Seems simple in that “WTF is up with me not doing that until now” kind of way but setting up all of your web content in SVN and then using svn export to deploy to your production server just plain rocks.
- Version control–which is desirable on its face
- The model enforces backing up–your deployment is just a copy of your versioned repository
- Instant recovery
- Work locally, publish remotely–no zOMGWTFBBQ moments when your internet connection breaks the I/O pipe your text editor is relying on or even dropping your terminal session, whereby you lose your work
There are many things I’ve learned working in CM these last few years, but the value of SVN or version control generally, continues to be the lesson that keeps paying dividends.
If I were still rabbiting away at the computer lab at $SATELLITE_CAMPUS library, I’d be advocating to teach a mini course on version control as a tool for managing all research projects/papers. It is the hammer by which I identify and act upon all nails. ;)