Editing "unlive" files

[Botsta]

At the moment I edit the live files of my website using FTP which means changes take affect instantly. This is bad for numerous reasons.

 

I figured that I would have to duplicate my website files and edit them instead to make it so I'm not editing the live files. What's the best way to do this?

 

Would you create a "dev" directory, place the duplicated website files there, edit them, then upload when your happy with the update?

[Adam]

Ideally you would have three servers; development, QA and production. The QA server, although not essential, would be as identical to the production server set-up as possible. It's less likely you can do this on DEV, as I imagine you work from Windows and have a Linux-based host. Never the less, you want a fully working development environment you can test changes as you work. If you have a QA environment, first you would upload there to test how they perform within a similar set-up. If all is well, you would then roll to the production servers. Obviously if you don't have a QA server you would just roll to production.

[Botsta]

Yes, I have an ubuntu server and I'm working from a windows computer.

 

I only have one server so would having a dev and public folder be fine? I could password protect the dev folder.

I would also have to duplicate all databases, should I set up another MYSQL account?

[Botsta]

Bump - Desperately need a good system for having separate development files to public files.