Deploy is the step where RankGear transfers your rendered experiment files, plus any optional root-level files, to the domain destinations you have configured, publishing the finished experiment to a live target.
| Term | Deploy |
|---|---|
| Category | APIs, Reliability and Publishing |
| Also known as | Deployment |
| Where it appears | Experiments → Deploy |
What it means in RankGear
Deploy sits at the end of the Experiments workflow. Once Render has produced the finished pages, Deploy pushes those rendered files, together with any root-level files you have chosen to include, out to the domain destinations named in the experiment’s publishing configuration. It is the action that moves an experiment from something you have built locally to something served from your configured target, using the credentials and remote paths you set up for that destination.
How to interpret it
Read the deploy status and diagnostics to tell apart a transient failure from a broken configuration. A timeout, a dropped connection, or a briefly unreachable host is usually transient, and RankGear may grant a single bounded retry. An authentication rejection, a wrong remote path, or a missing permission is a configuration problem that will not fix itself, so it stops rather than repeating. Run the credential test before you retry: if the test passes, the fault was likely transient and worth another attempt; if it fails, correct the credentials or destination settings first.
| Outcome | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Success | Files transferred to the destination; the experiment is live at the configured target. |
| Transient failure | Timeout or connection drop; a single bounded retry may resolve it. |
| Configuration failure | Auth rejected, wrong path, or missing permission; stops so you can fix the setup, not retry blindly. |
Example
An experiment renders forty pages and deploys to staging.example.com over SFTP. One page times out mid-transfer, so Deploy grants it a single longer retry and the file lands on the second attempt. A second destination returns a 401 because its API key was rotated the week before. Rather than hammering that target with repeated paid calls, Deploy stops on it immediately and the diagnostics flag an authorization failure, so you rotate the stored key and re-run only the destination that needs it.
Important considerations
- Deploy writes to real remote destinations, so credentials and publishing targets need care: confirm the host, path, and permissions before a first run.
- Credential and connection tests should be read-only where possible, so a check never alters the destination.
- Secrets stay redacted in status output and diagnostics; keys and passwords are not printed back to you.
- Retries are bounded on purpose. Transient errors get a limited second try, while configuration errors stop, which avoids repeated failed or paid calls.
- Deploy is an operational publishing step, not a ranking signal. It reports whether files reached the destination, not how those pages will perform in search.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.