Git: Deploying to Environments with Different Web Root Directory Names

Question

I have an ExpressionEngine site set up with Git in multiple environments: Local, Development, and Production.

I have a couple of directories that are above web root, so the web root directory itself is inside the git repo, like this:

• .git
• system
• third_party
• templates
• public_html (web root)
  • assets
    • css
    • js
    • img
  • themes
  • index.php

Now, my development and production environments are with 2 separate hosting providers, and their web roots have different names from each other. Development, for example, is named public_html, but Production is named content.

How do I deploy to both of these environments when the web root directories have different names?

Answer 1

Using symbolic links on the server to point the web root to the appropriate directory is a time honored technique. Let's assume you gave your Git Repo an obvious name: clientsite.com, so inside that folder you have:

• .git
• system
• third_party
• templates
• web_root
  • assets
    • css
    • js
    • img
  • themes
  • index.php
  • admin.php

That folder gets uploaded to your staging/production servers. On the staging server, you would then create a symbolic link to web_root named public_html:

ln -s clientsite.com/web_root public_html

And then on the production server, you would make a symbolic link to web_root called content:

ln -s clientsite.com/web_root content

---

Now, what's brilliant about this is that if you are very clever and are using MSM, you can create config.php and index.php files that allow you to use web_root for ALL your domains in that EE installation and just create symbolic links to it for each site. For example:

ln -s clientsite.com/web_root siteone_html

ln -s clientsite.com/web_root sitetwo_html

Then in index.php, you look at the HTTP_HOST server config to set the site_name:

switch ( $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] ) {

    case 'siteone.com' :
    case 'dev.siteone.com' :
        $assign_to_config['site_name']  = 'siteone';
    break;
    case 'sitetwo.com' :
    case 'dev.sitetwo.com' :
        $assign_to_config['site_name']  = 'site two';
    break;
}

Finally, your config.php can do something very similar:

$config['site_index']   = "";
$config['site_url']     = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
$config['server_path']  = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$config['cp_url']       = $config['site_url']."/".$config['system_folder'].'/index.php';

....stuff here...

switch ( $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] ) {

    // production
    case 'siteone.com' :
        $config['cookie_domain'] = ".siteone.com";
        $db['expressionengine']['hostname'] = "111.222.111.22";
        $db['expressionengine']['username'] = "siteone";
        $db['expressionengine']['password'] = "passone";
        $db['expressionengine']['database'] = "database_live";
        $db['expressionengine']['db_debug'] = FALSE; 
    break;

    // staging
    case 'dev.siteone.com' :
        $config['cookie_domain'] = "dev.siteone.com";
        $db['expressionengine']['hostname'] = "333.444.555.22";
        $db['expressionengine']['username'] = "siteone";
        $db['expressionengine']['password'] = "passone";
        $db['expressionengine']['database'] = "database_dev";
        $db['expressionengine']['db_debug'] = FALSE; 
    break;
}

In this way, you can have global config options and then site specific options too.