So I started using Git together with this workflow to make a personal website (mostly for testing and to learn Git) and I am developing it locally on my laptop using Xampp.
But now I would like to make this website public and upload it to my webserver. Problem is, I use a shared hosting plan which means I only have FTP access to my website directory. Can't use SSH or install Git or anything..
I would like to deploy the website and any updates to that webserver, but I was wondering if that was possible with Git with only FTP access? And if not, what would be an advisable way to update my website? Manually drag an dropping files through Filezilla can get a bit tedious.
If you have no SSH access to the remote server and the hosting provider doesn't offer a git deploy feature, you won't be able to deploy directly using git.
However, it's always a good idea to track your source code regardless the remote options.
In your case, a good alternative to automate the release process would be to create a simple deploy script in your favorite programming language (Ruby, Python, Bash...) that loads the list of changed files from your git repository and performs an upload via FTP of these files.
A simple search for git-ftp reveals that there are already two projects that seems to do what I suggested:
ezyang/git-ftp
git-ftp/git-ftp
If you are in a shared hosting plan, its not a good idea to host your own git server as you'll have both space and bandwidth limitations. You can look out for other options such as github or if you want to have a private hosting, there is bitbucket
Maybe think about a different hosting set up?
On a VPS you have more freedom but you need to set up everything yourself.
On a cloud PaaS you will get great technology but pay a little more.
As mentioned above: A private repo hoster with ftp deployment option might also work.
For me, best productivity is most important. Compare costs of web hosting with costs for web development.
If git is installed on the server (e.g <?php $last_line = system('git --version', $retval); ?>), but you don't have SSH access, perhaps try php-git-bundle.
This question may be old but there is a shared web hosting which offers git deployment option and SSH access to git pull/push etc: githoster.com
Or there are some scripts you can search in google which will link your github account to your host with git hooks.
Related
I was enjoining about getting a Network Attached Storage (NAS) so that I can work on dev sites from both my desktop and my laptop without duplicating files and always having the most current file (just in case I forget to save). My question is if I put sites on there that uses php, would I be able to run the sites off of the NAS as I would with MAMP / WAMP? Or would I still need something else to make that work?
The point of a NAS is to share files over a network. This is usually done via Windows File & Print Sharing (aka Samba aka SMB) which is supported on most platforms.
Some NAS devices might allow you to run a web server (particularly if you can install custom firmware), but it is a poor choice of platform to run anything remotely complex in terms of web server stacks.
You can certainly store your development files on a NAS, and then access them from webservers running in both your development environments.
… but that said, I'd look at using version control software (Git would be my preference), keeping your repository on the NAS and getting into the habit of saving, committing and pushing. It makes things more manageable in the long run. (You could also use a service like Bitbucket or Github and dispense with the local NAS entirely).
You could also go a step further and run a server with CI software on it that monitors your repository and automatically pulls updates from it, runs your automated tests, and then updates a local test server.
I am assuming you use windows(it's easier to do it in mac i think) with wamp what you can do is mount a network drive to w:\ let's say. Then create a virtual host that points to a folder in W:\ drive.
With mac all you need to do is mount the remote folder share to your mamp directory and all should work as you want.
Though personally I think this is a terrible idea and would much rather suggest you to use a VCS(version control system) to share code between multiple places. Lots of them are designed with this problem in mind. And it provides nice history about your code at the same time. If you want to do some research look at GIT(the most popular, currently) bitbucket has free private repositories. you can look into what a VCS can do here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_control
At the moment I am using poor method to work at home and at work to do web development.
I use Wamp for testing/development and then I upload to a production web server (Linux) via FTP.
If I continue with the project at home, I have to download the files from FTP.
What is good method to work on same projects at multiple locations?
Someone suggest me to learn Git and get Github private account. Also suggested to get Vagrant installed at work and home. Do I need to install Git in Vagrant VM or local machine?
Learn git: http://try.github.io
Create a Vagrant/VrtualBox VM by following the directions at https://puphpet.com
One of the tricks here is to put the Vagrant stuff you get from Puphpet directly in your project and then commit all of it to git. You'll then be able to check out the project in a new environment and, as long as Vagrant and VirtualBox are installed, you can run vagrant up and be working in about 5 mins.
Here's an example of how I'm doing just that to allow people to easily try out a library I've written: https://github.com/jeremykendall/query-auth-impl.
Enjoy! Your life as a developer is about to get a lot easier and a whole lot better.
Github or Bitbucket. Git or Mercurial, and also Svn if it's just for yourself and you want an easier learning curve.
Any source control system would be ideal for this.
You don't want your production server to be the source of truth for the actual code. Those two concerns should definitely be separated. The production application is the output of the code, not the code itself. For a language like PHP the two may be identical, but the concerns themselves should still be separated. Indeed, for small systems the two services may even be hosted on the same server, but should still be logically separated.
The source control system maintains the changes made to the code over time, the production server is a snapshot of the current release version of the code.
I am currently interacting with my sites via FTP, which can get quite annoying and impossible to manage at times.
Is it possible to use GitHub as a version control system for my PHP based websites which is on a different domain name?
If not, can anyone give me some advice on what tool I should look into using in order to set up version control.
You can create a git repository with all of your code for your website, and host it on Github. Then you can make changes, commit them to your local repository, and push them to Github. Afterwards, when you want to deploy your changes, do a git pull on your Github repository from the remote server.
Git is a distributed version control system. You have local repositories sitting in your local machine (your laptop, desktop, etc.) Github is a remote repository hosting service (sort of like Dropbox). When you want to sync the repo in your computer with the one hosted by Github, you do a pull/push. Then, you can sync the repository hosted by Github with the thrid repository on the server that hosts your website using a push/pull. No ftp is needed.
After a bit of research, found the solution to my question.
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/tools-and-tips/how-to-use-git-with-ftp/
I'm developing web app using CodeIgniter PHP framework. The server I'm working with does not support any type of source control (i.e. Subversion) unless you go to a higher price tier.
I would still like to put the code under some sort of source control. Does it make sense to do the following:
Install git or SVN on my local machine and develop there
Copy changes from my local machine to development directory on the server (using FileZilla, WinSCP, etc.) and test
Copy changes from development directory to production directory on the server
Does that sound reasonable? Are there better alternatives? Thanks!
If you are using svn locally it's a bit dangerous because then you will need to protect also your computer - I think the best way is to work with the commercial sites offer fully supported svn/git - like http://www.beanstalkapp.com/ or http://www.github.com
You could use source control on your local machine (SVN, Git, etc.) and use an open source tool like Capistrano to deploy the code from your local source control repo to your server via SSH. Or if you're limited to FTP, this blog post has a potential solution.
An advantage of using a tool like Capistrano instead of directly mirroring the files on your local machine to the server via FileZilla or WinSCP is that Capistrano will version your deployed files so that, if you end up breaking something and need to roll back quickly to the previously-deployed version, it can be as easy as changing a symlink to the previous deployment directory.
Does that sound reasonable?
Partially, in p.1. But even in this case I'll suggest to have your repository also at some Repository-Hosting (BitBucket, GitHub, Assembla)
For pp. 2-3: your deploys must to be automatic and non-interactive, thus - you'll have to select another tools (for using in post-commit hook of SCM-of-choice)
Somehow better alternative to 2-3 may be:
Use 2 different branches (DEVEL and PROD) as sources of DEVEL and PROD dir
Post-commit hook, which upload only changed in committed revision files to corresponding dir (NCFTP for FTP, SCP with scenario for ssh)
Main development happens in DEVEL branch
PROD have only mergesets from DEVEL
Workflow is SCM-agnostic and scalable to any reasonable amount of branches and developers
So we are pushing to create good processes in our office. I work in a web shop that has been doing web sites for over a decade. And we don't use version control. I know! It's bad, not my fault. I'm the guy with a SoftE background pushing for this at a minimum.
The tech lead has been looking into it. We all use Mac workstations and mostly use Coda for editing since it is a great IDE. It has SVN support built in but expects it to work on local files. We're trying to explore mounting the web directory as a local network drive with an SFTP tool.
We are a LAMP shop, BTW.
I am wondering what the model is here. I think we have typically would checkout the whole site to our local machine where we have apache running and then test it there? This isn't how we work yet, we do everything on the server. We've looked at checking things in and out, but some files are owned by apache and the ownerships change when I check them in, because I'm not apache.
I just want to know a way to do this that works given my circumstances. Would be nice to not have to run apache locally.
You might want to checkout the Coda mailing list and ask there. Lots of Coda enthusiasts there with specific experience.
If you don't want to have to run locally could make Apache on your server run a copy of the site for every developer, on a different port per person, and then mount those web-roots to the local macs and make that the working directory. If you're a small shop that's not hard to manage. I find that pretty easy to set up and saves a lot of resources on the local machines. The one-site-per-person helps to avoid conflicts with multiple people working on files at the same time.
What I'd additionally recommend is to have a script that gets the latest changes from SVN and deploys the entire site to the production server when you're ready. You could have that script change permissions on appropriate files/folders as needed to be owned by Apache. The idea once you're using source control is to never manually edit the production files -- you should have something that deploys it from SVN for you.
A few notes:
Take a look at MacFuse / MacFusion (the latter is the application, the former is the library behind it) to mount remote directories via SSH / FTP as local ones.
Allow your developers to check out into their local environment (with their own LAMP stack if they're savvy), or look into a shared dev environment with individual jails. This way your developers can run their own LAMP stack (which you could deploy for them on the machine) without interfering with others.
The idea being, let them use a workflow that works best for them, to minimize the pain in adapting to this change (if change management might be an issue!)
Just as an example, we have a shared dev server where jails are created with a single command for new developers. They have a full LAMP stack ready to go, and we can upgrade and re-deploy jails easily to keep software up to date. Developers have individual control to add custom settings / extensions if they need it for work, while the sys admins have the ability to reset everything when someone accidently breaks their environment :)
Those who prefer not to use jails, and are able to, manage their own local environments (typically through Macports or MAMP).