WP Engine GitHub Action for Site Deployment

Use this GitHub Action to deploy code from a GitHub repo to a WP Engine environment of your choosing. If you do not have a WP Engine Account, click here to get started! If you do have an account, check out our guided step-by-step instructions.

This action enables you to:

• Deploy a full site directory or subdirectory of your WordPress install
• Perform a PHP Lint
• Customize rsync flags
• Clear cache
• Execute a post-deploy script of your choosing

Setup Instructions

1. SSH PUBLIC KEY SETUP IN WP ENGINE

• Generate a new SSH key pair if you have not already done so. Please note that this SSH Key needs to be passwordless.

• Add SSH Public Key to WP Engine SSH Gateway Key settings. This Guide will show you how.

2. SSH PRIVATE KEY SETUP IN GITHUB

• Add the SSH Private Key to your Repository Secrets or your Organization Secrets. Save the new secret "Name" as WPE_SSHG_KEY_PRIVATE.

3. YML SETUP

• Create .github/workflows/main.yml directory and file locally. Copy and paste the configuration from below, replacing the value under branches: and the value for WPE_ENV:.

• To deploy from another branch, simply create another yml file locally for that branch, such as .github/workflows/stage.yml and replace the values for branches: and WPE_ENV: for that workflow.

This provides the ability to perform a different workflow for different branches/environments. Consult "Environment Variable & Secrets" for more available options.

4. Git push your site GitHub repo. The action will do the rest!

View your actions progress and logs by navigating to the "Actions" tab in your repo.

Example GitHub Action workflow

Simple main.yml:

name: Deploy to WP Engine
on:
  push:
    branches:
     - main
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: GitHub Action Deploy to WP Engine
      uses: wpengine/github-action-wpe-site-deploy@v3
      with:
        WPE_SSHG_KEY_PRIVATE: ${{ secrets.WPE_SSHG_KEY_PRIVATE }}
        WPE_ENV: <your_install_name_here>

Extended main.yml

name: Deploy to WP Engine
on:
  push:
    branches:
     - main
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: GitHub Action Deploy to WP Engine
      uses: wpengine/github-action-wpe-site-deploy@v3
      with:
      # Deploy vars
        WPE_SSHG_KEY_PRIVATE: ${{ secrets.WPE_SSHG_KEY_PRIVATE }}
        WPE_ENV: <your_install_name_here>
        # Deploy Options
        SRC_PATH: "wp-content/themes/genesis-child-theme/"
        REMOTE_PATH: "wp-content/themes/genesis-child-theme/"
        PHP_LINT: TRUE
        FLAGS: -azvr --inplace --delete --exclude=".*"  --exclude=wp-content/mu-plugins/local-plugin --exclude-from=ignorefile.txt
        SCRIPT: "path/yourscript.sh"
        CACHE_CLEAR: TRUE

Environment Variables & Secrets

Required

Deploy Options

Further reading

• NOTE: This Action DOES NOT utilize WP Engine GitPush or the GitPush SSH keys found here.
• TIP: If using a GitHub Organization, adding the SSH key to the Organization Secrets will allow all repos to reference the same SSH key for deploys using the method in the sample main.yml. The SSH Key also connects to all installs made available to its WP Engine User. One key can then effectively be used to deploy all projects to their respective sites on WP Engine. Less work. More deploys!
• Defining environment variables in GitHub Actions
• Storing secrets in GitHub repositories
• It is recommended to leverage one of WP Engine's .gitignore templates.
• This action excludes several files and directories from the deploy by default. See the exclude.txt for reference.

Versioning

We follow SemVer and GitHub's action versioning recommendations for maintaining major, minor, and patch version tags. Patch tags (e.g. v1.1.1) are created for each release and will not move once created. Major tags (e.g. v1) and minor tags (e.g. v1.1) will be updated to track their respective latest versions.

We recommend binding this action to the latest major tag so that you will receive backwards compatible updates.