If you're interested in the deployment of PHP applications, you'd do well to check out a series of articles Kevin Schroeder has posted to his blog talking about different methods for moving your site out when it's ready for the world to see.

His articles cover:

• Things to take into consideration when creating a deployment process
• Using rsync
• Integration of source code management
• Creating PEAR packages
• Making installable packages (like yum, RPM, etc)

This last option, while a bit more difficult than some of the others, seems to becoming more and more popular as a self-contained, easy to deploy method that's very controllable.

Brandon Savage as a suggestion for anyone doing any kind of development work - use source/version control in your development, you'll be thankful later.

If you ask most developers about source control, they'll agree that it's a wise thing to use. They'll insist that they think it's important. But yet, why are so many companies out there still not using source control in their projects? A good number of companies that I've worked with failed to make use of source control, resulting in issues that would have been trivial otherwise. In this article we'll explore ways to make sure that if your company isn't using source control, that you can help make a change to this policy.

He makes a few suggestions about implementing version control in your environment (it doesn't need to come from the top), how it's best put in place before a crisis and how the real person that might need the convincing could be your fellow cowrokers.

On the KillerPHP.com website today, there's a good beginner's guide (from J. Lenensold) about using version control in your development - specifically Subversion.

As projects start to get a little larger, it becomes crucial that you manage your code in an easy and organized manner. Using subversion is a breeze with tools like TortoiseSVN on windows and SCPlugin on the mac.

This article is an attempt at introducing the concept of SVN. There are many great tutorials out there that outline the steps for installing SVN on windows, mac and linux.

He talks about why using version control is a good thing, how it can speed up testing and even relates it back to PHPers with a sample workflow (with graphic) and some helpful hints as you introduce this very handy functionality into your development process.