I’m working on a website with some other people. Usually when we want to modify something, we do the change on our machine and just upload the new version with ftp, hope it’ll works (or that nobody will notice it doesn’t the time we correct it) and that’s it.
It’s already not the best way to work alone but even less to work collaboratively so I’m asking advices.
I think that a solution like svn/git/mercurial could help me. I found bitbucket which allows free private repository with mercurial. But still after, how can I upload the changes I did to the ftp and make sure the version I’ve on my computer is the same than the one on the server.
We are all doing it during our free time (not paid) and some people comes and leave every year so I’m looking for something free, easy to use (explain to everyone why we should use a DVCS is already hard) and which doesn’t rely on a specific person.
The server we are using to host the website is a cheap one and doesn’t allow the use of ssh, svn,…
Thank you
Version control will not help with the issue you are describing – namely, uploading untested changes to a production site.
What you (and your team) need, is better quality control procedures – you need a test website and a tester (QA) person. The process would be:
What you will gain by using version control (CVS, SVN, Git or anything else) is recoverability – you will be able to go back to a version before any breaking change. It will still not solve the issue of “the new code broke the site”.