How to setup a box and 3 machines as a web development environment for a small team

Extended title: How to setup a box with (Windows7 + Apache + VisualSVN + MySQL + PHP) and 3 machines with (MacOs/Windows7) and Dreamweaver CS5 as a web development environment for a small team

These are my thoughts. Please forgive my ignorance, I still don´t have completly clear all the concepts.

1. I need to setup a web development environment for a small team of 3 web developers. The staging and live environments will be in a remote server under an external hosting company (probably Amazon).

2. Our first project is a blog with Wordpress

3. I've installed XAMPP in the box and can be accessed like this (http://dev.company.com/xampp)

4. I've installed Wordpress and can be accessed like this (http://dev.company.com/blog)

5. I've installed VisualSVN in the box and can be accessed like this (http://dev.company.com:8080/svn)

6. I don´t know how to import files for the first time to my repositories in the box (c:/repositories/blog)

7. VisualSVN includes Apache. I don´t know if I should turn off the Apache of XAMPP or if should install another version of VisualSVN without Apache

8. I don't know if I should keep my repositories at C:\repositories or c:\xampp\htdocs.

9. I've read something about hooks? to copy the files from the repositories to the htdocs? Can anybody explain this process?

10. Would it be a good option to keep all the files always in the box? or it is a better option to check out the files to the machines?

11. When setting up Dreamweaver to connect to the SVN Server, do I have to point to the trunk开发者_开发技巧, branch or the name of the repository? Do I have to setup a different connection for each branch?

12. How can we include images and PSD's in the repositories?

When we start a new project we usually just checkout files on clients and commit the changes to the server when finished editing. This way people can just edit files on their own machine (without other users slowing stuff down).

Can't you just do a Linux install for the webserver (CentOS or something like that?). Windows 7 seems so heavy / unfitted for webdevelopment server.

We usually keep the repo out of the webroot.

XAMPP really???

Just my two cents...

1. It's strongly not recommended to use Apache HTTP server bundled to VisualSVN Server for anything else than Subversion server. So you have to install VisualSVN Server and XAMPP.

2. Just keep repositories in C:\Repositories. If you move them to htdocs all repository will be accessed for everyone who have access to XAMPP.

3. Common practice is to checkout working copy to htdocs folder, configure permissions to deny access to .svn and then run svn update in post-commit hook in VisualSVN Server.