still showing merge conflicts. Are you sure that the git pull --rebase upstream master command is syncing your local master branch with the upstream master branch? Is your upstream remote pointing to the right URL? It should be set to either "ssh://git@pagure.io/fedora-magazine.git" or "https://pagure.io/fedora-magazine.git" (you can find those URLs under the clone dropdown in the upper-right of this page).

$ git remote -v
origin ssh://git@pagure.io/forks/rlengland/fedora-magazine.git (fetch)
origin ssh://git@pagure.io/forks/rlengland/fedora-magazine.git (push)
upstream ssh://git@pagure.io/fedora-magazine.git (fetch)
upstream ssh://git@pagure.io/fedora-magazine.git (push)

I think it best for me to retrench. Correctly save the modified files, remove the branch from my clone and my local repo and start again.

Any tips on correctly removing the two branches? Thought I had done it correctly before

That should never be necessary with git. But it is often the easy way out.

You should be able to remove local branches with git branch -d <branchname>. You cannot delete the branch that you are on though, so you will want to use git checkout master to switch to the master branch first. You can delete the branches in your fork through the web interface (there is a way to do it with git push, but I forget the parameters).

I think what is important is to verify that your copy of master is up-to-date before you create a new branch. The simplest way to do that is probably to compare the commit history of your local master branch with the commit history on this upstream repository.

Use git log to view your repo's commit history. Then go here and make sure that the topmost/latest commits match.