Automatically deploy WordPress site from GitLab to your server using Git FTP

I’ve been using GitLab CI more and more to replace the traditional Filezilla method. When you use git-FTP with Gitlab, all the process of transfer of files will be automatic. You don’t need to frequently move the files to your server manually.

Getting started

To start using GitLab CI you have to create a .gitlab-ci.yml file in the root directory of your project. This file tells GitLab what Docker image it should use and what steps to go through.

Note: I will assume that you know how to push the files to the Gitlab repository.

Copy and paste below code on to your .gitlab-ci.yml file and save it.

stages:
  - MY_SITE_STAGING

deploy:
    stage: MY_SITE_STAGING
    image: dotsunited/git-ftp
    script:
        - git config git-ftp.url "$HOST"
        - git config git-ftp.user "$FTP_STAGING_USERNAME"
        - git config git-ftp.password "$FTP_STAGING_PASSWORD"
        - git ftp init
    only:
        - master

Environment variables: username & password

Before we can test our CI pipeline, we have to store our FTP username and password somewhere. Putting it in the gitlab-ci.yml file would be very insecure because everyone can see it (especially if your code is open source).

Instead, you should store it as an environment variable:

• Go to your project on gitlab.com
• In the sidebar, go to “Settings” and open “CI / CD”

Now enter your credentials in the “Environment variables” section. In the git-ftp command, we used $FTP_STAGING_USERNAME and $FTP_STAGING_PASSWORD so we’ll define their values here:

Note that here we don’t include the dollar sign $. It’s also wise to enable the “Protected” options.

Click on “Save variables” and now we’re ready to test it out!

Testing the GitLab CI pipeline

To test your pipeline you just have to commit some new changes to your git repository and push them to GitLab. Alternatively, you can also trigger a build manually by going to “CI / CD” and clicking on “Run Pipeline”.

If everything was configured correctly you should see your job running successfully:

Lastly

Once you have made your first push to the server, you will need to change some lines on the .gitlab-ci.yml file.

Edit the .gitlab-ci.yml file and replace git ftp init to git ftp push

1111stages:
  - MY_SITE_STAGING

deploy:
    stage: MY_SITE_STAGING
    image: dotsunited/git-ftp
    script:
        - git config git-ftp.url "$HOST"
        - git config git-ftp.user "$FTP_STAGING_USERNAME"
        - git config git-ftp.password "$FTP_STAGING_PASSWORD"
        - git ftp push
    only:
        - master

Some Useful Information

• Always add .gitignore file to the root of the directory. It will ignore all the files that are excluded in the .gitignore file.
• git-ftp will transfer one file at a time, so if you have more than 3000 files which WordPress does have. It will take some time to complete the file transfer. In your first commit, you will have more files so it will be slow at first and then afterward it will only transfer files that have been changed/modified.