When adding plugins and testing changes locally, it would be nice if we had a simple way to upload the changes to a live edition, without resorting to Git, hosting, FTP, etc. One way (which I’ve just tested and works) would be to add an option to upload the user directory (I uploaded it via SCP, chowned the folder, and it worked). This preserves logs (and thus, stats) but transfers all plugin installations, custom templates and themes, and more - plus it’s zero downtime.
How do you upload local changes to the live version?
The user/ folder should contain all the stuff you need. Uploading to a remote server really depends on the server in question and what services are exposed.
There are tones of ways of doing this with standard services such as FTP, SFTP, SCP, RSych, etc. some tools such as transmit for Mac can even automatically sync folders. Also there are third party sync options like Dropbox. And also you can use scm tools such as git. Lastly there are online services that can synchronize file systems. The world is really your oyster here!
if not using a version-control-system (git/mercurial), I highly use Beyond Compare (free - www.scootersoftware.com) for transferring local changes (and comparing them in the process) … regardless of using FTP/SFTP/Rsync.
It helps to know the timestamps of the changes, the last modified times, file/group permissions or missing files etc. And if I spot a missing file or change, I reconcile it there, visually.