Deploying Websites with Capistrano

How do you currently publish updates to your website? How do you undo changes if you've made a mistake?

Manually uploading files via FTP can lead to mistakes or downtime and are difficult to roll back. Other techniques such as remote repositories or post-receive hooks are better but can limit your ability to control the way updates are applied to the website.

Come learn how to streamline and automate the process of both deploying and rolling back updates to your website with Capistrano, a remote server automation tool.

Presentation given at Front Porch Conference in Dallas, TX
(video available at http://frontporch.io/andrew-turner/)

Transcript

1. Deploying Websites with Capistrano Andrew Turner, @galenandrew Front Porch Conference - Dallas, TX October 7, 2014
2. Common Deployment Methods • Server-side Editing • FTP Upload • File Syncing • Live Remote Repositories (i.e. version control on the server) • Post-receive Hooks / Webhooks • Third Party Deployment Services • Continuous Integration
3. Deployment Challenges • Often a manual process • High risk of error (easy to break things) • Potential downtime during upload / sync • No record or log of deployments • Typically not well documented or easily distributable • Difficult to manage for multiple environments • Updates are difficult to reverse …especially when a deployment crashes the live site!
4. Capistrano is a remote server automation and deployment tool that provides versioned releases and easy rollbacks.
5. How Capistrano Works • Deployment scripts are stored in your project • Executed locally from the command line (Ruby Gem) • Connects directly to your server via SSH • Checks out code from remote repository to your server • Performs automated tasks/commands on server (or locally) • Keeps deployment log and versioned releases • Provides easy ability to rollback releases
6. How Capistrano Works local server repository local connects to server via SSH server updates project code from repository deploy command is issued on local server issues a new release and logs deployment
7. Installation / Setup gem install capistrano Install Capistrano cap install Initialize Capistrano in your project Note: Run this command in the root directory of your project as it will create the necessary deployment files/folders
8. Usage cap production deploy Deploy cap production deploy:rollback Rollback
9. Directory Structure: local / project ├── Capfile └── config ├── deploy │ ├── production.rb │ └── staging.rb └── deploy.rb http://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/preparing-your-application/
10. Directory Structure: server ├── current ├── releases │ ├── 20141007223313 │ ├── 20140923125109 │ └── 20140915181947 ├── repo ├── shared └── revisions.log Note: Make sure to point your web host’s document root to current as it is a symlink to the latest release. For example, in the above current would be a symlink (alias) to 20141007223313
11. Resources • Official Capistrano Documentation
 http://capistranorb.com • Official Capistrano GitHub
 https://github.com/capistrano/capistrano • How To Use Capistrano to Automate Deployments: Getting Started
 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-capistrano-to- automate-deployments-getting-started • WP-Deploy (A framework for deploying WordPress sites using Capistrano)
 https://github.com/mixd/wp-deploy • CSS-Tricks: Website Deployments
 http://css-tricks.com/deployment/