When you use the Copy Project to deploy your project, it can help to remove you web.conf file from your project (after you have already posted it once on the server though).  This allows you to keep a modified version specific to your server on your server and still have a different copy locally.  You can always use the button to show all files in order to see your web.config file.

I can be slow at times but after nuking out the web.config file on the server a couple of times when it has been modified with local connection strings and keys for components, I started to wise up :)