Deploy to WP Engine

Last Updated: 31st August 2026

In this guide, you'll learn how to deploy applications to WP Engine from a Git repository using Launchdeck.

Whether you're deploying an entire WordPress website, a custom theme or a plugin, Launchdeck can automate deployments from your Git repository to your WP Engine environment.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you'll need a Git repository (for example, on GitHub or Bitbucket), a WP Engine account and SFTP credentials for your WP Engine environment.

WP Engine supports file deployments over SFTP and also provides command-line access through its SSH Gateway. This guide uses SFTP because it is the simplest option for deploying files with Launchdeck.

Launchdeck also supports SSH deployments. However, zero-downtime deployments are unlikely to work on WP Engine because of the platform's SSH Gateway limitations.

To deploy over SFTP, you'll need the following credentials:

• Hostname
• Username
• Password
• Upload Path

SFTP credentials are created separately for each WP Engine environment on your site. For theme or plugin deployments, you can create a dedicated SFTP user whose access is restricted to the relevant directory. For full-site deployments, the user will need access to the root directory of the environment.

For instructions on creating and managing SFTP users, refer to the official WP Engine documentation: Creating and Accessing SFTP Credentials

New to Launchdeck? Start your free trial and follow the steps below to deploy your project to WPEngine. Start free trial →

Step 1: Create a new project

Go to the Launchdeck Home Page and Click Add your first project to get started.

From here you’ll be prompted to pick Project Name and choose your repository provider. If you're using a different Git provider such as GitLab, Codebase or a self-hosted server, you can choose the Private/Hosted Git server option.

If you haven’t configured a provider yet, selecting a provider takes you to a login screen where you can authorise Launchdeck to access your repositories.

Once your repository is connected, you can select a repository and a branch you'll deploy from.

If your application requires build commands, Launchdeck will infer them based on your repository's framework (although you can edit these commands later).

Once done, you can click Next.

Step 2: Add server to project

On this page, you'll need to enter the server credentials you collected above (Hostname, Username, Password), as well as the server's environment name (e.g. production), and set the protocol to SFTP. The Port for SFTP is always 2222.

Then enter the Upload Path on the WP Engine server where your code will be stored.

Upload Path

For a full WordPress website, deploy to the root directory of your WP Engine environment. This is the directory containing folders such as wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes.

You can also deploy an individual theme or plugin by using a more specific path:

Theme: wp-content/themes/your-theme/ Plugin: wp-content/plugins/your-plugin/

Take care when deploying an entire website, as this may overwrite existing WordPress or WP Engine-managed files.

To verify the Connection Details are correct, run the server connection test.

If you want Launchdeck to automatically build and deploy new commits when you push to your selected branch, enable Auto-deploy to this server. You can also leave this disabled and trigger builds and deployments manually from the Project Overview page.

Then click Next.

Step 3: Build and deploy to WP Engine

From there, you can review basic details and click Create New Project to complete setup.

This will redirect you to the Project Overview page. With auto-deploy enabled, when Launchdeck detects new commits on your selected branch, the latest commit will automatically be built and deployed to your server.

You can also deploy manually at any time. Click Build on a specific commit to run your configured build commands and transfer the resulting code to your server. Once the build is successful, click Publish to switch to the new release.

Learn more

Launchdeck has a variety of useful features to help you deploy your site:

• Automating tasks such as installing dependencies, transpiling code and running tests using build commands
• Running SSH commands on your server
• Keep sensitive information such as database credentials files safely excluded from your repository using configuration files.

Guides

• Deploy WordPress theme, this guide will walk you through deploying a WordPress theme directly to your server.