Chris explains how he’s deploying web applications and why you should follow this six-step-approach, too:

1. The first deploy will not hurt, but as soon as you change something and it breaks it will hurt.
2. Make sure you are able to undo changes in the productive environment if you change something.
3. Don’t forget that there’s more in your application than code!
4. Automate every step, else mistakes will happen!
5. Make sure the deployment and production environment are as close as possible.
6. Ownership of code is important, make sure it’s properly deployed.

Chris recommends Capistrano, which is originally a deploy-tool for Ruby but since version 2 it doesn’t care about what it deploys. I personally haven’t used Capistrano, but hearing Chris’ satisfaction I think it’s worth checking it out.