Github Actions workflow for deploying a Kirby site to shared hosting with rsync

branchname.yml

name: Staging Deployment
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: bash
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 2

      # Set up Node.js
      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '22'

      # Set up PHP
      - name: Set up PHP
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: '8.3'

      # Install Node.js dependencies
      - name: Install Node.js dependencies
        run: npm ci && npm run build

      # Install Composer dependencies
      - name: Install Composer dependencies
        run: composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

      # Rsync/SFTP Deploy
      - name: Deploy via rsync over SSH
        uses: Burnett01/[email protected]
        with:
          switches: -avzr --delete --exclude='.ddev/' --exclude='.env.example' --exclude='.github/' --exclude='.git/' --exclude='.gitignore' --exclude='.DS_Store' --exclude='content/' --exclude='storage/' --exclude='site/accounts/' --exclude='site/cache/' --exclude='node_modules/'
          path: .
          remote_path: staging.maxfenton.com/
          remote_host: ${{ secrets.STAGING_SERVER }}
          remote_user: ${{ secrets.STAGING_USER }}
          remote_key: ${{ secrets.STAGING_SSH_KEY }}
          remote_port: 22

Add the three secrets (for each branch / environment) to the repo settings.

Add this file (or similar) to your project at .github/workflows/staging.yml

This setup is for a Kirby site, but you can use it for anything and change the --exclude flags

This set of --excludes assumes:

• You do not want to push content from local to production
• You do want to occasionally rsync the content down from production to local and commit it to the repo as backup