Many developers use sites like GitHub, BitBucket, and GitLab to automatically deploy changes to a running or live website. For most developers, the workflow looks like this: you develop a theme or plugin locally, then host it somewhere (for me it's usually GitHub).
Over the years, GitHub has become one of the popular choices for developers and submitting your projects to it is an integral part of web development. Doing it this way can help you sync it with a live install of WordPress. Syncing your GitHub repositories with WordPress manually is a bit of a hassle as you have to repeat the process over and over. It also involves copying files to FTP when you upload the project to your client (on shared servers) or configure the Git brackets to update, then retrieve and update on all sites. This is cumbersome and takes a lot of time.
Third-party automation and integration tools took my development flow to the next superior. Although they helped simplify tasks, integrating themes and Git management modules was difficult. In this tutorial, I will discuss how to automatically sync GitHub repositories with WordPress to deploy changes.
1 - WP Pusher
WP Pusher is one of the most complete plugins in this context. Developped by Peter Suhm, the plugin helps you sync themes and WordPress plugins directly from GitHub, Bitbucket or GitLab.
Easy to use : Synchronizing repositories with live sites may seem like hard work to do. WP Pusher simplifies this ten times by helping you escape the task of copying files to FTP / SSH. Once the plugin is activated, you can start managing all your projects hosted by GitHub from the dashboard.
Push to Deploy : the magic of the plugin lies in its Push-to-Deploy function which is a small box in the settings. It automatically updates your themes and plugins the moment you make your commitments to GitHub, with no hassle of updating and maintaining new versions manually.
Pro version : Overall, WP Pusher greatly improves the experience of integrating Git with WordPress. Despite being free, WP Pusher is also available at an affordable price ranging from $ 39 to $ 199. In his Pro versionyou can find some extended features to synchronize your private repositories.
2 - GitHub Updater
GitHub Updater is a plugin from Andy Fragen that automatically serves updates for your plugins and WordPress themes from GitHub, Bitbucket or GitLab.
The plugin is especially useful for a customer with a hosting account that does not support Git. Your plugin and theme header contains information about where it is hosted on GitHub. The plugin uses this information to update any plugin or WordPress theme hosted on GitHub.
3 - WordPress GitHub Sync
WordPress GitHub Sync synchronizes content with a GitHub repository and allows you to collaborate on content creation on your WordPress site. Developed by James DiGioia and Ben Balter, the plugin includes several useful features.
Synchronize content: The plugin allows you to synchronize the content of two different WordPress installations using GitHub. You can also preview the content before final deployment on the server.
Version : With WordPress GitHub Sync, you can easily edit your content on GitHub, which allows you to keep your users up-to-date on changes.
Submit improvements: this plugin allows you to submit your improvements by implementing the template of " Pull request From GitHub.
Collaborations: Allows different teams to write and edit their posts using GitHub. Even editors can write and edit a site from the WordPress editing interface.
4 - WP Migrate DB
This is yet another fantastic WordPress plugin that lets you export your database and sync it. You don't have to do anything with Git, but it does allow different environments to be synchronized.
That's all for this plugin list, I hope you can easily sync your WordPress projects with Github.
