I am developing a web application in PHP and JS. The software until recently was only being developed on and not being used by clients, so I could just change the script files directly. After the application went into release I just copied the application in a beta folder in which I could do changes. After testing the changes I manually selected the changed files and copied them into the release system.
Well, I really think there must be a better approach to my problem, that does not include manually copying files from beta to release. I used git for projects to collaborate with other people, but those always were non web applications, that were not running, while changing them. Collaboration is not as important, for I am working alone, at least in the medium term. Are there approaches to use git oder something else for working web applications?
As IDE I am using Netbeans, which is synchronized with the server.
Edit: Currently the productive code is located in the htdocs folder of the webserver. A copy of the whole stuff is in htdocs/dev. I do changes on the code in dev via Netbeans, without any version control plug-in, it just synchronizes the project files via sftp with the files in dev. After changing I am able to test the changes using example.org/beta. If everything's fine I copy the changed files into the productive system.