There are a lot of different ways to get the content for your Pelican site onto the internet. The Docs show an example using rsync.

For automation they talk about the use of either Invoke or Make (although you could also use Just instead of Make which is my preferred command runner.)

I didn't go with any of these options, instead opting to use GitHub Actions instead.

I have two GitHub Actions that will publish updated content. One action publishes to a UAT version of the site, and the other to the Production version of the site.

Why two actions you might ask?

Right now it's so that I can work through making my own theme and deploying it without disrupting the content on my production site. Also, it's a workflow that I'm pretty used to:

  1. Local Development
  2. Push to Development Branch on GitHub
  3. Pull Request into Main on GitHub

It kind of complicates things right now, but I feel waaay more comfortable with having a UAT version of my site that I can just undo if I need to.

Below is the code for the Prod Deployment

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name: Pelican Publish

on:
push:
    branches:
    - main

jobs:
deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
    steps:
    - name: deploy code
        uses: appleboy/ssh-action@v0.1.2
        with:
        host: ${{ secrets.SSH_HOST }}
        key: ${{ secrets.SSH_KEY }}
        username: ${{ secrets.SSH_USERNAME }}

        script: |
            rm -rf ryancheley.com
            git clone git@github.com:ryancheley/ryancheley.com.git

            source /home/ryancheley/venv/bin/activate

            cp -r ryancheley.com/* /home/ryancheley/

            cd /home/ryancheley

            pip install -r requirements.txt

            pelican content -s publishconf.py

Let's break it down a bit

Lines 3 - 6 are just indicating when the actually perform the actions in the lines below.

In line 13 I invoke the appleboy/ssh-action@v0.1.2 which allows me to ssh into my server and then run some command line functions.

On line 20 I remove the folder where the code was previously cloned from, and in line 21 I run the git clone command to download the code

Line 23 I activate my virtual environment

Line 25 I copy the code from the cloned repo into the directory of my site

Line 27 I change directory into the source for the site

Line 29 I make any updates to requirements with pip install

Finally, in line 31 I run the command to publish the content (which takes my .md files and turns them into HTML files to be seen on the internet)

This post is part 3 of the "Migrating to Pelican" series:

  1. Migrating to Pelican from Wordpress
  2. Setting up the Server to host my Pelican Site
  3. Publishing content to Pelican site

tags: Pelican, Server