Add staging environment

Context

We need a staging environment to safely test changes before production. Staging will be gated with Caddy basic auth and use dedicated R2 buckets.

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Step 1: Caddyfile — Add Conditional Basic Auth

File: deploy/ansible/roles/caddy/templates/Caddyfile.j2

Add a conditional basicauth * block. Production never defines caddy_basic_auth_enabled, so it's unaffected.

{% if caddy_basic_auth_enabled | default(false) %}
	basicauth * {
		{{ caddy_basic_auth_user }} {{ caddy_basic_auth_hash }}
	}
{% endif %}

Caddy uses bcrypt hashes natively — generate with caddy hash-password --plaintext '<password>'.

For Composer client testing, configure auth.json:

{"http-basic": {"staging.wp-packages.org": {"username": "staging", "password": "<pass>"}}}

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Step 2: Ansible Multi-Environment Setup

2a. Update ansible.cfg

File: deploy/ansible/ansible.cfg

Remove inventory = inventory/hosts/production.yml. Inventory will be passed explicitly via -i flag to prevent accidental production deploys.

2b. Create staging inventory example

New file: deploy/ansible/inventory/hosts/staging.example.yml

all:
  hosts:
    wp-packages-staging:
      ansible_host: your.staging.server.ip
      ansible_user: deploy
      ansible_python_interpreter: /usr/bin/python3

2c. Create staging group_vars

New file: deploy/ansible/group_vars/staging/main.yml

Copy from production with these overrides:

app_domain: staging.wp-packages.org
app_env: staging
app_debug: "true"
go_log_level: debug
r2_cdn_public_url: "https://cdn-staging.wp-packages.org"
caddy_basic_auth_enabled: true
caddy_basic_auth_user: "staging"
caddy_basic_auth_hash: "{{ vault_caddy_basic_auth_hash }}"

Everything else (timers, users, litestream version, etc.) stays the same as production.

New file: deploy/ansible/group_vars/staging/vault.example.yml

Same as production vault.example.yml plus vault_caddy_basic_auth_hash: "REPLACE_ME".

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Step 3: GitHub Actions Workflow

File: .github/workflows/deploy.yml

Add an environment input (choice: staging/production, default: staging):

• concurrency: ${{ inputs.environment }}-deploy — independent locks per env
• Conditionally use PROD_* or STAGING_* secrets based on the selected environment
• Pass -i inventory/hosts/${{ inputs.environment }}.yml explicitly to ansible-playbook

GitHub repo setup (manual, one-time):
Add repo-level secrets: STAGING_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY, STAGING_ANSIBLE_VAULT_PASSWORD, STAGING_INVENTORY_YML_B64, STAGING_VAULT_YML_B64

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Step 4: R2 Buckets (Manual in Cloudflare)

Create three staging buckets (using existing R2 API token):

1. wp-packages-staging — Composer package metadata
2. wp-packages-staging-cdn — CDN assets, with custom domain cdn-staging.wp-packages.org
3. wp-packages-staging-backups — Litestream SQLite replicas

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Step 5: DNS & Cloudflare (Manual)

1. staging.wp-packages.org — A record to staging server IP (proxied through Cloudflare)
2. cdn-staging.wp-packages.org — set up via R2 custom domain settings
3. Generate a separate Cloudflare origin certificate for staging.wp-packages.org
4. Store staging cert + key in staging vault (vault_ssl_certificate, vault_ssl_private_key)

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Step 6: Provision & Verify

1. Spin up staging VPS
2. Add all STAGING_* secrets to the GitHub repo
3. Run workflow: environment: staging, action: provision, ref: main
4. Verify:
   • curl https://staging.wp-packages.org → 401 (basic auth required)
   • curl -u staging:<pass> https://staging.wp-packages.org → 200
   • R2 uploads land in staging buckets
   • composer require wp-plugin/akismet works with auth.json configured

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Files to Create/Modify

File	Action
deploy/ansible/roles/caddy/templates/Caddyfile.j2	Add conditional basicauth block
deploy/ansible/ansible.cfg	Remove hardcoded inventory line
deploy/ansible/group_vars/staging/main.yml	Create — staging config
deploy/ansible/group_vars/staging/vault.example.yml	Create — vault key reference
deploy/ansible/inventory/hosts/staging.example.yml	Create — inventory example
.github/workflows/deploy.yml	Add environment input, conditional secrets, per-env concurrency
docs/operations.md	Update for multi-environment support (inventory -i flag, staging secrets, etc.)