dreamhost-deployer

v0.7.5

Published

9 months ago

A stylish, interactive CLI tool for deploying websites to DreamHost shared hosting with automated build integration

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jakerains

dreamhost deployment ssh scp cli vite build-integration static-site interactive user-friendly

🚀 DreamHost Deployer

DreamHost Deployer is a powerful command-line tool that makes deploying websites to DreamHost shared hosting simple, reliable, and visually appealing. With its interactive menus, progress indicators, and smart project detection, it streamlines the deployment process for developers of all experience levels.

✨ Features

🚀 One-Command Deployment - Deploy your site with a single command
🎭 Stylish Interactive Interface - Beautiful terminal UI with colors and animations
🔍 Dry Run Mode - Preview deployment changes without modifying the server
🛠️ Framework Auto-Detection - Automatically detects Vite, React, Next.js, and more
🔄 Build Integration - Runs your build process before deployment
🔙 Automatic Rollback - Instantly revert to previous version if deployment fails
🔑 Password Authentication - Simple SSH password authentication setup
📊 Progress Tracking - Visual progress bars for large deployments
📋 Project Templates - Pre-configured settings for popular frameworks
🔧 Server Environment Setup - Easily install Node.js on your DreamHost server

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

# Install globally
npm install -g dreamhost-deployer

# Or install locally in your project
npm install --save-dev dreamhost-deployer

Basic Usage

# Start the interactive menu
dreamhost-deployer

# Or deploy directly
dreamhost-deployer deploy

Step-by-Step Guide

Initial Setup

# Install the package
npm install -g dreamhost-deployer
   
# Run the initialization command to set up your project
dreamhost-deployer init
   
# Or use the interactive menu
dreamhost-deployer
# Select "Initialize project" from the menu

SSH Authentication Setup
```
# Set up password authentication for your DreamHost server
dreamhost-deployer setup-ssh
```
Follow the prompts to set up and test your password authentication for your DreamHost server.
Server Environment Setup
```
# Check and configure Node.js on your DreamHost server
dreamhost-deployer setup-node
```
This will guide you through installing NVM and Node.js on your DreamHost server, which is useful for running Node.js applications or build processes on the server.
Project Configuration
```
# Configure project build settings
dreamhost-deployer
# Select "Configure project settings" from the menu
```
This will detect your project type (Vite, React, Next.js, etc.) and configure optimal build settings automatically.

Deploy Your Website

# Run a dry-run deployment first (recommended)
dreamhost-deployer deploy --dry-run
   
# Deploy your website
dreamhost-deployer deploy

🖥️ Terminal Interface Features

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃                        DREAMHOST DEPLOYMENT                         ┃
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

✅ Loaded configuration from deploy.config.json

╔════════════════╤══════════════════════════════════════╗
║ Setting        │ Value                                ║
╟────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────╢
║ Host           │ example.com                          ║
╟────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────╢
║ Username       │ username                             ║
╟────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────╢
║ Remote Path    │ /home/username/example.com           ║
╟────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────╢
║ Authentication │ Password                             ║
╚════════════════╧══════════════════════════════════════╝

Uploading |████████████████████████████████████████| 100%

✨ Deployment completed successfully!

✨ Interactive and Beautiful UI

🎨 Colorful Output - Makes important information stand out
📊 Progress Bars - Real-time feedback on deployment progress
📋 Tables - Clear presentation of configuration settings
🔄 Spinners - Visual indication of running processes
🚦 Status Indicators - Icons show success, warnings, and errors
🎭 Box Drawing - Sections are clearly separated with professional borders

🧠 Smart Interactive Features

📝 Step-by-Step Wizards - Guide you through complex processes
🛠️ Project Type Detection - Automatically optimizes for your framework
📋 Auto-Suggestions - Provides smart defaults based on your project
🔍 Dry Run Mode - Preview changes without modifying the server

Try it yourself! Install the package and run dreamhost-deployer to experience the stylish interface.

📋 Command Reference

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | dreamhost-deployer | Launch interactive menu | | dreamhost-deployer init | Set up project for DreamHost deployment (config, SSH, server) | | dreamhost-deployer deploy | Deploy website to DreamHost | | dreamhost-deployer deploy --dry-run | Preview deployment without making changes | | dreamhost-deployer build | Run build process without deploying | | dreamhost-deployer setup-ssh | Set up SSH password authentication | | dreamhost-deployer ssh-setup | Set up SSH password authentication (alias) | | dreamhost-deployer check-server | Check Node.js environment on server | | dreamhost-deployer setup-node | Install Node.js on DreamHost server | | dreamhost-deployer project-settings | Configure project-specific settings | | dreamhost-deployer htaccess | Configure and deploy .htaccess file | | dreamhost-deployer info | Display deployment information | | dreamhost-deployer info --server | Include server information | | dreamhost-deployer version | Display version number |

Deployment Command Options

The deploy command supports several options to customize your deployment:

# Basic deployment
dreamhost-deployer deploy

# Preview changes without deploying
dreamhost-deployer deploy --dry-run

# Deploy without creating a backup
dreamhost-deployer deploy --no-backup

# Force deployment even if checks fail
dreamhost-deployer deploy --force

# Deploy with verbose logging
dreamhost-deployer deploy --verbose

# Deploy a specific directory
dreamhost-deployer deploy --path ./dist

# Deploy to a specific remote path
dreamhost-deployer deploy --remote /home/username/example.com

Build Integration Options

When using the build integration feature:

# Run build process only
dreamhost-deployer build

# Run build with a specific command
dreamhost-deployer build --command "npm run build:prod"

# Specify output directory
dreamhost-deployer build --output-dir "./build"

# Build with environment variables
dreamhost-deployer build --env production

⚙️ Configuration

DreamHost Deployer uses a deploy.config.json file to store your deployment settings. You can create this file manually or use the interactive setup to generate it.

Interactive Configuration

The easiest way to create your configuration is through the interactive setup:

dreamhost-deployer

This will launch a step-by-step wizard that guides you through:

Setting up your DreamHost server connection details
Configuring SSH authentication (password or key-based)
Specifying local and remote paths for deployment
Setting up build integration for your specific framework
Configuring exclusion patterns for files you don't want to deploy

Sample Configuration

Here's a complete example of the deploy.config.json file:

{
  "host": "example.dreamhost.com",
  "username": "your-username",
  "remotePath": "/home/your-username/example.com",
  "localPath": "./dist",
  "password": "your-password", // Not recommended to store in config
  "webServer": "apache",
  "buildIntegration": true,
  "buildCommand": "npm run build",
  "buildOutputDir": "dist",
  "excludePatterns": [
    "node_modules",
    ".git",
    ".env",
    ".DS_Store"
  ],
  "createBackup": true,
  "rollbackOnFailure": true,
  "deploymentMethod": "auto",
  "compressAssets": true,
  "timeout": 300000,
  "verboseLogging": false
}

Configuration Options Explained

| Option | Description | Default | |--------|-------------|---------| | host | DreamHost server hostname | N/A (required) | | username | SSH username for DreamHost | N/A (required) | | remotePath | Path on DreamHost server | N/A (required) | | localPath | Local directory to deploy | Current directory | | password | SSH password (used for authentication) | N/A | | webServer | Server type (apache/nginx) | apache | | buildIntegration | Enable build before deploy | false | | buildCommand | Command to build project | Varies by framework | | buildOutputDir | Directory with built files | Varies by framework | | excludePatterns | Files to exclude from deploy | ["node_modules", ".git"] | | createBackup | Create backup before deploy | true | | rollbackOnFailure | Revert to backup on fail | true | | deploymentMethod | Deploy method (rsync/scp/auto) | auto | | compressAssets | Compress files during transfer | true | | timeout | Timeout for operations (ms) | 300000 | | verboseLogging | Enable detailed logging | false |

Environment Variables

For CI/CD pipelines, you can use environment variables instead:

DREAMHOST_HOST=example.dreamhost.com
DREAMHOST_USERNAME=your-username
DREAMHOST_REMOTE_PATH=/home/your-username/example.com
DREAMHOST_LOCAL_PATH=./dist
DREAMHOST_PASSWORD=your-password  # Not recommended for security reasons
DREAMHOST_WEB_SERVER=apache
DREAMHOST_BUILD_INTEGRATION=true
DREAMHOST_BUILD_COMMAND=npm run build
DREAMHOST_BUILD_OUTPUT_DIR=dist
DREAMHOST_EXCLUDE=node_modules,.git,.env,.DS_Store
DREAMHOST_CREATE_BACKUP=true
DREAMHOST_ROLLBACK_ON_FAILURE=true
DREAMHOST_DEPLOYMENT_METHOD=auto
DREAMHOST_COMPRESS_ASSETS=true
DREAMHOST_TIMEOUT=300000
DREAMHOST_VERBOSE_LOGGING=false

You can mix and match environment variables and config file settings. Environment variables take precedence over the configuration file.

🔑 SSH Authentication Setup

Proper SSH authentication setup is crucial for secure and smooth deployments. DreamHost Deployer provides simple tools for setting up password-based authentication.

Setting Up SSH Authentication

# Run the SSH setup wizard
dreamhost-deployer setup-ssh

This interactive wizard will:

Set up password authentication for your DreamHost server
Test the connection to verify it works
Provide an option to save your password for non-interactive deployments (not recommended for security reasons)
Guide you through fixing common connection issues

SSH Authentication Best Practices

Use strong passwords - Complex passwords provide better security
Don't save passwords in configuration files - Enter your password during deployment instead
Consider a password manager - Store your credentials securely
Update passwords regularly - Change your DreamHost password periodically

🏗️ Build Integration

DreamHost Deployer can automatically build your project before deployment, making it easy to deploy modern JavaScript frameworks.

Automatic Framework Detection

The tool automatically identifies your project type by examining your dependencies and configuration files:

# Check what type of project was detected
dreamhost-deployer info

Build Configuration

You can configure build settings through the interactive menu or by editing deploy.config.json:

# Configure build settings
dreamhost-deployer
# Select "Configure project settings"

Build-Only Mode

You can run the build process without deploying to test it:

# Run build process only
dreamhost-deployer build

Environment-Specific Builds

For different environments:

# Build with staging environment variables
dreamhost-deployer build --env staging

# Build with production environment variables
dreamhost-deployer build --env production

🧩 Framework Support

DreamHost Deployer automatically detects your project type and provides optimized settings:

| Framework | Detected Features | Build Command | Output Directory | |-----------|------------------|---------------|------------------| | Vite | Environment vars, asset handling | npm run build | dist | | React (CRA) | Router settings, static optimization | npm run build | build | | Next.js | Static export, image optimization | npm run build && npm run export | out | | Gatsby | Asset prefixing, SEO optimization | npm run build | public | | Vue CLI | Router settings, compression | npm run build | dist | | Nuxt.js | Static generation, SSR detection | npm run generate | dist | | SvelteKit | Adapter configuration | npm run build | build | | Angular | Environment handling, optimization | ng build --prod | dist |

Framework-Specific Optimizations

The tool automatically applies optimizations for each framework:

Vite Projects

Configures proper base paths for deployments
Sets up environment variables for production
Optimizes asset handling for DreamHost

React Projects

Configures proper homepage in package.json
Sets up router for history API fallback
Optimizes caching for static assets

Next.js Projects

Configures for static exports when possible
Sets up image optimization
Handles API routes with proper redirects

🚀 Detailed Deployment Process

DreamHost Deployer's deployment process is designed to be reliable, efficient, and safe.

Deployment Workflow

When you run dreamhost-deployer deploy, the following steps occur:

Configuration Loading
- Loads settings from deploy.config.json or environment variables
- Validates all required settings are present
Pre-Deployment Checks
- Verifies SSH connection to DreamHost
- Checks for sufficient disk space on server
- Validates all paths exist
Build Process (if enabled)
- Runs your project's build command
- Verifies build output exists
- Prepares optimizations for your framework
Backup Creation
- Creates a timestamped backup of your current site
- Stores backup path for potential rollback
File Transfer
- Uses rsync (if available) or SCP for optimal transfer
- Excludes unnecessary files (node_modules, .git, etc.)
- Shows progress bar during transfer
Post-Deployment Verification
- Checks that all files were transferred correctly
- Verifies file permissions on the server

Deployment Methods

DreamHost Deployer supports multiple transfer methods:

Rsync Method (recommended)

Faster due to differential transfers (only changed files)
More efficient with large sites
Better handling of permissions
Requires rsync to be installed locally

SCP Method (fallback)

Works on all platforms without additional software
More reliable in some network environments
Transfers entire files, even if only small changes made

Rollback Capability

If something goes wrong during deployment, DreamHost Deployer can automatically roll back:

# Enable automatic rollback
dreamhost-deployer deploy --rollback

# Manual rollback to a specific backup
dreamhost-deployer rollback --backup /path/to/backup_2023-04-01

🌐 .htaccess Templates and Web Server Configuration

DreamHost Deployer includes pre-configured server settings for different application types.

.htaccess Templates

The tool includes templates for:

# Generate an .htaccess file for a Single Page Application
dreamhost-deployer htaccess --type spa

# Generate an .htaccess file for a PHP application
dreamhost-deployer htaccess --type php

# Generate an .htaccess file for WordPress
dreamhost-deployer htaccess --type wordpress

# Generate an .htaccess file for a static site
dreamhost-deployer htaccess --type static

Each template includes:

URL Rewriting - Proper rules for your application type
Caching Configuration - Optimal cache headers for different file types
Compression Settings - GZIP/Brotli compression for faster loading
Security Headers - Protection against common vulnerabilities
Performance Optimizations - Browser hinting, connection settings

Sample SPA .htaccess

For Single Page Applications (React, Vue, Angular):

# Redirect all requests to index.html for SPA routing
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  # Don't rewrite files or directories
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  # Rewrite everything else to index.html
  RewriteRule ^ index.html [L]
</IfModule>

# Caching rules for static assets
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  # Cache CSS, JS and media files for 1 year
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 year"
  # Cache fonts for 1 year
  ExpiresByType application/font-woff "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType application/font-woff2 "access plus 1 year"
  # Disable caching for HTML files
  ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 0 seconds"
</IfModule>

# Enable GZIP compression
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/javascript application/json
  AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/font-woff application/font-woff2 image/svg+xml
</IfModule>

# Security headers
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  # Prevent clickjacking
  Header set X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN"
  # XSS Protection
  Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
  # Prevent MIME-sniffing
  Header set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"
</IfModule>

Nginx Configuration

For Nginx servers, DreamHost Deployer can generate appropriate configurations:

# Generate Nginx configuration
dreamhost-deployer server-config --type nginx

🔧 Troubleshooting

SSH Connection Issues

If you're having trouble connecting to your DreamHost server:

Check Authentication Information
- Verify username and hostname are correctly entered
- Ensure your DreamHost password is correct
- Check that SSH access is enabled for your account
Test Direct SSH Connection
```
ssh [email protected]
```
Check Common SSH Issues
- Confirm your DreamHost server allows SSH connections
- Check that your local network allows outbound SSH (port 22)
- Verify firewall settings aren't blocking SSH connections
Verbose SSH Connection for Debugging
```
ssh -vvv [email protected]
```
Verify DreamHost Account Settings
- Log into DreamHost control panel
- Go to Users → Manage Users
- Ensure SSH access is enabled for your user

Deployment Failures

If deployment fails:

Run Dry Run Mode First
```
dreamhost-deployer deploy --dry-run
```
Check Server Permissions
- Ensure your user has write access to the target directory
- Check for any "Permission denied" errors in logs

Verify Build Process

# Test build without deploying
dreamhost-deployer build

Check Server Disk Space

# Get server info including disk space
dreamhost-deployer info --server

Check Log Files
- DreamHost Deployer creates logs in the logs/ directory
- Review error messages for specific issues

Log File Location

DreamHost Deployer creates detailed logs in the following location:

logs/dreamhost-deployer-YYYY-MM-DD.log

These logs contain detailed information about what went wrong during deployment.

📦 Requirements

Node.js: 14.0.0 or higher
SSH Access: SSH account on your DreamHost server
Rsync: Recommended but not required (falls back to SCP)
Operating Systems: Fully cross-platform, works on macOS, Linux, and Windows
Disk Space: Minimal; requires about 10MB plus dependencies
Permissions: Write access to your DreamHost web directory

Optional Requirements

Git: For version control features (not required for basic deployment)
Build Tools: If using build integration, requirements depend on your project
Terminal: Any modern terminal with color support for best experience

🔮 Coming Soon

🔄 Continuous Deployment - Automated deployments with GitHub Actions
🏢 Multi-site Management - Deploy to multiple sites with profile switching
💾 Database Tools - MySQL backup and migration capabilities
🧪 Post-deploy Testing - Automated site verification after deployment
⚡ Performance Analysis - Built-in tools to analyze site performance
📊 Enhanced Logs - Detailed deployment history and visualizations

📜 License

🧑‍💻 Join the Community

We'd love your help making DreamHost Deployer even better! Ways to contribute:

🐛 Report Bugs - Help us squash those pesky bugs
💡 Suggest Features - Great ideas make great software
🛠️ Submit PRs - Code contributions are always welcome
📚 Improve Docs - Clear documentation helps everyone
🌟 Spread the Word - Tell others about DreamHost Deployer

Check out our contributing guidelines for details.

🙏 Credits

Developer: jakerains
UI Components: Built with chalk, ora, inquirer, and other excellent libraries
Inspiration: DreamHost's commitment to simplicity and developer-friendliness