For a couple of weeks now I have been watching various screencasts and envying those who can operate Drush on their sites, esp. when enabling/disabling of the modules, or clearing cache. The time savings seem to be immense.

However, as a more of a front-end developer, rather than a qualified, fluent console operator, I find myself completely lost as per the usage of Drush with remote sites. Most of the googled readings treat about local sites, they specify paths to local installations, or they assume that a site was created using site-install command. While I am interested in adding Drush to an existing remote site. How do I add Drush into play with that remote site?

Now that I'm trying to get the bug picture of using Drush, I think I miss some principal knowledge about the environment and tools needed, which I haven't found anywhere.

1. Apart from having command line Drush installed on my desktop, do I have to install Drush module on my remote site? Or is Drupal core Drush-controllable out-of-the-box (if it is, what is the purpose of Drush module available at drupal.org/project/drush)
2. Do I have to configure SSH for communicating the server?
3. Do I need to provide db credentials anywhere (where)?
4. Do I need to define FTP credentials anywhere (where)?
5. aliases.drushrc.php: does it live only on my desktop, or should I define anything similar on the remote ftp?

My setup involves staging and production sites, the former also stored on a remote ftp server with its own domain. I would like both to be controllable via Drush. Is that feasible?

It'd be great if someone could shed some light on me.

For a couple of weeks now I have been watching various screencasts and envying those who can operate Drush on their sites, esp. when enabling/disabling of the modules, or clearing cache. The time savings seem to be immense.

However, as a more of a front-end developer, rather than a qualified, fluent console operator, I find myself completely lost as per the usage of Drush with remote sites. Most of the googled readings treat about local sites, they specify paths to local installations, or they assume that a site was created using site-install command. While I am interested in adding Drush to an existing remote site. How do I add Drush into play with that remote site?

Now that I'm trying to get the big picture of using Drush, I think I may have missed some principal knowledge about the environment and tools needed, which I haven't found anywhere.

1. Apart from having command line Drush installed on my desktop, do I have to install Drush module on my remote site? Or is Drupal core Drush-controllable out-of-the-box (if it is, what is the purpose of Drush module available at drupal.org/project/drush)
2. Do I have to configure SSH for communicating the server?
3. Do I need to provide db credentials anywhere (where)?
4. Do I need to define FTP credentials anywhere (where)?
5. aliases.drushrc.php: does it live only on my desktop, or should I define anything similar on the remote ftp?

My setup involves staging and production sites, the former also stored on a remote ftp server with its own domain. I would like both to be controllable via Drush. Is that feasible?

It'd be great if someone could shed some light on me.