What plugin (or strategy) can I use to synchronize content on my server with the GitHub repository? (Content modified through panel).
I’ve read other posts and seen some plugins, but I still don’t have a clear idea.
Thank you.
Kirby versions would be one option, although it goes beyond simple version controlling your content.
There is also this one: Git Content | Kirby CMS, which has also been updated for Kirby 4 by now.
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I’m curious on this on being fairly new to Kirby. I’ve happily got a separate /content folder repo, and this all works well.
I’ve tried all the plugins, but I fall down on the configuration and documentation when it comes to adding details for my own GitHub repo for any of them.
The major sticking point is pulling / pushing changes to the live site if changes are made via the Panel. I don’t need anything too complex and would rather avoid FTP dump.
Any tips or pointers would be really helpful please.
I have a problem understand that sentence. If you make a change via the Panel (on the server), all that is needed is to push these changes to GitHub, and that’s exactly what the plugin I mentioned above does. What do you want to also pull from where to where?
Yes, this is what I thought, but there is a config step I’m missing, and can’t work out from the docs. So, if I try to push any changes, I would get an error such as:
fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com': No such device or address
- The Git Plugin and the Git Content Plugin, is the same issue. I’ve done everything right, but getting stuck
- Where do I add my server details and how?
Any pointers helpful 
Assuming you used the Git Content plugin, what do you see when you open the Git Content area in the Panel? Also, please describe the steps you did so far and post your /site/config/config.php. Thanks.
Did you create a repo on GitHub and add it to the new content repo on the server as remote?
On my local dev server, everything works apart from Pull and Push. It’s the Pull and Push that I really want to work on the Production Server.
Yes. /content is it’s own repo and I can Push and Pull to GitHub.com all fine.
config looks like this… Screenshots are from my Local Dev, and that is the error message when Pull or Push. (I can Pull and Push in Terminal/GitHub Desktop)
'thathoff.git-content.pull' => true,
'thathoff.git-content.commit' => true,
'thathoff.git-content.push' => true,
'thathoff.git-content.helpText' => 'My helpText',
Hm, if you added the remote as https://…, then you need to provide username and password. It would make more sense to use git:// and a public key that you need to set in your GitHub account.
I’ve updated the remote from https and is now git@github.com:USER/REPO Public SSH key set up al fine.
I can from terminal from /content repo successfully git pull and git push locally
Feel I’m missing something really obvious here 
because back to the plugin, slightly different message now when trying push or pull…
git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey). fatal: Could not read from remote repository. Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists.
Are we talking about terminal on server or locally?
Are you testing pushing from Panel locally or on the server? Note that your ssh key on server will be different from key on your local machine, and if you don’t have ssh keys on the server, you first need to create those keys, then add on GitHub.
Locally - Server can wait for another day
I tested the plugin myself locally and didn’t run into issues. Here are the steps I did:
- Installed plugin via compose
composer require thathoff/kirby-git-content - In config, added just
'thathoff.git-content.commit' => true, cd contentecho ".lock" >> .gitignoregit add .git commit -m "Initial Commit"git remote add origin git@github.com:myname/content-repo.gitgit push --set-upstream origin main
Same errors. There is something about the plugin/install I can’t do in the Panel, that I can in a command line.
- Terminal: Git Push and Pull all good
- Panel/Browser: Permission denied (publickey)
- .git ignore with .lock present
Could this be related to there the plugin folder is (under /site/plugins this is where composer installs?) I’m running the “above webroot” secure setup and my index.php looks like this:
$kirby = new Kirby([
'roots' => [
'index' => __DIR__,
'base' => $base = dirname(__DIR__),
'content' => $base . '/content',
'site' => $base . '/site',
'plugins' => $base . '/site/plugins',
'storage' => $storage = $base . '/storage',
'accounts' => $storage . '/accounts',
'cache' => $storage . '/cache',
'sessions' => $storage . '/sessions',
]
]);
It sounds like your local dev server (where you run PHP and Kirby) does not have access to your SSH config and keys in ~/.ssh, unlike your terminal shell sessions where you run git push directly.
Is your local dev server using a VM or containers maybe? In that case you should figure out how to get a shell session inside that VM or container, and how to make sure that in that context Git has access to your SSH keys.
For instance, if you’re using VS Code Dev Containers, this is their guide on this topic: Sharing Git credentials with your container
Ah - I’m running DDEV
Looks like you need at least this then, to add your SSH keys inside a development container:
ddev auth ssh.
You might also need to make sure that git executed within the container is configured with the correct user name and email (depending on your account configuration on GitHub, this might only impact how commits created and pushed by this plugin inside your dev container look like; or it might be a strict requirement to have a correct email address attached).
Looks like you can open a shell session inside your container with ddev ssh. This might be useful to troubleshoot how Git is configured in that context. Your goal should be to be able to create commits and push them from a shell session in the context of that container. Until that works, trying the same thing with several layers of PHP code and HTML UI will not be useful.
For the record, the plugin you’re using is using code which calls the git executable directly. Hopefully when it does that, this git executable will have the same configuration and data access that the Linux user inside your dev container (which should be true if the PHP process is running with the same Linux user inside that container).
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YES! Thank you.
ddev auth ssh at the site level (not /content) was enough to get this to kick in as it took the key from my local setup.
I should be able to do this now on the server. Will update
All deployed and Pull/Push in place for all locations local-repo-server
Thank you all for the help