On the SitePoint PHP blog today David Shirley has a new tutorial looking at continuous deployment with a bit more detail than his previous post.

In an earlier article I talked about what Continuous Deployment was and how it fits into the modern programming process. We took a small swipe at how it works, but some people (okay, one person) felt that I could have gone into more detail and they were right. [...] The essence of Continuous Deployment is that you use automated tools to do a lot of the heavy lifting. This means there may or may not be a bit of a learning curve when you first get started. A number of software elements are brought into play, and if you already know how to use those, great. If you don’t, just remember that this is a learning curve, not a barrier.

He's broken down the rest of the tutorial into sections relating to the different pieces needed to effectively set up a continuous deployment (CD) system:

• Effective use of version control
• Commitment to automated testing
• Setup and use of automated build software