Morella House – Guest House in the Clare Valley
I also have another website under construction. Morella House was in need of a redesign for their website to make it more attractive and functional. It currently has a splash screen also while the site is in development. Their old site was resurrected to keep the content after issues with their webhost, I have moved them to Jumbas webhosting, registered them a .com.au domain as well.
The Moorings – Guest House at Carrickalinga
Last week I set up the hosting and domain registration for a guest house in Carrickalinga. It goes by the name of The Moorings and is situated just back from the beach at Carrickalinga. I’ve put a splash screen up while I work on the site and will be launched soon.
Why you should buy locally.
Thinking about the pro’s and con’s between buying products overseas vs locally. There are quite a few reasons we choose to buy products from overseas, and I’m thinking mainly in electronic consumer devices.
I was reading in the Overclockers.com.au forum about someone who was thinking of getting a Nintendo Wii from Japan. The pro I can see is that it may be cheaper for the unit, but the cons seem to far outweigh the pro side. If the Wii was bought from Japan it would be cheaper, not by much but definitely cheaper. But if it was bought from Japan, what happens when something goes wrong under warranty? It would have to be sent back to Japan to be repaired, it could be gone months while it is repaired, not only that but there can also be a communication problem between different languages.
I also see that there would be incompatibility issues with the games, the power plug would be different and require a converter so it can be plugged in. The software on the Wii would be in Japanese too.
If you bought something like a notebook from a local store and you had problems, you can take it back and have it repaired. While the time factor is still there, the face to face communication is a plus. But also that the support is local, you can pick up accessories in the shop and look at them. Feel them and see their quality. Not only that, but you’re supporting local business and keeping the economy alive. It may cost a little more but you do get more service with your dollar.
So next time you’re looking at buying something, have a think to yourself if it’s going to be an issue returning it if you have a problem.
Portable Applications
I’m not intending on listing any portable applications to go on your usb drives, ipods, or memory sticks. But I’m going to list the places that have them, or I know will list them in the future.
PortableApps – This is the big daddy of portable application sites in my opinion, while it doesn’t have as many apps. It has the more used and practical ones like Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office. Along with their own software packages.
Portable Freeware – While the site layout isn’t that great, there are a lot of apps on here that can be useful.
PenDriveApps – I’ve only come across this one in the last few months, not lots on there but the useful ones are.
LifeHacker – Lifehackers list of portable applications with short reviews.
GetUSB – I just found this in Google, looks interesting!
Xtort – Freeware files, including portable apps.
U3 – U3 are USB drive with their own preinstalled package. While the freeware portable apps do the job you may like something a little more standardised. But U3 does offer some free apps in their database so have a look what’s on offer.
Wikipedia – No applications on here, but a big list of the portable applications avilable to install on your USB drive.
Document, Document, Document.
Let’s face it, when you’re freelancing but not enough to make it a regular job you want to save as much money as possible and spend as little on them as you can. At least when it comes to applications that can manage your jobs. The last month or so I’d been looking at a way I could document all my clients details and track changes to make in each project I’m working on, or the progress for any upcoming projects. I’d tried a few applications, searched for web based type management but most of them are free trials with a limitation of 1 or 3 clients. Or it’s a full blown system you have to pay for. I was looking for an all in one solution that followed how I worked but nothing seemed to, every application out there seems to lack the feature of another.
I’ve been trying to find something that can do project management, time tracking and invoicing all in the one go that is either free or gives me more than 3 clients to manage with. I know I’m dreaming, but won’t someone think of the little guys out there?
I’ve found 2 applications in the last week which I am currently running off my USB drive, this is to work in conjunction with the hope that I can run all my web work of a USB HDD and make me a more mobile worker.
The 2 applications I found are TreePad and DevProject Manager. While they don’t match my whole needs, it’s one step futher to consolidating all my working needs into one place.
Treepad gives a basic tree structure with subfolders so that information can be categorised and entered into a text document. The set back I found was no way to Bold, Underline text or give it enhancements to differentiate it from other text. You have to get the paid version to get those perks!
DevProject Manager is more promising. I’ve only just installed it and it gives me project management with To-Do Lists, subfolders for categorisation, changelogs, versions, notes on the project. People can be added to manage projects but I can see this more as a base to put contact details in for your clients. The ‘code snippets’ section looks like a good place to store those bits of code you like to keep for each site. Be it notes for your website or some javascript someone may want. But it could also be used to store more details if need be of clients.
Unfortunately, neither of these come available for linux users. I find this odd because it’s for coders and a lot of them work in a Linux environment, and should there have been a linux version I would have passed it onto a few people who might find it useful.
Both of these apps can be run off a USB drive, but can easily be installed to your hard drive for use on the desktop. I’ve put my projects into folders Archive, Current, Future and Ongoing. Each has a subfolder for the project I’m working on.
I’ll update this post soon hopefully on how it goes managing details for my projects.
Templates, stock sites and blogs, oh my!
This morning I was reading my news feeds and came across this one from Web Worker Daily.
I’m a big user of open source, freeware and royalty free type content. If it’s there why not use it? It can save me time and money, so I thought I’d list out 3 areas I go to regularly for resources I might need. Being Website Templates, Stock Images, and Other Resources (photoshop brushes, actions, various other bits).
Free/Open Source Web Templates
OpenWebDesign
OpenSourceTemplates
OSWT
Free CSS
OpenSourceTemplates
StyleShout
Stock Image Sites
stock.xchnge – Free Stock Images
Fotolia – Royalty Free Stock Images. You pay for the image but there’s no restrictions on using it.
StockXpert – Royalty Free Stock Photos
DeviantArt – A lot of the stock images here require you to talk with the author. Some allow use for personal, some don’t allow commercial use, check with the notes on each image you think you may use.
Blogs & Websites
FreelanceSwitch – Everything you need to know about freelancing, you’ll find a lot of useful sites.
DeviantArt – Besides having a lot of stock images, it also has a mass of photoshop resources to choose from. I go there mainly for my photoshop brushes
Snapfiles – Full of freeware and shareware, some great applications around that can replace the ones we buy and do just as good at their job, all files are scanned for spyware and malware before being made public
MakeUseOf – This site is full of usefull websites and links to applications for anything you can think of, it’s only just made it into my news feeds and it’s become one of my favourite sites at the moment.
WebWorkerDaily – This is a regular in my readings of a morning. Usefull articles, sites and applications that pop up.
LifeHack – This, along with LifeHacker, while not affiliated with eachother. Provide various articles to techies, home based workers and bloggers. Sites, applications and more news.
LifeHacker – Sites, Applications and more.
AppsMania – This site is pretty much a database of web based 2.0 applications, they link to the site and are categorised. So you can take them for a test drive when you’re looking for something in particular.
Creating a static front page in Wordpress, and keeping your blog posts.
The process is quite simple to do this. What we are doing is making a static front page on Wordpress, then having another menu link at the top to your blog.
1. Login to your administration panel
2. Click Manage > Pages > Create a New Page.
3. Name this page, in our case “Blog” and then publish this page.
4. Create a page for your static Front Page if you haven’t.
4. Next, click Options in the administration menu, then Reading.
6. On the top section titled Front Page/Front Page Displays, select A Static Page.
7. Select the page you want as the static front page, and select “Blog” as the Posts Page.
8. Update the options, and your page will be static on the front and a menu at the top called Blog with your blog posts in it.
The arrival of Moo
My Moo Cards arrived today, along with the keychain card holder. They look fantastic!
I’m going to be handing these out to prospective clients, and also sending some to previous clients and friends who recommend me on for work at times. I haven’t had a business card before, but I do now!
One thing I noticed, which is my fault but I couldn’t tell until I had them printed in my hands to check. The image used on the background comes out a little fuzzy and no definition. So I’m going to try and fix that for the next lot I order. Hopefully I’ll have my VOIP line going then so I’ll have a fixed line contact number to go on there as well.
They also have that silky, wax feel to them as well as I like. I think not only should a business card look good, it should feel good the moment it’s put in someones hands for the first time.
Click the thumbnail below to view my Moo Cards.
