Presentation about automation of local environment and deployment for WordPress, using Capistrano, Mercury Vagrant and WP CLI

1. Professional Deployment

2. About

3. Crowd Favorite

4. FTP Workflow

6. Issues with this workflow

No fast way to revert

No backup of the file

No way to track changes

No way to check if someone else is
working on the same file

Slow and not effective

7. Professional deployment
tools

Capistrano

Mercury Vagrant

WP CLI

8. Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation
tool.

Benefits:
- Reliably deploy web application to any
number of machines simultaneously, in
sequence or as a rolling set
- To automate audits of any number of
machines (checking login logs, enumerating
uptimes, and/or applying security patches)
- To script arbitrary workflows over SSH
- To automate common tasks in software teams.

9. Requirements
Capistrano is written in Ruby, but
it can easily be used to deploy any
language.

Ruby >= 1.9.3 (JRuby and C-
Ruby/YARV are supported)

Capistrano support these source
code version control systems out of
the box:
– Git 1.8 or higher
– Mercurial
– SVN

10. Assumptions

You are using SSH to access your remote
machines. Telnet and FTP are not supported.

Your remote servers have a POSIX-compatible
shell installed. The shell must be called
“sh” and must reside in the default system
path.

If you are using passwords to access your
servers, they must all have the same
password. Because this is not generally a
good idea, the preferred way of accessing
your servers is with a public key. Make
sure you’ve got a good passphrase on your
key.

11. Assumptions

12. Installation

gem 'capistrano', '~> 3.4.0'

$ bundle install

$ bundle exec cap install
Capify: make sure there's no
"Capfile" or "capfile" present

13. Structure

├── Capfile

├── config

│ ├── deploy

│ │ ├── production.rb

│ │ └── staging.rb

│ └── deploy.rb

└── lib

└── capistrano

└── tasks

14. Crowd Favorite modification
Recipes for deploying and
maintaining remote WordPress
installations with Capistrano.

15. cap -T

16. Create a project

cap cf:setup:new_project

18. {
"code_repository": "",
"code_directory": "",
"type": "wordpress",
"project_name": "wordcamp-sofia",
"wp_directory": "wp/",
"wp_content_directory": "wp-
content/",
"wp_version": "branches/4.3",
"database_name": "c_wc_sofia",
"dev_domain": "wordcamp-sofia.dev"
}

19. cap cf:setup:wordpress

Set up WordPress install

Gets the required version of
WordPress core noted in the
capinfo.json file - "wp_version":
"branches/4.3",

Set up config files

Set up local-config.php, included
into the wp-config.php, to make
local install

Set up all needed files

21. Custom Capistrano recipes

Sync DB with remote server

Update on staging server

Update WordPress Core

Set up a project that already
exists on git with everything you
need for local dev

22. Deployment

Important files for the setup
- config/deploy.rb
- config/deploy/production.rb
- config/deploy/staging.rb

23. config/deploy.rb

Stages – production, staging

Server WordPress version

Git repo to pull from

Enable/disable git submodules

Number of releases to keep

Files to exclude form deploy

Files on server to exclude from
tracking

24. staging.rb

Staging ssh user and IP

Paths to server directories

Branch to deploy

Symlinks

After deploy actions

25. production.rb

Production ssh user and IP

Paths to server directories

Branch to deploy

Symlinks

After deploy actions

26. Executing deployment

cap staging deploy

cap production deploy

Magic!

27. Behind the scenes

Capistrano executes a set of commands,

Connects via ssh on the server.

Sets up the version of WordPress set in
config/deploy.rb,
- for example: set:wordpress_version,
"tags/4.3.1",

Sets new releases folder with the
current timestamp

Symlinks root content folder to the new
release folder

28. Behind the scenes

Creates symlinks to the shared
directories

Clears the cache

All done

29. Rolling back

In case something goes wrong
cap deploy:rollback
– Rolls back a previous version and
restarts

30. Server structure

Deploy path
- current folder – httpdocs for
example
- releases folder – keeps the number
of releases set on the deploy.rb
file
- shared folder – contains the
symlinked folders described in the
config file

31. Git push

Pushes to server from git repo

Can be used on most of the hosts

Easy to run and rollback

32. Set up

Set up local repo

ssh on the server and set up you
ssh keys used for Github

Clone the git repository folder
structure there

Add remote locally
- check remotes – git remote -v
- add remote – git remote add <your
repo ssh link>

git push <branch name needed>

33. Set up local environment
with Mercury
Mercury project is meant to allow
people in the WordPress community
to run a single Vagrant for
developing, debugging, and
deploying HHVM based code.

34. Setting Up

Install Git.

Windows users: Be sure to add the Git
executables to your path (See, e.g. this
guide, under "Prerequisites")

Install virtual machine software (VMware or
VirtualBox are recommended).

Install Vagrant

Install Node

Optional, but highly recommended: Install
the Vagrant Ghost plugin
- Short version: vagrant plugin install
vagrant-ghost

35. Installation

git clone --recursive
https://github.com/wpengine/hgv.git
.
- to clone the latest version of the
tool.

Change into the directory hgv.

Run npm install to install build
and deploy script dependencies.

Run vagrant up.

36. Default sites

hgv.test -- General documentation
and links for all of the tools

hhvm.hgv.test -- A new WordPress
installation running on HHVM

php.hgv.test -- A new WordPress
installation running on PHP-FPM
(PHP 5.5)

admin.hgv.test -- Useful
administrative tools (phpMyAdmin,
etc.) - admin.hgv.test/phpmyadmin

37. Workflow

New project folder in hgv/sites
provisioning/default-install.yml ->
hgv_data/config/sites/default.yml

Config the yml file

Run vagrant provision.

38. What you get

New WordPress with some useful
plugins

All config files set up

DB set up

Debug tools

ssh access to the vagrant files

caching if needed – Memcache /
Varnish

39. Vagrant Push
config.push.define "staging",
strategy: "ftp" do |push|
# ...
end
config.push.define "qa", strategy:
"ftp" do |push|
# ...
end

40. WP CLI
WP-CLI is a set of command-line
tools for managing WordPress
installations. You can update
plugins, set up multisite installs
and much more, without using a web
browser.

41. Requirements

UNIX-like environment (OS X, Linux,
FreeBSD, Cygwin); limited support
in Windows environment

PHP 5.3.2 or later

WordPress 3.5.2 or later

42. Usage
Navigate to WordPress root:

cd /var/www/wp/
Commands list:

wp

Test a plugin install:

wp plugin install hello-dolly

43. Deployment

wp-cli-deploy

Requires defining a set of
constants in your wp-config.php
file

Example # Pull both the production
themes and plugins
wp deploy pull production
--what=themes && wp deploy pull
production --what=plugins

44. Example
define( 'DEV_URL', 'the-remote-website-url.com' );
define( 'DEV_WP_PATH',
'/path/to/the/wp/dir/on/the/server' );
define( 'DEV_HOST', 'ssh_host' );
define( 'DEV_USER', 'ssh_user' );
define( 'DEV_PORT', '22' );
define( 'DEV_PATH',
'/path/to/a/writable/dir/on/the/server' );
define( 'DEV_UPLOADS_PATH',
'/path/to/the/remote/uploads/directory' );
define( 'DEV_THEMES_PATH',
'/path/to/the/remote/themes/directory' );
define( 'DEV_PLUGINS_PATH',
'/path/to/the/remote/plugins/directory' );
define( 'DEV_DB_HOST', 'the_remote_db_host' );
define( 'DEV_DB_NAME', 'the_remote_db_name' );
define( 'DEV_DB_USER', 'the_remote_db_user' );
define( 'DEV_DB_PASSWORD', 'the_remote_db_password' );
define( 'DEV_POST_HOOK', 'echo "something to be executed
when the command finishes"' )

45. Final notes

Open source products

Easy to use and configure

A lot of contributors, examples,
docs

Adding of custom commands/recipes
for custom cases/projects

46. Resources
http://capistranorb.com/
https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano/wiki
https://git-scm.com/docs/git-push
http://wpengine.com/mercury/how-to-start/
https://github.com/wpengine/hgv/wiki
http://wp-cli.org/
https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/wiki

47. Contacts
E-mail: iv.dimova@gmail.com
Twitter: @iv_wp