Continuous deployment is good, but the comments are valid.
There is a certain non-zero probability for errors to occur during deployment. Binaries have to be reloaded, database connections have to be reconnected, sessions have to be restored, etc, so the more you deploy, the larger the coefficient before this probability in the "will something go wrong" equation.
So, what we do is break up our system into deployment groups where some handful of users gets updated a few times an hour sometimes. We test the deployment on this small set of users, usually they know the change is coming and are ready to test the change in real time.
Sometimes we repeat this process using different deployment groups. Test in this one, then test in that one, until we get a final small errorless deployment and then we roll out to the masses.
If it is successful, we roll it out to the masses.
Your site doesn't have to be /all/ beta or /all/ production. You can have batches of users in different groups.
There is a certain non-zero probability for errors to occur during deployment. Binaries have to be reloaded, database connections have to be reconnected, sessions have to be restored, etc, so the more you deploy, the larger the coefficient before this probability in the "will something go wrong" equation.
So, what we do is break up our system into deployment groups where some handful of users gets updated a few times an hour sometimes. We test the deployment on this small set of users, usually they know the change is coming and are ready to test the change in real time.
Sometimes we repeat this process using different deployment groups. Test in this one, then test in that one, until we get a final small errorless deployment and then we roll out to the masses.
If it is successful, we roll it out to the masses.
Your site doesn't have to be /all/ beta or /all/ production. You can have batches of users in different groups.