No website is complete without a deployment plan. The whole account on the process of a website development, right from its internal development to the production environment, is known as deployment plan. And the whole process takes time, as the production environment (the server holding the files that will finally be on the website) is quite different from that of the developer's local environment on which he is working. Website Deployment's process consists of QA (qualitative analysis) that involves testing of the design and the development combined with the testing of the functionality. QA creates test cases for the testing of files and templates, deployment plan for the developers to fix any problem that comes on the way of QA. Files are transferred to hosting server with all the components that need to be moved. These files include database information, website files, content, design source files, audio and video. Also, the developer adjusts local paths to production ones in order to the reference media.
You must expect twice time devoted to QA for the production environment, the way you did in the local environment; which means, more time for design and development.
At INA Brains, we always strive for the best web deployment practices.