Running an ASP.Net website and using TinyMCE for content management. Users need to be able to upload images for content. The images will be shown in website content (news, articles, etc) but won't otherwise be referenced by anything aside from their content.
Should these images be under version control (svn), or should the upload directory just be passed around when needed (backup, testing, etc)? If they should be versioned, what's the best way to do this?
The content is not a part of the application just the instance you have running so it should be added to your backup not your SVN repository. I only add images to SVN if there are apart of the application it self.
There's no reason not to store images in your version management repository, and it makes a great tool for handling changes-of-mind, who-did-what and how things evolve over time.
The only thing you need to do is ensure that you have the needs-lock property on these files - last thing you want is for users to get a file, modify it, then attempt to check it in only to find someone else has modified it already. Normally this is not a problem due to the merge ability of SVN, but its a bit tricky to merge image files. So, put the needs-lock property on and only 1 user can modify an image at a time.
ah.. just read it again, do you mean user-uploaded content that is not part of your website? In which case, why do you need those images at all - back them up of course, but otherwise do you need them at all anywhere other than on the live website?