Good PP management?

[Iron Flatline]

Hi all.

Over time, I've made a number of tweaks to my template - mainly text and buttons. They only reside on the server right now, and I have no back-up.

I was wondering about best practices when it comes to managing files and application assets. How do you do it, and how do you recommend to do it?

One thing I was imagining was keeping the master file set on my computer with a back-up to CD-ROM, and using my ftp tool to sync the (non-photo) files on the server whenever I make changes.

The problem is that I can't see the changes on the site until I've made the changes on the server, so if I'm trying out new button locations it adds a series of extra steps to my workflow.

How do I back-up the files on my server, esp. browse_template and image_template? Can I just do a Save Target As and copy it to my local HD?

[blinking8s]

I do full backups (files and database) about every other week unless major changes are going on. I host with eleven2 which has a cPanel admin system and has a backup tool to generate a zipped backup file

as far as editing on your host machine, you could install a local server so that things can render out, but I skip around on machines a lot, and just use dreamweaver with everything linked in the template directory so I can see everything, then when I move the css file's link I can just update the rest of the links from there before uploading to the server. I have a test accound and the actual blog, I always test everything out first.

I have two external HD's I back things up to, and then burn web projects to CD ROM when complected or monthly during development.

If you host doesnt have a backup option for you, you can use ftp and just download everything...and mysql will have the option to download gzip folders of the database for backup.