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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-14T14:49:51+00:00

My current project has a development web server and live web server. Developers make

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My current project has a development web server and live web server. Developers make changes to files on the dev server and test them (by going to the dev address) and make changes as necessary. When the file or files are ready to go, they are copied to the live server. There is no version control.

As you might expect, there are some problems with this model:

  • It’s hard to keep track of what other programmers have done.
  • It’s hard to keep track of what files should be copied to the live server.
  • There is no version control.

I’m in a position to make nearly any change I like, but I want it to be the right one! I have been turning this over in my head for quite a while, and I have a solution that might be okay. But I want SO’s opinion.

Certainly version control needs to be added. But how should it work with the existing codebase and where should the developers be testing? How can anyone know what needs to be moved to the live server? What other details need to be addressed?

How would you attack this problem?

Supplementary information:

  • The website is vital, but not mission critical. A small amount of downtime is acceptable.
  • There are very few developers. (Right now, only 4.)
  • History: Before I started, the project used Visual Source Safe. This was a sufficiently bad experience that they quit using it and abandoned version control.
  • The project is an ASP.NET (C#) website.
  • This seems like a question that may have a complicated answer. Thanks for thinking about it!
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use source control. Even VSS is better than nothing, but there are plenty of better alternatives, free or otherwise. Simple enough option in Subversion, with a plugin like VisualSVN to integrate with Visual Studio.

    Developers’ initial testing should just use their own local development web servers that VS will fire up, or their own local IIS instances.

    Add a web deployment project to pre-compile the website, and exclude it from the debug build configuration so it doesn’t slow everyone down when they build.

    When you want to deploy, deploy the entire output of the web deployment project built in release mode. Don’t do it piecemeal, otherwise you’ll never know what’s there.

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