Aperture Project naming conventions?

"IMO you've got a bit of #1 going on, although being able to sort the sidebar is by no means unreasonable (and I encounter this issue in a lot of Apple apps)

However, As you mentioned, if you click the ""All Projects"" button in the toolbar, it brings up a grid listing of your projects which does show them chronologically. I don't use iPhoto but to me the two views look pretty similar. I've never really liked this view myself as I regularly add new photos to old projects in my workflow so the dates are a little bit ""off"" for me (the date used for sorting is the date of the earliest shot in the project) but it sounds like it'll work for you.

I'd personally avoid putting dates in the project name because its simply redundant. I do this only with recurring events like ""Disneyland July 2007"" and ""Disneyland July 2009"" or ""Club Meeting June-09, Club Meeting July-09."" To keep things organized, I'll then add those to higher level folders (Summer Vacations, Club Meetings).

The real power of a photo system like aperture though is tags. If you get in the habit of tagging batches of photos as you import them, you'll find its much easier to locate a shot later on.

Lastly, see if some of what you want to do can be done with smart libraries. There are the built in ""last week"" and ""last month"" ones, and they're fairly flexible."