Beside of your Eclipse installation via update site, here a possible plugin to manage configurations (question 2):
To distribute any settings of 'window-preference' to your whole dev team I can recomment 'workspace mechanics'.
You can record your settings and then provide them via your dev server.
If you distribute a shared Eclipse it's also easy to provide the proper workspace mechanics URL for any Eclipse installation (see Enterprise Configuration of Workspace mechanic).
Changes to the settings are checked on startup and the developers are always up to date.
Further information can be found on the official project page: https://code.google.com/a/eclipselabs.org/p/workspacemechanic/