I cringe every time I hear something like this called a "deployment". This is a lazy hack, not a deployment. You can't deploy with ftp/rsync/put_your_own_tool_h

I cringe every time I hear something like this called a "deployment". This is a lazy hack, not a deployment. You can't deploy with ftp/rsync/put_your_own_tool_here sync. Well, you can, kind of, but you better not. A "proper" deployment must be (at least): * Completely automated. Should be just a simple command line. * Atomic. As in all the files are changed at once. * Easily revertible. If your are deploying a db-backed application, deployment process also must manage db versioning (including possibility of rollbacks). All of the above is trivially provided by Vlad or Capistrano. And since they are super easy to use even for non Ruby projects, I fail to see the reason to keep using ftp or rsync other then laziness. I've seen some people using git for deployment, which is better then ftp/rsync, but still lacks in atomicity and rollbacks can be quite tricky.