I was just wondering how people here manage multiple active projects on their development server.
At this moment I have about 5 active projects, all being developped on a single server (not my machine).
I switch between them a couple of times per day.

The best way of working I have come up with so far (keeping debugging, the base-url and other development
related stuff in mind) is using a script that stops the webserver, links the webservers "root" to one of my project
directories and start the webserver again. I have one of those scripts per project.
I can then use a single phpED workspace/project to work on everything (which I have to close and reopen between
changes ofcourse).

Anyone have any other ideas on this?
I'd appreciate all comments on this matter

PS: In the past I have tried a different port per project, a subdirectory from the root etc but all put aside due
to the extra b*s* and the differences between the actual live environment and the dev-server.

PS2: I'm sorry if this is not the correct location for this question, but given the very appropriate public on this
forum I hoped the question would be allowed.

How about different virtual hosts per project - woould this work? I didn't give it much of a thought though, just poped in my head

we use virtual hosts for that... just set up one (name based) virtual hosts for each project. You could - for example - have "a.dev.mynet" and "b.dev.mynet". The document roots are /var/www/a and /var/www/b, respectively.

Make /var/www accessible as a Samba share (if you're not using your local machine).

Then simply set up two different projects in PhpEd that point to these directories.

I had/have the problem that my dev-server is my laptop, and I use it both @ home (my own company)
and with clients to develop on.
The IP settings for all locations differ and so do the DNS names for my laptop.
Anyway, I solved it by "mixing" my existing configuration and the suggestions made here.

I'd like to share it with you guys, you never know if it comes in handy:

I installed a ntcanuck DNS server on my laptop, working for my home domain, but not for the clients
(since it "hosts" my home domain and redirects to the laptops home ip)
I created a wildcard subdomain (ie *.domain.local).

Next I configured Apache2 to work with named virtualhosts.
(I always created a new file for each virtualhost and then include the directory with Include .... )
The very first file alphabetically (I named it 0.default) points to the ActiveSite directory and I
put the DNS names for my laptop in there for all clients, so if I'm at a client, it still uses the old way.
ie ServerAlias laptop.domain1.local laptop.domain2.local etc.
Since I usually work at a single project when I'm with a client, having to run a script once to update
a symbolic link and restart the webserver once is peanuts.
The file has to be first due to the fact that if Apache can't match to a specific VH, it will always
use the first one defined.

Then for each of my other projects (the ones I work on at home), I created a virtualhost, as
advised in previous posts. I don't have to add a new subdomain entry to my DNS since I
have the wildcard entry, just restart apache to update the config.

After that it was just a matter of creating a separate project/workspace per project, instead of
constantly reusing a single project pointing to the active site (with constantly changing files and
all consequences from that).

So, in short I think my life has gotten quite a bit easier thanks to the help I got here. I now just
have to load the other project and not run scripts on my server to change sites when I'm home.

Thanks!

one point, if you allow

Why not multiple projects in one workspace?

Well, for one: because of this
But I guess I would not be a bad idea to combine the smaller ones and just change the active project indeed.