Hey guys, I am web developer who currently works mostly on his own but, some projects require outside coding help (my brother.) Anyway, after running in to the problem of "working on the same files" and "saving over each others edits" I decided to research ways to avoid this.

Through the help of stackoverflow I decided on subversion. My setup is the following: A windows 2008 server with a clean install. My desktop which is on the local network of the server. Then my brothers desktop which is at his house, not on lan. We both prefer to use netbeans for development.

My Questions:

How do we set this thing up correctly and most optimally. Here is my current setup and work flow.

1. dev site: in the past I just created sub domains with my web host for test sites (company1.bythepixel.com, company2.bythepixel.com), and editted those sites with netbeans set up having remote sources (ftp). how do i set up my netbeans now? should I set it up with remote sources? I guess I may need to set up a web server on my local server. I'm just not sure of the work flow. When i hit save in netbeans.. will it update the repository.. then do i need to update the site from the repository somehow?

2. live site: when going live, i would just copy all the files from the dev site into the live site. from what i gather i should be able to update the site from the dev repository?

3. Currently I am toying with virtualsvn server (http://www.visualsvn.com/server/) on my local server. It looks like it is set up to use the http protocol. Is there advantages to this or should I consider something that does the file//. Do you recommend any other subversion software that would run on my 2008 box?

4. how will my brother connect? should i set up a permanent vpn from his house to mine? suggestions?

5. (not that important) how do I deal with databases, there anyway to do subversion on database?

I know I have a lot of questions and I am trying to read / make sense of the free online subversion book, but its all so overwhelming! Wish there was a small subversion for dummies guide :)