Intro

So, you have installed jekyll on dreamhost. If you have not, feel free to read my other post on how to setup jekyll on dreamhost. Next, you need to somehow make sure your jekyll code gets easily pushed to your live server. While there maybe lots of different ways to do it, this way, in my opinion is one of the easiest ways.

Prerequisites

Have jekyll setup on Dreamhost
Basic linux knowledge

Steps

Below I outline each of the steps. I will be using local to refer to my own laptop and remote to refer to dreamhost server.

Generate a keypair

Execute the following command on your laptop:

local> ssh-keygen -t rsa

Follow the instructions and generate the keypair. It is highly recommended to provide a passphrase, but you if want to keep it empty that’s fine too.

Copy the keypair to dreamhost

Execute the following to copy the ssh key to dreamhost:

local> ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub <username>@<server>.dreamhost.com

Replace <username> and <server> with your username and server name respectively.

Add it to your SSH agent

To avoid entering the passphrase over and over, add the ssh keypair to your ssh agent.

local> ssh-agent -s
local> ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Now you can just login using ssh [email protected]. If you provided a passphrase, enter the passphrase to login.

Step 2: Setup Repositories

The next steps are to setup your local and remote repositories. We need two repositories to be setup. One on dreamhost and the other on our local machine. On the remote server, do the following:

remote> cd ~
remote> git --bare init <repository_name>.git

Replace <repository_name> with your repository name. I suggest something like your-domain.com.git.

Next, on the local machine we need to create a repo and set the remote to be what we just setup.

local> mkdir <repository_name> && cd <repository_name>
local> git init
local> git add .
local> git commit -m "First commit"
local> git remote add live ssh://<user>@host/~/<repository_name>.git

Step 3: Auto Publish

To Auto publish our jekyll site, we need to do few more things. First, we need to write a post-receive hook on our remote repo.

Change directory into the remote repo, go into hooks and then create a post-receive hook as follows:

remote> cd ~
remote> cd <repository_name>.git
remote> cd hooks
remote> touch post-receive

Next edit the post-receive file and paste the following:

#!/bin/bash -l

# Replace this line with your real domain name
DOMAIN=yourdomain.com

echo
echo "~~ Updating $DOMAIN ~~"
echo

# Clearing git env
unset GIT_DIR
unset GIT_WORK_TREE

# auxiliar domain storing the entire jekyll tree (all repo content)
cd ~/$DOMAIN-jekyll
git pull

# delete domain contents
rm -rf ~/$DOMAIN/*

jekyll build --source ~/$DOMAIN-jekyll --destination ~/$DOMAIN

echo
echo "~~ Done ~~"
echo

Save and exit the file. Make the file executable.

chmod +x post-receive

Step 4: Push and Publish

Exit out of your remote and then push from your local repository to your remote to pubhlish to the live site.

local> git remote live master

You will see the post-receive hook kick-in and publish the site.

Conclusion

Hope I was able to help you configure jekyll on your server. If you like this post, please don’t forget to share on Twitter. Don’t forget to tag me at @mdzahedhossain. Cheers!