scenario: you don't mind publishing your source code, and you need to publish via ftp. visual studio's built in "copy web site" tool is prohibitively slow because it scans the server for changes and your website has many folders and files, but analyzing the server is unnecessary because you are the only person who updates your website.
solution: "web site publisher", the simplest and most genius program ever. it took me many hours to find it, which is why i felt the need to share it. you can configure it to scan only your hard drive for new/changed files and deletions, and then publish the changes since you last published to the ftp server. my solution won't work for pre-compiled asp.net web applications; works well for regular asp.net web sites.
download it here:
http://www.cryer.co.uk/downloads/websitepublisher/
you must enable the turbo optimization so that it does not scan the server. click "config", "optimisations", and then check "turbo".
here's my blog post saying the exact same thing:
http://devblog.alexsapps.com/2012/04/visual-studio-2010-copy-web-site-tool.html