This will upload the new files using SSH from the current directory and synchronize with the remote directory public_html on HOST, pushing only the new or changed files.

rsync -rvC --rsh="ssh -l SSH_USERNAME" * HOST:public_html/

mmmm, tasty rsync. my new best friend. even better than scp, I think.

From man rsync:

-C, –cvs-exclude

This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range of files that you often don’t want to transfer between systems. It uses the same algorithm that CVS uses to determine if a file should be ignored.

The exclude list is initialized to:

RCS/ SCCS/ CVS/ .svn/ CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS .make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* *.old *.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.o *.obj *.so *.Z *.elc *.ln core

then files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to the list and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environment variable (space delimited).

Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same directory as a .cvsignore file and matches one of the patterns listed therein.

See the cvs(1) manual for more information.

I just created a nice little .cvsignore file in my $HOME directory with the following in it:

.DS_Store

so that in addition to not uploading Subversion or CVS directories, the .DS_Store files that my Mac puts in directories won’t get uploaded when i rsync. SWEEET! 🙂