deploy-and-siteground

name	deploy-and-siteground
description	Load before deploying roadielabs.com or touching any SiteGround/WordPress-shaped op in this repo — the site is static HTML, not WordPress, and the deploy script's naming lies about that.

Read this repo's CLAUDE.md first (architecture, scoring, brand tokens). This skill covers only the deploy/hosting layer, which CLAUDE.md doesn't detail.

The one fact that changes everything

roadielabs.com is a static HTML site on SiteGround — no WordPress, no wp-content/. The deploy script is still named scripts/push_wordpress.py (reused/adapted from the gravel repo), and its own purge_cache() docstring says so explicitly: wp sg purge fails with "No WordPress installation found" here, and the function detects that and prints a manual-flush instruction instead of treating it as an error.

Trap already in the script: several --sync-* flags (--sync-consent, --sync-ga4, --sync-header, --sync-noindex, --sync-meta-descriptions, --sync-ab's mu-plugin leg) upload PHP from wordpress/mu-plugins/ to {REMOTE_BASE}/wp-content/mu-plugins/ — a path that does not exist on the live server. They're dead weight inherited from the WordPress flow; don't reach for them here. GA4/consent/CTA tracking are instead baked into the static HTML at generation time — GA_MEASUREMENT_ID = "G-WQ7W8XN11N" lives in wordpress/brand_tokens.py and is inlined as gtag(...) by wordpress/generate_neo_brutalist.py and friends. If analytics look broken, check the generator/token, not a mu-plugin sync.

Actual deploy path

1. Regenerate the affected pages (python3 wordpress/generate_neo_brutalist.py for race pages, or the matching generate_*.py — see CLAUDE.md "Common Commands").
2. Push with scripts/push_wordpress.py, using flags that hit real static paths:
   • --sync-pages --pages-dir <dir> — tar+ssh's {slug}.html into {slug}/index.html under {REMOTE_BASE}/race/, plus prebuilt subdirectories (vs pages, state hubs, calendar) and shared assets/. Sets chmod 755 on /race/ for Apache/Googlebot.
   • Single-purpose flags SCP a page's own index.html + assets straight into its public_html/<dir>/ — e.g. sync_questionnaire() writes into /questionnaire/ with no wp-content dependency at all.
   • --purge-cache — best-effort wp sg purge over SSH; on this host it always no-ops with the "static site" message above. That message is expected, not a failure.
3. Credentials live in .env (gitignored): SSH_HOST, SSH_USER, SSH_PORT (18765), REMOTE_BASE (/home/customer/www/roadielabs.com/public_html), key at ~/.ssh/roadlabs_key. The script blocklists [;\s|&\$]` in host/user before shelling out — don't bypass that.

Vs. gravel-race-automation: gravel deploys to real WordPress, so its cache purge and mu-plugin syncs actually land. This repo shares the script's shape but only a subset of flags do anything real — check a flag's remote target is a static path before trusting it.

Cache staleness after every deploy

SiteGround's NGINX/dynamic cache has no CLI flush for a static site. After any HTML-changing deploy, default visitors see the old page until the TTL expires or someone flushes manually: Site Tools → Speed → Caching → Dynamic Cache → Flush. Verify a deploy with ?cb=... before concluding a fix didn't work — it may just be cached.

War story: the SSL outage

The cert expired Jul 1 2026 18:55 UTC and took the whole site down for all HTTPS visitors for an extended stretch — nothing in this repo could have prevented or fixed it. Renewal is a manual SiteGround Site Tools action (Security → SSL Manager); there is no script for it. When roadielabs.com is unreachable, check certificate validity first (openssl s_client -connect roadielabs.com:443, or the browser padlock) before assuming a code or deploy problem. Noted root cause: a wildcard cert with nameservers on Cloudflare can never auto-renew, so the site moved to a plain Let's Encrypt cert to self-renew. [UNVERIFIED — session memory, Jul 2026: whether that root cause was independently confirmed vs. a working theory.] A cache flush from before the outage doesn't cover deploys made after the fix — flush again post-renewal.

The Jul 1 "fix all" sprint and generator drift

The Jul 1 2026 night sprint (commits ceaa974..8f10bb2, on origin/main) shipped sitemap cleanup, tier hubs, vs-pages, a real /search/ page shell, and a 1,051-page regen+redeploy (about, coaching, legal, quiz, calendar, state hubs, vs pages, prep-kits, training-plans) — because those pages had drifted behind fixes already made to the shared generators. The same window's e4d09cc found generate_neo_brutalist.py still keyed its rating pipeline off gravel dimension names instead of road's fondo_rating keys — 8 of 14 radar dimensions rendered zero on every one of 427 race pages until fixed.

Lesson, not just history: a fix to shared generator logic does not retroactively apply to already-deployed static output. After any shared-generator change, regenerate and redeploy every page type it touches — check docs/whoops-audit-jul2026.md's "recurring root causes" (aspirational URLs, gravel copy-paste debt, escaped placeholders) before assuming a page is current just because its generator was fixed.

SiteGround/WordPress traps worth carrying over

• Speed Optimizer strips raw <script> tags injected by PHP — if this site ever runs real WP mu-plugins, use wp_enqueue_script(), not echo '<script>'.
• wp-login.php may be hidden on WordPress siblings — use Site Tools' "Log in to Admin Panel" button instead of guessing the URL.
• Flush all three cache layers, not just one — NGINX Direct Delivery, Dynamic Cache, Memcached are separate Site Tools toggles; OPcache can also hold stale PHP ~60s independently.
• Auto-advance carousels must never fire GA events — a timer-driven event drowned real signal on the gravel site (17,873 junk events from 9 users); recheck after any carousel change here.

When NOT to use this

Skip for race-data content edits, scoring/dimension changes, or local-only generator/test work where nothing gets pushed to roadielabs.com. Also skip for gravel-race-automation deploys — that site is real WordPress with its own deploy conventions.