How to clone a private Github repo into Cpanel ¶

The goal of this blog post is to help you in setting up your Github private repo on Cpanel, so that when you make a push to your blog post, then those changes are synced automatically.

So let's get started 😀

Generate a key in Cpanel¶

The goal is the create a public and private key pair. Then copy the public key and save it in Github. First we will create a pair in Cpanel. For this go to Cpanel → Security → SSH Access → Manage Keys → Generate New Key (enter a strong password)

Copy public key from Cpanel¶

After generating a public-private key pair, now is the time to copy the public key. For doing this, go to SSH Access → Manage SSH Keys → Public keys → Authorize (make authorize) → Go back → Press view/download → Download key → open it using a text editor and copy it.

Copy public key to Github¶

The goal is to save the public key in your private git repo, so that Cpanel can fetch data from it. Go to your Github → Your private repo → Settings → Deploy Keys → add deploy key → Provide any title and paste the public key.

Add an `.cpanel.yml` file.¶

Before we go ahead, we need to make sure the files we add from the Github are deployed to cpanel. You will need to know 2 important things here

yourUserName/repositories : this is the folder where all the repo's will get synced.
yourUserName/public_html : This is the folder from where the actual site content is served. So, this should contain an index.html at minimum.

The .cpanel.yml file is a basic configuration file. It can be used to copy the contents from your yourUserName/repositories/subdir directory to yourUserName/public_html for example.

Make sure you've added a .cpanel.yml file at the root of your project that you are uploading. The contents of this file can be something like

---
deployment:
  tasks:
    - export DEPLOYPATH=/home/ReplaceItByYourUserName/public_html/
    - /bin/rm -Rf $DEPLOYPATH
    - /bin/mkdir $DEPLOYPATH
    - /bin/cp -R FileWhereSiteContentIsLocated/* $DEPLOYPATH

Clone a repo to CPanel¶

After you upload your project, this file will be hidden (as this is a . file) but can be seen by going to your directory from cPanel home → Advanced → Shell

cd yourHome/Repositories
ls -a

Go to Cpanel → Git™ Version Control → create clone url and enter the similar Clone URL

 git@github.com:<user_name>/<repository_name>.git

The Repository Path and Repo Name will be autofilled. Then hit create.

Pull from the sources.¶

Manage repository from list → Manage → pull or deploy from Github → Click on Update from Remote: works perfectly (any files edit or delete you fetch/pull from GitHub now)

Cheers 🍻