title: Optimal workflow for Local / Staging / Production server stack + Git
body: <p>I am looking to incorporate a web development workflow that allows me to do the following:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Develop / Test locally
  <ul>
  <li>mimics production server (many subdomains, a few mysql DBs) </li>
  <li>stays synced between desktop &amp; laptop to allow on-the-go development</li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>easily push local -> staging </li>
  <li>easily push staging  -> production</li>
  <li>easily live-edit on the production server (occasionally need to for very minor content updates, typo changes, etc. Right now I spend a lot of time making small edits, pushing it to staging, then pushing to  production which takes awhile for minor things.)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I am also new to Git. I have begun test the waters with Git in my personal projects, however the project I have inherited (with the production/staging environments) has not used any version control to this point. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Questions:</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>how can I easily adapt a large established project to a local environment (XAMPP)?</li>
  <li>how can I sync my local environment between dev-laptop and dev-desktop?</li>
  <li>Is Github worth it in this type of pre-established project / server setup? It seems like it adds a lot more steps (ex: local->push to git repo -> download repo to staging server -> push staging server to live server). Also I am concerned about maintaining privacy/security.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>essentially I'm the single developer who was handed a fairly large project and I just want to try and make things as easy/straightforward on myself as possible. :)</p>