Git-based FTP‑deployment

Introduction

This is a step-by-step guide for FTP-deployment to development, staging and production servers. We use a development environment on our local machine. Deployment to the staging and production servers is triggered via GitHub actions and published via FTP.

Requirements and Prerequisites

• Local running Kirby project
  First of all, we need a running Kirby project on your local machine. If you need help setting up a local environment, I recommend Sonja's guide: Local development environment. I use Laravel valet on my MacBook, but it's up to you to choose a solution that works best for you.
• Web server for staging
  Second, we need a running web server for staging, e.g. staging.example.com. The requirements are very low. It can be a web hosting starter package with a hoster of your choice. Only FTP access is needed, and the FTP path should be the root directory of the web server. SSH is not required.
• Web server for production
  A running web server for production is also needed, e.g. www.example.com. The requirements are identical to the requirements for staging.
• Terminal
  To run our Git commands, we need a local terminal window with Git installed locally and a little command line knowledge.
• GitHub account
  Last but not least, we need an active GitHub account. A free plan is sufficient.

Setting up a Git repository

For better understanding, we will use Git commands in the command line. We only need a handful of Git commands for this tutorial and it helps to understand the steps better, especially if Git is new to you. Of course, you can also use a graphical Git tool, such as SourceTree or Sublime Merge.

Create an empty repository

First we create an empty repository via the GitHub web interface and clone it to our local machine into the directory ~/Projects/example.

Open a terminal window, change to the directory ~/Projects/example and invoke the following Git command.

git clone https://github.com/chrfickinger/example.git ~/Projects/example

Please replace chrfickinger/example.git with the url of your project.

Copy your project files

Now we can copy (or move) all our kirby project files into the named directory, change to the project folder again and fire up a git status command to list the newly added files.

# change to your project directory ...
cd ~/Projects/example

# ... and list all (uncommited) files for control
git status -s

Commit and push your changes

# Mark all files to add to your repository
git add -A

# Commit all marked files to your local repository
git commit -a -m "My first commit"

# Push the latest version to GitHub
git push

The Git queue should now be clear again and all files should have been pushed to GitHub. You can check the empty queue by firing up the git status command again. The result should be empty.

git status -s

Deployment to staging

Whenever we push something to GitHub, we want GitHub to FTP the changes to our staging system. To make this happen, we need a workflow file. The file and its folders need to be placed in the root of your project ~/Projects/example. Create a folder called .github with a subfolder called workflows and a yml file called staging.yml in it.

It should look like this: ~/Projects/example/.github/workflows/staging.yml. This file contains all necessary information for the GitHub action.

The workflow file

Let's check the workflow file staging.yml now!

First we give it a meaningful name e.g. Staging Deployment and then we define when the action should take place. In our example the action will be executed whenever something is pushed into the main branch.

name: Staging Deployment
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]

Now some basic information about the environment where the workflow runs.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: bash

Steps define, what kind of action(s) run on GitHub. There are a lot of predefined actions out there. We actually only need two actions for our deployment.

The first action is a checkout action

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    with:
      fetch-depth: 2

and the second action is the FTP-Deploy-Action by SamKirkland.
You just need to replace the access data with the FTP data of your staging server.

steps:
  - name: FTP Deployment
    uses: SamKirkland/FTP-Deploy-Action@4.3.3
    with:
      server: staging.example.com
      username: your staging ftp-user
      password: your staging ftp-password
      protocol: ftps

Finally we end up with the following file:

name: Staging Deployment
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: bash
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 2
      - name: FTP Deployment
        uses: SamKirkland/FTP-Deploy-Action@4.3.3
        with:
          server: staging.example.com
          username: your staging ftp-user
          password: your staging ftp-password
          protocol: ftps

Now all we need to do is commit and push that file to GitHub, and we have a fully functional action that will automatically deploy your files to your staging environment once they are pushed to GitHub.

Commit and push the file

# Mark staging.yml to add to your repository
git add .github/workflows/staging.yml

# Commit the file to your local repository
git commit .github/workflows/staging.yml -m "My staging workflow"

# and push the file to GitHub
git push

Once the file is pushed to GitHub the action starts immediately. You can check the running workflow under the Actions tab of your GitHub project.

Deployment to production

Typically, the staging server is used to preview and test your latest code changes. After approval by your customer (or by you), the updated files can be deployed to your production environment.

The workflow file

Let's create a workflow file for production now: ~/Projects/example/.github/workflows/production.yml

We again give it a meaningful name, e.g. Production Deployment, and specify when the action should be executed. In our example, the action is executed whenever we set a tag in our repository and push the tag to GitHub.

name: Production Deployment
on:
  push:
    tags:
      - '*'

We also need to update the FTP settings.

steps:
  - name: FTP Deployment
    uses: SamKirkland/FTP-Deploy-Action@4.3.3
    with:
      server: www.example.com
      username: your production ftp-user
      password: your production ftp-password
      protocol: ftps

The rest of the file can be the same as in the staging workflow file.
We end up with the following file:

name: Production Deployment
on:
  push:
    tags:
      - '*'
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: bash
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 2
      - name: FTP Deployment
        uses: SamKirkland/FTP-Deploy-Action@4.3.3
        with:
          server: www.example.com
          username: your production ftp-user
          password: your production ftp-password
          protocol: ftps

Commit and push the file

# Mark production.yml to add to your repository
git add .github/workflows/production.yml

# Commit the file to your local repository
git commit .github/workflows/production.yml -m "My production workflow"

# and push the file to GitHub
git push

Once the file is pushed to GitHub, the action waits for any incoming tags in your repository.

Tag your repository

We just need to set a tag now and push it to GitHub.

# Define a new tag ...
git tag v0.1

# ... and push it to GitHub
git push origin --tags

Once the tag is pushed to GitHub, the production workflow starts immediately to FTP the files to the production target.

Conclusion

Now you have a complete guide for a modern staging/production deployment solution with very low server requirements. This guide can be extended in many different directions. Have fun using it.