The engine, and everything around it

Keeping a live app up to date without a deploy button

A site does not update itself when you change the code unless something is arranged to carry the change across. That arrangement is what "deploying" means. When it is a manual step, it gets forgotten, and the live version quietly falls months behind.

Why this happens to almost everybody

The work feels finished when the change works on your own machine. The satisfaction arrives there. Everything after that is admin, and admin without a deadline does not happen. It is not carelessness, it is just how attention works.

The three ways people solve it

ApproachHow it worksFails when
Remember to press deployYou do it by handImmediately, and permanently
Deploy on every code pushA service watches your repositoryYou are not using a repository
The tool carries it automaticallyChanges reach the address by themselvesRarely, and it should be switchable off

The case for it being automatic

If somebody cannot code, they do not know that deploying is a step, so the step should not exist for them. Ura works that way: once a project is online, every change reaches its address, every time, without anybody asking. The one exception is a project you want held still, and that switch sits beside the address, because "leave this one alone, it is a client's site" is a fact about one project rather than about you.

It is never a first deploy, though. Putting something on the internet for the first time stays your own decision, made once, on purpose.