Before you can start using Atomic Deployment to take advantage of the continuous deployment functionality on RunCloud, you need to set up a web application using Git. In this guide, we assume that you already have a web application stored in a Git repository.

The process to create a web application is simple. Go to your RunCloud dashboard and click on “Create a Web Application“, then switch to the “Git Repository” tab to get started.

On this page, select the Git hosting service that you are using. In the above example we have selected GitHub.

Next, configure the name of your web application. This will be displayed in the RunCloud dashboard, and can be different from the name of your Git repository.

We highly recommend you create a new user for each web application for better security. This can be done easily by un-checking the “Use existing system user” box, and providing the name of the new user account. 

After this, you can move to the domain name and SSL/TLS section. You can either configure it right now, or use the default settings – and change them later, as necessary.

You can learn more about configuring your Domain name and SSL/TLS from our knowledge base articles.

The next step is to provide the details about your Git Repository. Fill in the name of the repository and the branch that you would like to deploy. Most people use the “main” branch, but this can differ if you are building a development site to quickly test changes. 

Note: There are certain ASCII characters that aren’t accepted as filenames. If you receive “Invalid repository name” error, make sure that you are not using any of the following characters.

<>:"/|?'!@#$%^&()_+-~`,

It is highly likely that your web application is stored in a private repository. You will need to configure a Deployment key to give your RunCloud server access to your files.

First, click on “Generate” to create a new Deployment key, and then click on “Copy” to copy it to your clipboard.

After copying the deployment key, you need to add it to your Git Repository. The exact steps will differ for each Git provider, but generally you can find the option to add deployment keys under the Settings>Deployment Keys menu.

Once you have located the menu, click on “Add deploy key“.

On the next screen, provide a suitable name for easy identification, and then paste the key.

Click on “Add Key” to save the changes.

Finally, go back to the RunCloud dashboard and quickly configure the Backup and basic tech stack. For most users, the default settings work just fine. However, if you would like to configure these, you can learn to do so from our Knowledgebase articles.

After adding all the details, click on “Deploy” to save the changes. This will clone your web repository, and deploy it on the provided domain name. If your application relies on other services, such as a database, you can configure them now.

Now you can start browsing your site as you normally would. 

Setting Up the Webhook URL (Optional)

After setting up the repository, you can configure a Webhook URL in your Git dashboard. You don’t need to do this step if you plan to configure Atomic deployment for this repository.

A webhook will tell your server when a change is made in your Git repository. Doing this is quick and simple. Click on “Git” in left menu – this will take you to the “Webhook URL” tab by default. Now copy the provided webhook URL.

After copying the Webhook URL, you’ll need to add it to your Git provider’s dashboard. The exact steps vary for each provider, but generally you can find this option under “Settings>Webhooks“. Once there, click on “Add webhook“.

On the next screen, paste the provided URL, and make sure to change the content type to “application/json“. You can leave the rest of the settings as default. Click on “Add webhook” to save your changes.

Now, your server will receive a message whenever a change occurs in your Git repository. You can see recent messages by switching to the “Webhook history” tab in the RunCloud dashboard.