Question about best practice (if exists) for deployment method of branding files.
Background:
I created 2 differefent projects for a public facing SP 2010 site.
First project contains 1 feature and is responsible for deploying branding files: contains my custom columns, layouts, masterpage, css, etc...
Second project is my web template. Contains 3 features, contenttypebinding, webtemp default page, and the web temp files (onet.xml).
I deploy my branding project, then my template files.
Do you deploy branding as Farm solution or Sandboxed solution? So how do you update your branding files at this point?
1. You don't, you deploy and forget about solution doing everything in SP Designer from this point on.
2. Do step 1, then copy everything back to the VS project and save to TFS server.
3. Do all design in VS and then update solution.
I like the idea of having a full completed project, but don't like the idea of having to go back to VS, package, and re-deploy every time I have a minor change to my masterpage when I can just open up Designer and edit.
Do you deploy and forget about the branding files using SP Designer to update master pages, layouts, etc.. or do you work and deploy via VS project.