Welcome

New Fountain Type and Website

Dec 18, 08:46 AM

Oh happy day! Peter Bruhn and crew have just announced Fountain’s new website and 4 new typefaces as part of their fifteen year celebration. In addition, it looks like most of their library is now available in OpenType format—and through January 31, 2009 they’re offering special upgrade pricing to license owners of their previous Type 1 and TrueType fonts. I know that I’ll be digging up my order numbers for the Mountaineer kit (the first types I purchased from Fountain), Baskerville 1757, and Malmö Sans.

Of special interest is the new Tycho, a Garamondish sixteenth century book type with a really nice lower case a. There’s a very nice display cut as well.

My content management arsenal

Jul 1, 10:10 PM

Jon Hick’s article on Expression Engine and Textpattern thrilled me, but I was most interested in the comments that followed. Content management systems are plentiful, and many are free, but choosing the right one can be difficult to say the least. Not only does it need to match the project it’s used for, you must also learn to use it!

Textpattern was my first, and I still love it for most projects. This site and my professional site both run on Textpattern. In a nutshell, it’s simple — most of the time I can have an entire site built out and running in less than a day. If I need something special, a plugin here and there usually does the trick. Or, since the database design is so easy to understand, I can add my own PHP if necessary.

For other designer/developers using Textpattern, here are a few plugins that you should not be without:

  • glz_custom_fields
    This plugin requires payment, but it’s absolutely worth it. It brings Textpattern into the realm of ExpressionEngine with limitless custom fields of almost any type: text input, select, radio buttons, or check boxes.
  • sed_section_fields
    Again, to emulate ExpressionEngine, this plugin allows you to associate custom fields with particular sections.
  • upm_image
    I love the way Textpattern manages images and this plugin allows you to output your images and associated data just about any way you like.

ExpressionEngine, for me, picks up where Textpattern leaves off. Limitless custom fields of any type per “weblog” (think of it as a site section) allows you to fine-tune your data and present it any way you like. Also, if the site requires user management or membership of any kind, I always turn to ExpressionEngine since it’s a built-in feature. All of the features that make it powerful also make it more complicated, but once you’re comfortable with ExpressionEngine, there isn’t much you can’t accomplish.

ExpressionEngine can do loads on its own, but one module I almost always use is Freeform. It makes forms a breeze to build and it also records all data to the database — nice.

I must admit, the one thing I don’t have is a good solution for e-commerce. Recommendations would be would certainly be welcome…

Web applications for the freelancer

Jun 20, 10:26 PM

Being a one-man-show requires me to use my time as effectively as possible. Early on I kept time records with pencil and paper, and I invoiced with PDFs created from an InDesign file. Thankfully, since then I have discovered several web tools that help me manage my business without much fuss.

Backpack was the first, but I honestly can’t remember why I tried it. Even so, now I can’t live without it. I create a page for each of my clients that contains contact information, notes, and anything else I need to know. Additionally, my main page contains to-do lists of all my current projects, proposal requests, and potential work. It’s a definite time-saver (and at times a life-saver) to be able to quickly and easily access all of that information wherever I have an internet connection. If only there were a mobile version…

Invoicing was my next obstacle, and Blinksale saved the day. All Blinksale can do is invoice, but it does it extremely well. It allows you to easily create, send, and manage your billing, and you can even send a neat “Thank you!” when receiving payments. From the dashboard you can see when all of your invoices are due and see who’s past due. If you know CSS, Blinksale also allows customization of invoices if you’d rather not use any of their templates.

Last on my list was time tracking. HarvestApp was the best choice at the time, but it’s better suited for teams. They have also added an invoicing feature that’s available for and extra fee, but I’ll talk about that in just a minute. For the freelancer, I just don’t think you can find anything better or easier than More Honey. All it requires to create a project is a title and then you start the clock. In fact, all you can really do is track time and create reports — that’s it. Oh, wait, it can record expenses, too.

Back to invoicing. Even though HarvestApp had introduced invoicing, this year I had decided to start keeping up with accounting in order to manage my business a little better. Since I have no accounting experience, I was overwhelmed by the likes of Quickbooks and Microsoft Money, but an online article led me to LessAccounting. Not only can it do basic accounting, but also proposals, invoicing, expenses, notes, and charts. But here’s the real magic: if you track your time with More Honey, you can import your time sheets directly into LessAccounting and create an invoice. It takes about 15 seconds — beautiful.

So to summarize, here’s what I currently use:

Man, I love the internet.

Small note: I’m actually not entirely a one-man-show. My wife helps me a great deal and offers invaluable advice, and my kids keep a smile on my face.