Deploying a Laravel 5 application on SiteGround’s shared hosting with Git

This post shows how to deploy a Laravel 5 application on a SiteGround‘s shared hosting service, using Git for simplify the deployment process.

Take a look to this other post for general methods about deploy Laravel on shared hosting services: Deploy Laravel Application On Shared Hosting.

1. Configuring SSH and Git

Enable SSH access from cPanel > Advanced > SSH/Shell Access, then import your public key.

Check the SSH connection:

$ ssh -p 18765 [siteground-user]@[domain-name.com]

Check that Git is correctly installed on SiteGround:

$ git --version

Create the bin directory on the user’s home:

$ mkdir ~/bin

2. Configuring PHP

On the SiteGround host:

$ cd ~
$ vim .bash_profile

Change:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

with:

PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

i.e. prepend your local bin directory to assign it first priority over other paths.

Then link the right php in your bin folder:

$ cd ~/bin
$ ln -s /usr/local/php55/bin/php-cli php

Close and reopen the SSH connection, then check php:

$ php --version

Should print something like:

PHP 5.5.31 (cli) (built: Jan  7 2016 18:09:47)

For Laravel 5.2 when need at least PHP 5.5.9.

3. Create the application folder

From SiteGround host, create the [app] folder in your home, where [app] is the name of your Laravel application:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir [app]

This folder will contains your application.

Depending if you want to install the application in the main domain, e.g. http://example.com, or in a subdomain, e.g. http://[app].example.com, do one of the following.

Main domain

Replace the public_html folder with a symbolic link to [app]/public (be sure public_html is empty before delete it):

$ rm -r public_html
$ ln -s [app]/public public_html

Subdomains

Create a subdomain setting the root folder to /[app]/public:

• Go on cPanel > Subdomains
• Add a subdomain and a set the document root, for example:
  • Subdomain: [app]
  • Document Root: /[app]/public

4. Get Composer

On the SiteGround host type:

$ cd ~/bin
$ curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
$ ln -s ./composer.phar composer

Check it:

$ composer --version

5. Configuring Git for automatic deploy

Create the Git bare repository on SiteGround’s host:

$ # Create the git directory where the repository will be mantained
$ cd ~
$ mkdir git

$ # Create the repository
$ cd git
$ git init --bare --shared [app].git

$ # Create the post-receive hook file
$ cd [app].git/hooks
$ touch post-receive

$ # Make the hook executable
$ chmod +x post-receive

$ # Configure the hook
$ vim post-receive

Write in the file post-receive all the operations that will be performed after the push is done:

~/git/[app].git/hooks/post-receive

#!/bin/sh

# Set up our PATH variable and export it
PATH="/home/[siteground-user]/bin":$PATH
export PATH

# App directories
APP_WEB_DIR="/home/[siteground-user]/[app]"
APP_GIT_DIR="/home/[siteground-user]/git/[app].git"

# Checkout the last commit inside the web app directory
git --work-tree=${APP_WEB_DIR} --git-dir=${APP_GIT_DIR} checkout -f

# Clean the app directory
# Use -e "[pattern]" to exclude some file or directory to be cleaned,
# as they are in the .gitignore file
# git --work-tree=${APP_WEB_DIR} clean -fd

# Run composer
cd ${APP_WEB_DIR}
composer install
   
# Ensure that storage's folder have write permission for the group
chmod -R g+w storage

# Optimizations
echo "Running optimizations"
php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache

# Do other things here, for example load database changes automatically
# php artisan migrate
# ...

6. Add the ‘production’ remote in your repository

From your PC:

$ cd /path/to/your/project
$ git remote add production ssh://[siteground-user]@[domain-name.com]:18765/~/git/[app].git

Now you can deploy the project on SiteGround (pushing it on the production remote) with:

$ git push production master

You should now be able to see your code on the folder /[app] on SiteGround.

References

http://www.rarst.net/wordpress/siteground/
http://nicolasgallagher.com/simple-git-deployment-strategy-for-static-sites/
http://www.sitepoint.com/one-click-app-deployment-server-side-git-hooks/