Being a website developer I often have to follow a certain workflow over and over again. Every project is a little different, but the workflow is essential the same. Am I being too cryptic? Here’s an example:

I’m working on a new website, its been developed on a staging server, but it’s now ready for primetime. First, I hit remote desktop to the production webserver and set up a new site (IIS) with a new user, FTP, logging, permissions, all the boring but important stuff.

With the new hosting setup I actually have to move the staging website to it. Since our staging and production servers are on seperate networks, I usually accomplish this via FTP. So remote desktop again, this time to the staging server. Open up FileZilla FTP and start uploading the site.

Once the site is uploaded I usually need to make a few adjustments to it, connect strings, Google maps keys, etc. So I open up Dreamweaver and add an FTP connection to the new hosting setup. I also like to keep new sites saved in my local version of CuteFTP so I can quickly reference login info or upload/download files.

Finally, I remove the website from IIS on the staging server and archive those files using remote desktop.

So lets summarize… in the last 5 or 10 minutes I have setup one IIS website, removed one IIS website, and made or saved 3 FTP connections.

I just can’t but help thinking that my workflow is overly complicated. But I have yet to find a decent solution for it. Working with my two monitor setup certainly helps keep things organized when switching between my local desktop and the two remote connections. One app I would love to find would be some sort of FTP repository that would let me store one set of login information that could be accessed from CuteFTP or Dreamweaver, maybe even from the staging server when moving a site to production.

I’m open to suggestions and I know there are probably better ways to do what I’m doing, but I’ve yet to find them.