How to work collaboratively on a website

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 n开发者_如何学Pythonot 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:

• Make a change
• Update the test website
• Have the update and the whole website signed off by QA
• Update the production/live site

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".

You want scheduled releases.

1. Commit and update code regularly
2. Code freeze or develop in a branch and merge to the trunk
3. test on a staging environment
4. Find a bug goto step 1
5. Release

You need to understand that what represents your latest correct working build is not what's on the server but in your source repository whether that be SVN or just the file system. Anything as long as it isn't the live server! Make sure everything works locally as expected then unless the site is huge (I guess not given your situation) deploy it in its entirety as a single version.