diff --git a/docs/topics/scrapyd.rst b/docs/topics/scrapyd.rst
index e55cf80fe..e78b5c76e 100644
--- a/docs/topics/scrapyd.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/scrapyd.rst
@@ -221,39 +221,38 @@ Show and define targets
 
 To see all available targets type::
 
-    scrapy deploy -L
+    scrapy deploy -l
 
-This will return a list of available targets and their URLs::
+This will return a list of available targets and their URLs. For example::
 
     scrapyd              http://localhost:6800/
 
-The ``scrapyd`` target is available by default. You can define more targets by
-adding them to the ``scrapy.cfg`` file in your project or any other supported
-location like ``~/.scrapy.cfg``, ``/etc/scrapy.cfg``, or
-``c:\scrapy\scrapy.cfg``.
+You can define targets by adding them to your project's ``scrapy.cfg`` file,
+or any other supported location like ``~/.scrapy.cfg``, ``/etc/scrapy.cfg``,
+or ``c:\scrapy\scrapy.cfg`` (in Windows).
 
 Here's an example of defining a new target ``scrapyd2`` with restricted access
 through HTTP basic authentication::
 
-    [deploy_scrapyd2]
-    url = http://scrapyd.mydomain.com/api/scrapy/
+    [deploy:scrapyd2]
+    url = http://scrapyd.mydomain.com/api/scrapyd/
     username = john
     password = secret
 
 .. note:: The :command:`deploy` command also supports netrc for getting the
    credentials.
 
-Now, if you type ``scrapy deploy -L`` you'd see::
+Now, if you type ``scrapy deploy -l`` you'll see::
 
     scrapyd              http://localhost:6800/
-    scrapyd2             http://scrapyd.mydomain.com/api/scrapy/
+    scrapyd2             http://scrapyd.mydomain.com/api/scrapyd/
 
 See available projects
 ----------------------
 
-To see all available projets in certain target use::
+To see all available projets in a specific target use::
 
-    scrapy deploy -l scrapyd
+    scrapy deploy -L scrapyd
 
 It would return something like this::
 
@@ -265,14 +264,14 @@ Deploying a project
 
 Finally, to deploy your project use::
 
-    scrapy deploy scrapyd:project1
+    scrapy deploy scrapyd -p project1
 
 This will eggify your project and upload it to the target, printing the JSON
 response returned from the Scrapyd server. If you have a ``setup.py`` file in
 your project, that one will be used. Otherwise a ``setup.py`` file will be
 created automatically (based on a simple template) that you can edit later.
 
-After running that command you will see something like this meaning your
+After running that command you will see something like this, meaning your
 project was uploaded successfully::
 
     Deploying myproject-1287453519 to http://localhost:6800/addversion.json
@@ -283,23 +282,30 @@ By default ``scrapy deploy`` uses the current timestamp for generating the
 project version, as you can see in the output above. However, you can pass a
 custom version with the ``--version`` option::
 
-    scrapy deploy scrapyd:project1 --version 54
+    scrapy deploy scrapyd -p project1 --version 54
 
 Also, if you use Mercurial for tracking your project source code, you can use
 ``HG`` for the version which will be replaced by the current Mercurial
 revision, for example ``r382``::
 
-    scrapy deploy scrapyd:project1 --version HG
+    scrapy deploy scrapyd -p project1 --version HG
 
 Support for other version discovery sources may be added in the future.
 
-Finally, if you don't want to specify the target and project every time you run
-``scrapy deploy`` you can define the default ones in the ``scrapy.cfg`` file,
-like this::
+Finally, if you don't want to specify the target, project and version every
+time you run ``scrapy deploy`` you can define the defaults in the
+``scrapy.cfg`` file. For example::
 
     [deploy]
-    target = scrapyd
+    url = http://scrapyd.mydomain.com/api/scrapyd/
+    username = john
+    password = secret
     project = project1
+    version = HG
+
+This way, you can deploy your project just by using::
+
+    scrapy deploy
 
 .. _topics-egg-caveats:
 
diff --git a/scrapy/commands/deploy.py b/scrapy/commands/deploy.py
index aa2a4e9c5..a8c546de1 100644
--- a/scrapy/commands/deploy.py
+++ b/scrapy/commands/deploy.py
@@ -18,12 +18,6 @@ from scrapy.utils.multipart import encode_multipart
 from scrapy.utils.http import basic_auth_header
 from scrapy.utils.conf import get_config, closest_scrapy_cfg
 
-_DEFAULT_TARGETS = {
-    'scrapyd': {
-        'url': 'http://localhost:6800/',
-    },
-}
-
 _SETUP_PY_TEMPLATE = \
 """# Automatically created by: scrapy deploy
 
@@ -42,22 +36,24 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
     requires_project = True
 
     def syntax(self):
-        return "[options] [ <target:project> | -l <target> | -L ]"
+        return "[options] [ [target] | -l | -L <target> ]"
 
     def short_desc(self):
-        return "Deploy project in Scrapyd server"
+        return "Deploy project in Scrapyd target"
 
     def long_desc(self):
         return "Deploy the current project into the given Scrapyd server " \
-            "(aka target) and project."
+            "(known as target)"
 
     def add_options(self, parser):
         ScrapyCommand.add_options(self, parser)
+        parser.add_option("-p", "--project",
+            help="the project name in the target")
         parser.add_option("-v", "--version",
             help="the version to deploy. Defaults to current timestamp")
-        parser.add_option("-L", "--list-targets", action="store_true", \
+        parser.add_option("-l", "--list-targets", action="store_true", \
             help="list available targets")
-        parser.add_option("-l", "--list-projects", metavar="TARGET", \
+        parser.add_option("-L", "--list-projects", metavar="TARGET", \
             help="list available projects on TARGET")
         parser.add_option("--egg", metavar="FILE",
             help="use the given egg, instead of building it")
@@ -79,13 +75,16 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
             projects = json.loads(f.read())['projects']
             print os.linesep.join(projects)
             return
-        target, project = _get_target_project(args)
-        version = _get_version(opts)
+        target_name = _get_target_name(args)
+        target = _get_target(target_name)
+        project = _get_project(target, opts)
+        version = _get_version(target, opts)
         tmpdir = None
         if opts.egg:
+            _log("Using egg: %s" % opts.egg)
             egg = open(opts.egg, 'rb')
         else:
-            _log("Bulding egg of %s-%s" % (project, version))
+            _log("Building egg of %s-%s" % (project, version))
             egg, tmpdir = _build_egg()
         _upload_egg(target, egg, project, version)
         egg.close()
@@ -93,20 +92,21 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
             shutil.rmtree(tmpdir)
 
 def _log(message):
-    sys.stderr.write("%s\n" % message)
+    sys.stderr.write(message + os.linesep)
 
-def _get_target_project(args):
-    if len(args) >= 1 and ':' in args[0]:
-        target_name, project = args[0].split(':', 1)
+def _get_target_name(args):
+    if len(args) > 1:
+        raise UsageError("Too many arguments: %s" % ' '.join(args))
+    elif args:
+        return args[0]
     elif len(args) < 1:
-        target_name = _get_option('deploy', 'target')
-        project = _get_option('deploy', 'project')
-        if not target_name or not project:
-            raise UsageError("<target:project> not given and defaults not found")
-    else:
-        raise UsageError("%r is not a <target:project>" % args[0])
-    target = _get_target(target_name)
-    return target, project
+        return 'default'
+
+def _get_project(target, opts):
+    project = opts.project or target.get('project')
+    if not project:
+        raise UsageError("Missing project")
+    return project
 
 def _get_option(section, option, default=None):
     cfg = get_config()
@@ -115,10 +115,15 @@ def _get_option(section, option, default=None):
 
 def _get_targets():
     cfg = get_config()
-    targets = _DEFAULT_TARGETS.copy()
+    baset = dict(cfg.items('deploy')) if cfg.has_section('deploy') else {}
+    targets = {}
+    if 'url' in baset:
+        targets['default'] = baset
     for x in cfg.sections():
-        if x.startswith('deploy_'):
-            targets[x[7:]] = dict(cfg.items(x))
+        if x.startswith('deploy:'):
+            t = baset.copy()
+            t.update(cfg.items(x))
+            targets[x[7:]] = t
     return targets
 
 def _get_target(name):
@@ -130,12 +135,13 @@ def _get_target(name):
 def _url(target, action):
     return urljoin(target['url'], action)
 
-def _get_version(opts):
-    if opts.version == 'HG':
+def _get_version(target, opts):
+    version = opts.version or target.get('version')
+    if version == 'HG':
         p = Popen(['hg', 'tip', '--template', '{rev}'], stdout=PIPE)
         return 'r%s' % p.communicate()[0]
-    elif opts.version:
-        return opts.version
+    elif version:
+        return version
     else:
         return str(int(time.time()))
 
diff --git a/scrapy/templates/project/scrapy.cfg b/scrapy/templates/project/scrapy.cfg
index 7c357dc0d..889516a42 100644
--- a/scrapy/templates/project/scrapy.cfg
+++ b/scrapy/templates/project/scrapy.cfg
@@ -1,2 +1,11 @@
+# Automatically created by: scrapy startproject
+#
+# For more information about the [deploy] section see:
+# http://doc.scrapy.org/topics/scrapyd.html
+
 [settings]
 default = ${project_name}.settings
+
+[deploy]
+#url = http://localhost:6800/
+project = ${project_name}