Pancake Stack › Pancake Stack Manual

Publish a site to a static host, your hosting over SFTP or FTP, a managed WordPress host, an app platform or a brand-new cloud server, and edit live sites safely.

11.1The Deploy pane

The Deploy pane lists where each site is published. Each row shows the site and its target, the address, when it was last deployed and whether that worked, and a status dot. Pancake checks the dot only when you open the pane or click Check Now; it doesn't keep watching sites hosted elsewhere.

Row buttons: Deploy, Open, History and a trash button that forgets the target (nothing on the server is deleted). Server targets add Publish Database…, and with Advanced on, Connect Host API… and Set Up Host Database….

11.2Kinds of target

11.3Add a target and deploy

1. Click + Add Target, choose the Site and where to Deploy to.
2. For a static host or app platform, paste its API token. Pancake says where to find it, with an Open button. Optionally give an existing project, site or app to deploy into; otherwise Pancake creates one. Cloudflare Pages uses your Cloudflare connection; its token needs Account › Cloudflare Pages › Edit.
3. For a server, type the Site address, pick a Hosting preset if your host is listed, and fill in the server, port, user, password or key, and the Folder on the server. A site you imported from a live website fills this in by itself.
4. Click Add, then Deploy on the new row.

Only files that changed since the last deploy are sent, and files you deleted locally are removed from the server. These never leave your Mac:

• .env files, SQL dumps and .git (also .svn, .DS_Store, node_modules and __pycache__);
• for WordPress on a server: wp-config.php and the cache folder, because the server keeps its own.

11.4Checks before deploying

TallStack Before each deploy, Pancake shows Before Deploying with:

• Files: how many will be sent, or that nothing changed.
• PHP syntax: every changed PHP file is checked; an error stops the deploy unless you choose Deploy Anyway.
• Local addresses: a warning about links to .localhost or 127.0.0.1 left in the site.

FullStack For server targets, Pancake also checks the host itself through a one-time, protected test page: its PHP version, the PHP extensions your site needs, memory and upload limits, and the database. If the host runs a different PHP version, Match My Host switches your local site to the same version, so you test what will really run.

11.5Edit a live site safely

A site you brought in from a live website remembers its server. Its card shows the host with two actions:

Download Again…

Brings the server's latest files down, after backing up the local site. Tick Also replace the database with the live one to refresh the data too. Works on every plan.

Publish to Server ▸ Files…

TallStack Publishes your changes back to the same server and folder, changed files only, after the usual checks. The server's own wp-config.php is kept.

Publish to Server ▸ Database…

TallStack Replaces the live database with your local one (below).

A typical round trip: Download Again, change and test at name.localhost, Publish Files. Publishing files never touches the live database.

11.6Publishing a database

TallStack Publish Database… replaces the server's database with the one on your Mac. Use it with care: anything added on the live site since you downloaded it (orders, comments, sign-ups) is replaced.

1. Start All, then choose Publish Database….
2. Read which database will be replaced, tick I understand the live site's current content will be replaced, and click Back Up and Publish.
3. Pancake reads the server's database settings, saves a backup of the live database in Backups, makes a copy of your database with local addresses changed to the live ones, loads it on the server and checks that the site answers.

If the backup of the live database comes back empty, nothing is published. Your local database isn't changed.

11.7Creating the database on your host

TallStack For a new site on shared hosting, Set Up Host Database… (Advanced) asks your hosting control panel to create a database and user: cPanel (an API token from Security ▸ Manage API Tokens), Plesk (an API key) or DirectAdmin (a login key allowed to manage databases). Nothing else on the account changes. For WordPress, Pancake uploads a server wp-config.php for it, unless one is already there. Then click Publish Database Now….

11.8Managed WordPress hosts

TallStack With Kinsta, WP Engine and Pressable, Pancake deploys files to the staging environment, then asks the host to promote staging to live.

1. Add a server target for the host's staging site (the Managed WordPress presets help).
2. Click Connect Host API…, choose the host and enter its API details: for Kinsta an API key and company ID, for WP Engine an API user name and password, for Pressable a client ID and secret.
3. Click Load Environments, choose which is staging and which is live, and Save.
4. Deploy as usual, check the staging site, then click Promote to Live…. Kinsta and WP Engine are asked to back up live first; Pressable backs up both sites.

Clear Cache clears the host's cache for staging and live.

11.9App platforms

• Heroku: Pancake uploads the site's files (never .env, dumps or .git) and Heroku builds them.
• DigitalOcean App Platform and Render build from the site's GitHub or GitLab repository, which must be public: commit and push first (site card ▸ Git). Render has no PHP runtime, so PHP sites there need a Dockerfile.

Pancake adds a Procfile where needed. Python sites need a requirements.txt that includes gunicorn. Add a database in the platform's own dashboard if the site needs one.

11.10Create a server

TallStack Pancake can create a cloud server, set it up and put a PHP site on it: Amazon Lightsail and EC2 on TallStack (up to 3 servers), plus DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, Akamai Linode, ConoHa VPS and Sakura Cloud on FullStack.

1. Start All, then click Create a Server….
2. Choose the Site, the Provider and a Region (Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, US and Europe regions, depending on the provider). Pancake shows the size it will use and a link to the provider's prices.
3. Enter the provider's API token (for AWS, the access key and secret of an IAM user, never the root account; Copy the IAM policy Pancake needs helps). Keys are kept in your Keychain.
4. Tick I understand … bills me for this server until I delete it and click Create Server.

Pancake creates the server and sets up Ubuntu with Apache, the site's PHP version and MariaDB, a firewall, fail2ban and automatic security updates. Only Pancake's SSH key can sign in. It then uploads the site and its database and adds a deploy target, so later changes go up with Deploy. When it's done, point your domain's DNS at the server's address.

The servers appear under Servers Pancake created, with Console and Delete Server…. Pancake deploys to them and can delete them; it doesn't manage or monitor them.