Deploy a GitHub-based static site to Dreamhost

dreamhost-deploy.md

Before begining, make sure your SSH keys are set so you can ssh to your Dreamhost account.

Mac

$ ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@domain.com
$ ssh username@domain.com

Windows

$ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub [user]@[hostname]:~/.ssh/authorized_keys
$ ssh username@domain.com

You now need to make a git repository for that site (at the same level in the tree) and initialize a bare repo:

$ mkdir domain.com     # if necessary
$ mkdir domain.com.git
$ cd !$
$ git init --bare

Now you need to create a hook that will, upon a push, copy the contents of the updated repository to the website directory:

$ vi hooks/post-receive (then add the following line)
git --work-tree=/home/username/domain.com --git-dir=/home/username/domain.com.git checkout -f

$ chmod +x hooks/post-receive
$ exit

Now, back on your development machine, in the original git repo, add Dreamhost as a remote that will ALSO get pushed to when you push your updates:

$ git remote add prod ssh://username@domain.com/home/username/domain.com.git
$ git push prod +master:refs/heads/master   # only need to do once: force push

From now on, push as usual:

$ git push prod master

This is the reference post