Source Control for Web developers

So Pencilneck Software is growing. We’ve hired one person on. I suspect we’ll hire another pair by the end of summer, if not more. We already have a stable of contractors whom we use regularly. With growth comes good things, and problems. The problem that we’re already encountering (indeed, it was a problem with just Jeff and I) is that of source control. Particularly as our contractors are often off-site, and both Jeff and I work from home from time to time (well, Jeff does. Not having a laptop any longer, or a (work) computer at home, I only work at work now). We’ve been bitten at least a half-dozen times by the over-writing someone else’s work issue over the past three years. While it’s just been the two of us, we’ve been admittedly a little lazy – I’ve often popped stuff live directly from my development box, rather than going via the staging server. And Jeff’s even made edits directly on a live site – minor inconsequential ones, to be sure, but it still means that we’ve overwritten each others’ edits, often months later.

So I’m realizing that I really need to look into some source/version control systems for us. The overly-basic dreamweaver check-in, check-out system has never really worked, plus it litters filesystems with .lck files, which, if you don’t use dreamweaver for FTP (which we don’t, because Dreamweaver’s FTP sucks), often means littering already often over-busy server directories with little lock files. But the key here is that we generally use Dreamweaver (or HomeSite) to dev our sites, all of our sites being Cold Fusion/HTML/CSS based. So ideally, I’d love a source-control application that plugs directly into Dreamweaver. This may not be possible, and a brief Googling would indicate that it’s not. We’re windows/SQL Server based, so I’d like something that runs stably on that platform, which seems to eliminate a lot of the open-source ones. And while it’s been a good 5 years since I last used MS Source Safe, I wasn’t a huge fan of that at the time.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions for me to look into? I don’t mind paying for good software, but I’d like to hear some non-advertorial reviews of it first, or be able to try it for a while without it being too disruptive before dropping a few hundred dollars on it

6 Replies to “Source Control for Web developers”

  1. Hi, we just tried the Dreamweaver check in/check out system and it interfered with a php randomizing script, so I think we’re going to ditch it. Did you ever find anything that worked for you? Thanks, Jen

  2. Hi, we just tried the Dreamweaver check in/check out system and it interfered with a php randomizing script, so I think we’re going to ditch it. Did you ever find anything that worked for you? Thanks, Jen

  3. Hi Jen.

    We’re now using Subversion. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of it, but it does work, and makes it pretty easy to control version, even when working remotely – which is key for us

  4. Hi Jen.

    We’re now using Subversion. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of it, but it does work, and makes it pretty easy to control version, even when working remotely – which is key for us

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