If you’ve done any development on themes, plugins, or the core application itself, then you know that the team uses Subversion for WordPress development. This means that when you checkout the project, you’re either pulling down at least three directories, or you’re pulling down the trunk.
The challenge is figuring out a way to organize your local development environment so that it resembles the staging and production environment rather than what the repository looks like.
But this can be tough if you’re used to working with the trunk, with copying files, or with whatever crazy ways you’ve come up with managing version controlled files.
Here’s the most effective way that I’ve found to organize my installation when using Subversion for WordPress development: