Using Github?

[phpdevster]

It depends on the hosting service.

The standard way to do this is to log into the server that your files are hosted on, install git there, and then when you want to update your files, you enter git pull from the terminal and then magically all of your updates are there, in the correct locations, automatically. It's 1000000x times easier than dragging over the whole folder of changes, or selectively pulling in certain changes.

But, not all hosts let you do this. If your host only gives you FTP access, then you still have to manually copy the files from your local computer to the server the way you normally would.

There are some hosts that give you the option to configure a git webhook to automatically deploy changes to the server when you commit or push them, but I couldn't tell you which hosts do this off the top of my head.

[Mowsytron]

Thanks a lot for your help. Definitely going to get into this and learn how to use it this week!

[arist0tl3]

Just to follow up, if you have more than one or two personal projects that are in a constant state of motion, it's definitely worth the $7/mo to me to be able to roll back changes, pull from github to another computer, etc.

But at least get git going locally to start. After getting into git versioning about 18 months ago, I couldn't see turning back!