[no subject]

File transfer is appropriate to a test/staging server, and then you migrate
to the live one, after moving the files to the production server and then
using a script or something to automate the process of 'in with the new out
with the old'.  This minimizes downtime and makes me feel a lot more
confident that changes will go smoothly.  Incidentally, you don't *have* to
have a dedicated test/qa server (although this is nice).  Just add an
additional virtual site, like test.bigsite.com and have them have FTP access
to *that* account.  And you can still do the migration yourself.

It just prevents them from accidently overwriting work that perhaps you have
done on the server (how many times have you done maintaince on a site and
just have the client upload their old version of the site right on top,
breaking whatever functionality you implemented?).  If there are multiple
people maintaining a site, you simply can't allow them to all have free for
all FTP access to the production server (this is where CVS systems come into
play).

You can still use a web front end to the back-end that supplies timely
information (because its a lot hard for that to get screwed up).

-k