Using git to manage a website

Is it bad, that I simply SSH into the server and do a "git pull"?

I use Fabric with mercurial to achieve a similar effect typing "fab prod deploy" - see Steve Losh's blog posts or bitbucket.org/kevinburke/goodmorningcmc

It's probably worth checking out NestaCSM (<a href="http://effectif.com/nesta" rel="nofollow">http://effectif.com/nesta</a>) if you're interested in doing this.<p>Sinatra in front, but all your posts are managed by Git and can be Markdown/Textile/HAML (or anything supported by Tilt iirc). Push it to Heroku if you want easy/free hosting.<p>Takes care of publishing an RSS feed, tags/categorisation, and a bunch of other nifty things beyond just generating a static site.<p>Example: <a href="http://blog.peepcode.com/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.peepcode.com/</a><p>(disclaimer: I used to work with Graham who created it, but I genuinely think it's awesome and use it for almost every site I build now)

I've been using Joe Maller's write-up[1] as a guide for a while.<p>I see this strategy removes the need for a second repo on the server. Other than removing a layer which would save space and lower the likelihood of errors in general are their significant pros/cons to either method.<p>[1] <a href="http://joemaller.com/990/a-web-focused-git-workflow/" rel="nofollow">http://joemaller.com/990/a-web-focused-git-workflow/</a>

Can I use git to manage a Drupal-managed website?

That's similar to my private website (soultcer.com). I use git to create and store the content, and a wiki as content management system. It's nice to work on your website, and all you need is a git push for deploy. If I make a mistake or someone vandalizes the wiki, reverting is easy.<p>clickable: <a href="http://www.soultcer.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.soultcer.com/</a><p>Edit: In case you are interested, the wiki software was written by a friend and is open source: <a href="https://github.com/patrikf/ewiki" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/patrikf/ewiki</a>

The general approach of putting together your website on one machine, the coding machine, and publishing it to your server is one I use, although I prefer a complex build on my design machine and then rsync it with the server.<p>Checkout Chronicle (<a href="http://www.steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle/" rel="nofollow">http://www.steve.org.uk/Software/chronicle/</a>). I've put up a HN thread (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2186798" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2186798</a>).

This is basically how I run my publishing engine (you can read more about it at the "Colophon" part of this article: <a href="http://nearthespeedoflight.com/article/about_the_redesign" rel="nofollow">http://nearthespeedoflight.com/article/about_the_redesign</a> ).<p>I wanted to teach myself Ruby and I figured this was a great way to maintain a site, as I'm terrible with both SQL and security. Git solves security and DataMapper solves the SQL, and my Ruby lubricates the rest.

I've played with this - in the end I ended up using custom scripts and/or Capistrano scripts (along with git of course) to handle actual deployments. It provided more control and more features, while still letting me leverage git.

Have a question. This is nice for simple HTML. How about deploying site were you have to migrate the database etc. This approach wouldn't work. I use fabric with git right now, works well.

What about using git to backup an entire hard drive? Maybe using bitbucket (or github if you don't mind sharing your data with the world).<p>Living on the cloud has never been so easy :-D

I do something similar, but I keep the "central" repository in another location on the server and pull from that.

So in other words Heroku minus all that pesky code?