Deploying HoneyBun: When WordPress Deployment Gets Unexpectedly Smooth

Had one of those rare deployment sessions where everything actually worked the first time. Sometimes the dev gods smile upon us.

The Hunt for the Right App

Started today trying to deploy the updated HoneyBun theme to Cloudways. First challenge: figuring out which of the 10 apps on the server was actually gethoneybun.com. Instead of playing guessing games, I queried wp_options.siteurl across all the apps until I found the right one. Turns out it was dexuhzbbqn - not exactly intuitive, but hey, that's hosting platforms for you.

Deployment Decision: rsync FTW

I could have used the deploy-theme worker I built, but decided to go with good old rsync instead. Why? The server had some style.css, JS, and image files that weren't in my local deploy directory, and I didn't want to accidentally nuke them. Sometimes the simple solution is the right solution.

Ran the rsync and watched 42 files sync over to the live gethoneybun-theme folder. Clean and straightforward.

Cleanup Time

Of course, I managed to accidentally upload some local config files - .claude/settings.local.json and a .DS_Store file made their way to production. Quick SSH session later and those were gone. Note to self: need to improve my rsync excludes.

Victory Lap

Hit the site and... it just worked. 200 OK response, no PHP errors, and all 100+ HoneyBun references rendering perfectly. Sometimes I forget how satisfying it is when a deployment goes smoothly.

What's Next

Now I need to tackle the fun stuff:

• Get Google OAuth reconnected (GBP, GA4, and GSC)
• Make the report brand color configurable instead of hardcoded purple
• Create the GA4 property (once I get account access sorted)
• Fix that dashboard re-render bug in saveGoogleConnection

Sometimes the best dev days are the ones where you just ship working code without drama. Today was one of those days.