cPanel + Git – ‘Git’ them to play nice on GoDaddy web hosting

I decided to do some more work on Archiver (read more here) to re-write the front-end using Bootstrap.  I was looking for an end-to-end dev / production environment managed completely through GitHub (I made a repo 2 years ago but hadn’t touched it since).

I pulled and pushed code with my Linux Mint VM perfectly fine, but had some difficulty on the server side.  To my surprise, Git was already installed when I connected via SSH to my GoDaddy web hosting account .  However, cPanel Git is a bit different than using Git on a dedicated server.   It took a little while to figure it out, so I thought I’d share the steps it took to make everything work correctly.  I kept getting the error, “The requested URL returned error: 403 Forbidden while accessing”, and found a solution after a bit of searching.

Note: These directions assume that you have connected via SSH to your cPanel GoDaddy web hosting account.

1. Set your name and email so your commits are labeled correctly.

   $ git config --global user.name "Your Name Here"
   $ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

2. Assuming you’ve already forked the repository, clone the fork.

   $ git clone https://github.com/ifyouwillit/Archiver.git

3. Add a changed file.

   $ git add somefile.php

4. Commit your changes.

   $ git commit -m "[your commit note here]"

5. Push your changes (I’m using the actual URL instead of ‘remote’ to illustrate the change).

   $ git push -u https://github.com/[GITHUB_USERNAME]/[REPO_NAME].git

   But WAIT. You will probably get an error if you’re using cPanel Git on GoDaddy.

   error: The requested URL returned error: 403 Forbidden while accessing https://github.com/ifyouwillit/Archiver.git/info/refs fatal: HTTP request failed.

   To correct the error, make the following change…

6. $ git push -u https://[GITHUB_USERNAME]@github.com/[GITHUB_USERNAME]/[REPO_NAME].git

   Notice the base URL has changed.
   https://[email protected]/ifyouwillit/Archiver.git
   vs
   https://github.com/ifyouwillit/Archiver.git

And there ya have it.  If you have comments or questions, leave them in the comment section below.

By the way, I can’t take all the credit.  Jess is the one that originally saved me!