Developing PHP with Eclipse on a remote server (FTP) on Windows

I use WinSCP and enable remote synchronization.
Everything that changes on the local system is automatically synchronized trough SCP/FTP onto the server.

Looks like RSE might be overkill for your needs. Here's a similar question and popular answer to your problem of uploading from Eclipse:

How do I add FTP support to Eclipse?

Secondly, you could try out a version control system like SVN - it would take a little bit of time and work to set it up but probably be far more useful than getting RSE going and then you could develop locally, commit your changes to the server and then update the workspace on the server.

Thirdly, there are other IDEs out there, like Netbeans, with built in support for working on remote files.

Sorry to drag up an old topic but Remote System Explorer is exactly what you need. No need for sFTP or a Shell. Setup the connection in the RSE perspective just like you normally would using your sFTP/SSH client.

Open the folder for the first time and you get the login dialog. Enter your credentials. Store them as needed.

Now navigate to your development files and double click or right click to open the file. Eclipse caches a local copy till you save, Ctrl-S.

Need to do some shell work. Right click on a folder and Launch a Terminal. If your files are source controlled, such as svn, you can checkout or update from the terminal.

I use to have Putty, FileZilla and a host of other editors and utilities. Now I never leave Eclipse. SQL, Shell, sFTP, PHP, CSS/HTML, C/C++, Droid, all within Eclipse.