Why so complicated? As a first step Please give me a Deployments Page that gives me the option to run simples SH Scripts in the Runner on click, parameterised please. All I need is a nice GUI for my QA people that allows them to deploy(which for our PHP site basically just means copy and DB Import) Branch x on Server y.
Jenkins is total Overkill for that but GitLab CI doesnt leave me with enough GUI to skip it either.
I agree that we should have a simple page that shows you an overview, our issue for this is https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/750910
If you want to securely store login credentials consider using secure variables http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/ci/variables/README.html