[thelist] Your top timesaving tips?

[Liam Delahunty]

Paul Bennett Sent: 18 September 2003 05:08

>I was wondering what the Evolters tips for saving time and effort on
>web/application development are.

Design first on paper.

Use collage to really sort things out - use the clients brochures or grab a
magazine with appropriate images, cut up and play.

filenames/folders:
Make things easy to find and archive.
Have a clients materials folder which contains sub directories for each
client. In those you put all material relating to the client, in appropriate
sub directories (if necessary in further subfolders with project names),
artwork, proposals, brief, invoices, contracts, etc...

For file naming I like to give new material a date in the name so,
20030919_description_version.extention. I find that easier to work with when
they say, "oh I liked that bit from last week" - at least I have a chance to
know what they are talking about. It's also useful in a billing situation,
as you  can then physically show the X amount of files that have been
created during the process and they can really see what the billing hours
are. Obviously this only really works for image manipulation, for web work I
just back up daily the web structure, and save a file of the directory
listing. Using a

At the end of the project, just burn the whole lot to a CD/DVD and delete
everything apart from the working material.

Use other tools wisely:
I often use formulas in Excel to grab a clients stock lists and produce the
PHP / MySQL commands.
Similarly I'll use it to produce table mark-up.

I also have a simple excel spreadsheet in which I log all my client time:
date/time started,
date/time ended,
a calculation to work out the hours in decimal,
client name,
comments,
fee.

Kind regards, Liam Delahunty, Mega Products Limited
http://www.megaproducts.co.uk/ web design, programming, e-commerce
http://www.onlinesales.co.uk/ Open Source PHP/MySQL E-commerce App.
http://www.britstream.com/ Hosting/ Domain Names From UKP 7.50 p.a.