(OSX) Textmate is a good text editor if you don't need wysiwyg editing. Coda might be a good alternative if you do. Cyberduck is a good ftp/ssh over ftp/file c

(OSX) Textmate is a good text editor if you don't need wysiwyg editing. Coda might be a good alternative if you do. Cyberduck is a good ftp/ssh over ftp/file client. For sure use some form of source control to manage files. ( I don't care what you use just use something. Subversion is ok. Git and Mercurial are nice too.) My preferred method for updating a site is to checkout/clone from source control to a new location in your websites hierarchy and then create a soft link to the new directory. Scripts can automate this process. ln -si /var/www/mysitecheckedoutfromsourcecontrol /var/www/mysiterootsetupinwebserverconfig After that, If you have problems with the new site, you have a simple one line command to revert the site back to a known good point in time. All you have to do is relink it to the old site and you are off and running. ln -si /oldsitepath /var/www/mysitesetupinwebserver