I'm with cuningham. If you can backup/restore, this is the simplest and most reliable.

Log shipping works well, but if you get out of sync, lose a file, etc., you're starting this, which is administratively a pain. It will fail when you're busy and you'll re-set the system and the first restore WITH RECOVERY, so you'll end up doing it again.

Replication is more real time, but also brittle. Works great when it works. When it fails, it's a pain to fix.