Question

I’ve got a website that I do the coding and testing for locally, and when ready I upload the files via FTP to a remote server which can be a little slow at times.

If a user tries to access a page containing a require_once of a page that’s currently being uploaded, they will get errors as at that specific moment in time the file appears not to exist or is only partially uploaded. Even if a user tries to access a page directly e.g. example.php they could experience the same problem.

I overcame the require_once issue by creating a custom include function that checks the last line of the file for a marker but this doesn’t help for non include pages and is really messy.

Is there a better way to update the site without pissing off the users with errors?

Answer 1

Have you looked into deployment options other than FTP? Many deployment tools like Capistrano, which works via SSH, copy new files into a new folder, then symlink the current directory to the new folder if and when the whole upload and update process is finished. This ensures atomic (all or nothing) updates.