Avoid Visual Studio deployment, and automate as much as possible. Web Deployment Projects and NAnt can be your friends!
Briefly, our deployment setup:
We use RedGate SQL to script differences between dev and live database.
An NAnt build file which calls MSBUILD to build the web deployment project (.wdproj), zips up the resulting compiled web app (along with the SQL change script) and then uploads the zip file to the server.
On the server side, there is another NAnt build file which takes the application offline, backs up the database, backs up the website. runs the SQL change script, unzips the new version and brings the app online.
Step 3 is usually run "manually" (one double-click), but sometimes scheduled for late at night. You could do exactly the same from a CDROM, or even write a pretty little Windows Forms app as a wrapper.
Quite happy to give details of the NAnt script if you're interested.