I use rsync to deploy code to my web server:

rsync --recursive --compress \  
--verbose --progress --stats \  
--times --perms --delete \  
--exclude "*~" --exclude "*.pyc" \  
. login@server:path  

This command will transfer the current directory and all sub-directories and files to my server, but only transfer modified files to save time and bandwidth.
verbose, progress, and stats display useful output
times / perms ensure the file timestamps / permissions are the same on my server
delete will delete remote files when deleted locally
exclude temporary files