I've worked out how to get my linux based Netbeans PHP development machine to behave much like what happens when you create a new ASP.Net project in Visual Studio. Firstly create multiple PHP project in Netbeans,say for example mysite1 and mysite2. Next edit the apache2/sites-enabled/000-d... file and add two virtualhost sections as below <VirtualHost 127.0.1.1> ServerName mysite1.localhost DocumentRoot /var/www/mysite1/ </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost 127.0.2.1> ServerName mysite2.localhost ......