How to Deploy HTML Website to cpanel using FTP from Github (CI/CD)

July 23, 2024

Automate deployment to cpanel from Github using FTP and Github actions

Ugochukwu Paul

Latest in tech

Software Dev

Introduction

Uploading files to cPanel manually is boring and stressful in 2024. In this article, I'll show you how to automate your deployment to cPanel so you no longer need to manually deploy your files.

Why use FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it makes it very easy to transfer files in cPanel. The combination of FTP and GitHub Actions creates a CI/CD flow for automating file transfers across both servers, taking the stress away from you.

Steps

• Create an FTP account : On cPanel, search for "FTP" and click on it. You’ll be taken to a page displaying all existing FTP accounts. Click on the Create Account button and input a username, password, quota (depending on the size of your files), and directory (e.g., /home2/username/public_html). Click the Create button to create your FTP account.

Note: In my case, the /home2/username was already specified and I just had to add public_html. Click the "Create" button to create your FTP account.

• Create Github secrets : Go to your GitHub repository, click on Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret. You'll need to create these three secrets:
  • Name: FTP_PASSWORD
    
    Value: your-ftp-password
    
    
  • Name: FTP_USERNAME
    
    Value: your-ftp-username
    
    
  • Name: FTP_SERVER
    
    Value: your-ftp-server
    
• Create Github Workflow : In your project folder, create a directory at the root named .github/workflows. Inside this directory, create a file named main.yaml. Then, paste the following code into main.yaml:

name: Publish website to cPanel
on:
push:
branches:
    - main
jobs:
     FTP-Deploy-Action:
         name: FTP Deploy Action
         runs-on: ubuntu-latest

         steps: - name: Checkout code
         uses: actions/checkout@v2.1.0
         with:
                fetch-depth: 2
         - name: Install lftp
            run: sudo apt-get install -y lftp

          - name: Deploy to FTP server
             env:
                   FTP_SERVER: ${{ secrets.FTP_SERVER }}
                   FTP_USERNAME: ${{ secrets.FTP_USERNAME }}
                   FTP_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.FTP_PASSWORD }}
                   LOCAL_DIR: "./"
                   REMOTE_DIR: "/public_html"

           run: | 
                 lftp -f " 
                 set ssl:verify-certificate no 
                 open $FTP_SERVER 
                 user $FTP_USERNAME $FTP_PASSWORD 
                 lcd $LOCAL_DIR 
                 cd $REMOTE_DIR 
                 mirror --reverse --delete --verbose --exclude .ftpquota 
                 bye "

• Push to Github: Push the new changes to GitHub, and then navigate to the Actions tab in your repository to see the deployment process.
  

Conclusion

Deploying manually can be difficult, and you don’t deserve to go through that amount of stress just to keep a webpage running. Hopefully, this article helps you streamline the process. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or encounter any issues.