Docs Site Deployment¶

Operational guide for ops/my-server/docs.yml. Structured per Constitution §37.2. Self-hosted on this repo's own VPS rather than GitHub Pages — see B2 in the project tracking docs (docs/project/first_production_release/b2-docs-deploy/, not part of this built site — see that directory's own note on why) for the decision record.

	Detail
Playbook	`docs.yml`
Production domain	`docs.barrins-codex.org`
Staging domain	`docs-staging.barrins-codex.org`
Source	latest GitHub release tag (or `-e docs_site_release_tag=<tag>`)
Serves	`docs/`'s `mkdocs build --strict` output, as a plain static site

All commands below run from ops/my-server/.

Preparation¶

Server requirements — initial.yml/setup.yml must already have run.

DNS — an A record for the target domain pointing at the server (both docs.barrins-codex.org and docs-staging.barrins-codex.org need one; neither exists yet as of this writing).

GitHub token — a local, git-ignored secrets/github/token.txt (see secrets/README.md) — the same shared token every other playbook that clones a private repo uses.

Release (production only) — this monorepo needs at least one GitHub Release published (ADR-2 in ../architecture/decisions.md).

Deployment¶

# Staging first
ansible-playbook docs.yml -e deploy_env=staging
# preview a specific branch instead of the staging default:
ansible-playbook docs.yml -e deploy_env=staging -e docs_site_git_branch=my-feature

# Production, once staging is verified — deploys the latest release tag
ansible-playbook docs.yml

This is a snapshot deploy, not a live-updating site: it builds and serves whatever the resolved ref pointed to at deploy time. Later commits on that branch/tag aren't reflected until the playbook runs again — nothing here watches for changes (unlike mkdocs serve's local dev hot-reload, which isn't used in production).

Validation¶

Open the deployed domain in a browser; confirm the docs site loads and a deep link (e.g. a nested page) resolves directly, not just the home page — mkdocs' "pretty URL" pages are real <page>/index.html files on disk (try_files $uri $uri/ =404;), so this should just work with no SPA-style rewrite involved.
Spot-check that the content matches the branch/tag actually requested (e.g. a page you know changed recently).

Rollback¶

See rollback.md for the full procedure. Short version:

ansible-playbook docs.yml -e docs_site_release_tag=<previous-tag>

Simplest rollback in the whole deployment set: no database, no running service — just a rebuild from the older tag.

Troubleshooting¶

Symptom	Likely cause
Playbook fails before touching the server, "repo has no GitHub release yet"	Cut a release on GitHub, or pin one with `-e docs_site_release_tag=<tag>`.
Playbook fails before touching the server, "does not exist" (github token)	`secrets/github/token.txt` is missing — see `secrets/README.md`.
`register_ssl` fails on "certbot certonly"	DNS not propagated, or port 80 unreachable from the internet.
Site loads but shows stale content	Expected if nothing has re-deployed since the last change — re-run the playbook; this isn't a live-updating site (see "Deployment" above).
`mkdocs build --strict` fails during the playbook run	The same failure would show locally via `npm run build` in `docs/` — fix the underlying docs issue (broken nav entry, lint error) before retrying, not an infra problem.