Web Development Box Brainstorm

[Brendtro, Steven]

Hello all,

I am trying to come up with a solution for a development box I am building.
Here is my situation...  I have a web server with MySQL databases full of
dynamic content that runs the site.  I have a development box that I set up
as a mirror of the web server.  The development box is sitting right on the
Internet, while the real web server is behind a firewall.

I want to set up six or seven user accounts that are able to do development
and/or learn to code on the website without messing up the site content for
everyone else.  I was thinking of using rsync locally to create and maintain
copies of the development tree for each individual developer.  I don't know
exactly how to handle the databse part of it yet, as MySQL doesn't have
tablespaces like Oracle and such.

Also, since the web server is behind a firewall, I haven't come up with a
good way to run updates on the web server from the development tree each
time a project/update rolls out.

Has anyone ever done this sort of thing (or anything remotely similar)
before?  Does anyone have any ideas about how to pull something like this
off?  Consider this a brainstorming session....

Thanks,
Steven Brendtro
sbrendtro at home.com