As many of you know I started a business a little over a year ago now in web site solutions. I have been doing freelance design and development for years and decided it was time to organize something official. I formed Docavedia Information Services LLC and the projects started to pile in. Most of it being referrals, but all of it being enough to keep my part time business busy. I have made mistakes here and there and probably undercharged for some of the projects; all part of learning how to run a small business. One of my biggest fears ended up being one of my mistakes; how to keep things organized. I had spreadsheets and documents for everything I did, but how to organize it all along with my thoughts. It was easy when I had a few projects, but now I have many, all at some stage, being developed concurrently. Why was this a problem? I actually forgot to invoice on a couple of projects when payment for hosting services was due. That’s just wrong!
So I began the search for some sort of project management software. My requirements where, something flexible enough to work with the nature of web development, something mobile (as I am not always at MY computer), and something cheap (preferably free). After a few hours research I found a fit. dotProject is an open source, web based application for project management. It is written in PHP *bliss* and completely web based, making it accessible from anyplace that I can get to the web. Now dotProject is not another content management system, it is a true project management application; much like Microsoft Project. This little application helped me organize all that was going on between projects, and most importantly how much time was being spent on each project. I recommend it to anyone who has access to a web server with PHP and MySQL installed.
In the months I have been using it I already have noticed a difference. I am no longer worrying about what I forgot, or what stage I am at on a project, I just develop. Best I all, if I every need to hire an employee (I would have to be doing this full-time first) it would be easy to collaborate from multiple physical locations. So go and try it for yourself, www.dotproject.net.
Version 3.0 of the alternate browser Firefox as moved to full release status. I have long been a proponent of this browser, and so far 3.0 is a worthy upgrade. They said it’s faster; it is, they said it’s cleaner; it is, and they said add-ons will work with it; they do for the most part. I only had incompatibility with about 5% of the add-ons I had installed in Firefox 2. To be honest I only used one of the few that where incompatible currently.