What does this mean for me, the client of Debut Creative!?

Understandably this might worry some of my local Debut clients; but let me assure you that 95% of all the great work we do is for clients hundreds of kilometers away. With the exception of some understandable moving-related scatterbrainedness, it will be business-as-usual for DEBUT.

When you have a site that multiple designers, developers or contributors might be working on you run the risk of stepping on one another’s toes, losing data, and at its worse; breaking something on your website. This can happen very easily. Take the following image as a very basic example. Let’s say you have a yellow page with an A on it. Person 1 decides the page should be blue, Person 2 decides the letter should be B. Both changes are done at once. Who ever uploads last has their change live on the site.

For both changes to take place they would have to be done one after the other, not simultaneously.

The Solution

To help prevent these kinds of problems Dreamweaver’s FTP protocol can manage a Check in/Check out process. There are several reasons why this is a great tool:

• When Person 1 grabs the file, they grab it from the Remote location (the server) as opposed to a local version. This means that he’s working off the most recent version in case someone has made changes they don’t know about.
• When you access a file Dreamweaver gives you the option to download all related files (images etc.). This is perfect for when you are overhauling the whole page entirely.
• When Person 1 checks out the file Dreamweaver “locks” it preventing Person 2 from making changes. Instead, they will see that the file is in use by Person 1. (note, if they forget to check the file back in and you absolutely must have it, I connect by an FTP app like FileZilla and remove the .LCK file for that respective file (eg. index.asp.LCK)).

The Setup

It’s pretty easy to setup too!

1) Set Up Your Site: Even though you do not need local copies of the site, you do need to setup a Site within Dreamweaver. Then when you check out files it downloads them to the site directory. Create a directory on your computer for the site, then in Dreamweaver’s menu: Site > New Site.

Go to the Advanced tab. Give the site a name, and select the Local Root folder to the directory you just made. You can skip all the other form fields.

2) Setup the FTP Connection: From the Site Definition window’s left pane click Remote Info and select FTP. Enter your host/ip, username and password.

Keep “Maintain synchronization information” checked, and check “Check out files when opening”. Now enter your name and email address that everyone else with server access will see.

3 Test the Setup Once it has finished caching / checking the connection go to your site window (F8 is the keyshort to toggle it). You will need to click the Connect button (circled here)

Once you do this the left pane should show you the remote server, and the right pane the local directory.

Using the FTP

Double click one of the page files. Usually I say no to dependent files (unless I know I’ll need them). Now that file should appear in the Local pane. When I double click it opens and a green check mark appears next to it in my Files window. This means it is currently checked out. If you haven’t downloaded the dependent files the page will look VERY different as the images and CSS that style the page are gone.

Make your changes, and save the file. Now click the file and click the Check In button to put it back on the server. This not only updates the page, but relinquishes your checking-it out, making it available to other people.

You’ve now successfully set up Dreamweaver FTP. This will hopefully keep everything a lot safer. It’s still no replacement for frequent back ups, but it’s one more layer of security to help you sleep at night!

Download Issue Two – April 2009 – From the Depths PDF 3.5MB

FAME

Twitter has been growing hugely in popularity this year. Even since the last issue of this newsletter thousands have joined up – and not just savvy nerds from San Fran.

Early March Digg.com (a social news site) had a frontpage story on 10 features that could improve Twitter. After reading this I made a comment about an idea I had: Time Shifting Prime-Time Tweets. Soon I was approached by Six Revisions founder Jacob Gube about writing in depth about my idea for a follow-up article.

Sixrevisions.com is a very popular site for web designers and developers, so naturally I was amazed! After getting my contribution, Gube read my blogs at arleym.com and debutcreative.com and asked me to write more often on any topic! It is very flattering to be offered money for writing about a subject I am so passionate about, but what really inspires me is that Six Revisions sees about 500,000 visitors a month.

Ok, so I’m not famous yet, but my Prime-Time article is live http://bit.ly/xFLy8

Faster, Smarter, Radder.

How working from home has made me better

Ever since college I’ve been trying to find the best and fastest ways to work; be it software, work flow or even simple key shorts. I never would have guessed that working from home would be the most epic ‘Work Smart’ trick of all.

I love working from home: I work less time, I work less hard – yet I get more done, I get it done faster and I make more money. I don’t know how it works!

The phenomenon is growing. Readers Digest recently claimed that the Canadian work-force is working from home in greater numbers every year, sometimes only making the commute for periodic meetings.

Through industry publications like zines, blogs and podcasts I’ve been finding out that this is especially true of the web industry. The magazine .net (issue 182) had an interview with Jason Fried; founder of 37signals.com. He spoke about his team work flow: “We don’t see each other that often. This isn’t what people expect when they think about collaboration. We’ve found that by physically staying apart we encourage less interruption.”

“Interruptions are what suck most people’s time away. When you’re in an office, it’s easy to call someone over for a meeting, or to come and look at something… You can’t really be creative in that sort of environment.”

He goes on to illustrate how the majority of what we interrupt people for can easily wait an hour or two. By using passive communication like email or IM I can see how I am not only less distracted, but less of a distraction as well!

I love working from home. Ironically it makes me a better team player. You might say I’m having my cake and eating it too.

Fun Links

IMG: Periodic Table of Fonts http://is.gd/mE3r
VIDEO: Did you Know? http://tinyurl.com/cutb3p
TXT: 10 Bad Clients (thankfully none of my clients fit) http://bit.ly/orUHz

Are you using…

URL Shorteners

I’ve already used several in this newsletter. These services reduce huge URLs like http://freelancefolder.com/bad-clients-and-how-to-avoid-them into http://bit.ly/orUHz This is a huge advantage in print and we services that limit your characters. Several are highly used, and their worth is being recognized. Recently http://bit.ly sold for $8M!

Google Docs

I’m obviously a huge Google fanboy. Docs is one of the great tools that come free with a Google account. It not only allows me to store important files on their server (accessible anywhere with internet) but it also allows users to collaborate on documents. A great app for offices to stay up to date with sharing procedures and account information that change often. Centralize! docs.google.com

RSS Feeds

Really Simple Syndication allows people to read / share the content of sites without going to the website. Ever find you don’t have time to visit all the websites you want to read? With an RSS reader you can gather all the new content without the visit. Simply copy the RSS URL (usually linked to this icon)

www.google.com/readerwww.bloglines.com
and most mail clients like Outlook

The Exciting World of Web Accessibility

Websites are made with good code or not-so-good code. Bad web code usually comes out of a necessity to meet a deadline or laziness. Good code takes a lot more time and care, and you might not be able to see a difference – so is it worth it?

Web Accessibility gets its name for making the web more accessible to users with disabilities. It’s so easy for us to take for granted what visually impaired or colour blind users must face every day.

For instance some users with visual impairments use screen readers that convert text to speech. Some users might turn off images and surpress colours to improve legibility. Some users change text sizes…So what are they seeing on your site?

Some code mark-up will not allow text to be resized. Media like Images containing text (in some site navigations), Flash and embedded Video are impossible to be understood by these readers.

There is always a work around, but it all takes time. Code can also be optimized for better printing, for use with slow connections, and the ever increasing use of mobile devices with smaller screens.

It might be time consuming, but accessbility is the difference between your site being useful or aweful – and not only to human users; search engines will rank your site based on what they read.

If your site is inaccessible; then it can’t be read by search engines; then it won’t be ranked, then it won’t be found. Invest the time.

Google is, for all intents, a blind user. A billionaire blind user with tens of millions of friends, all of whom hang on his every word.

-Karsten M. Self
Tech Writer

BACKGROUND NOISE:

Tim Ferriss (author of the 4-Hour Workweek) and Kevin Rose (digg.com, Top-10 most influential internet personalities) discuss the process of naming products / sites and investing in budding websites (30min) http://vimeo.com/3934635

INSPIRATION

(in less than 5 min): The Technology/Entertainment/Design conference is about spreading ideas. TED Talks are a great source of inspiration (well, about half of the ones I have heard). Richard St. John talks about “Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes” http://tr.im/i9CM

In the next swell issue of the Debut Creative Newsletter…

(quite possibly at any rate)

• Content Management Systems: Not just for Nerds
• The gory truth about browsers (and IE6)
• And more fun links than you can shake a stick at!

1. RAID – My first line of defence is a SATA Raid for my data drive on my computer (the OS is on a third hdd). This mirroring makes sure that my data is safe even if a hard drive dies.

2. Sync Back Pro Daily – Every day my system does a backup sync of emails and work files to an external drive using a program called Sync Back Pro. I highly recommend this product that easily allows scheduled backups and syncs of files to HDD, DVD or even FTP. There is a very nice free version as well with a couple less features. http://www.2brightsparks.com/

3. Closed Jobs drive – Since I do a lot of freelance work for a marketing agency a lot of jobs pass through my computer. To prevent redundancy I keep a drive of closed jobs as my only repository for files if the job suddenly re-opens.

4. Off Site Storage - Should the unthinkable happen I do have an external at a friend’s house with a collection of files I update a couple times a year.

5. Google Docs – For those important lists and billing / client information I have started to use Google’s services. I will never have hardware as reliable as this giant.

6. Fire Proof – What paranoid backup system would be complete without considering fire proofness? I recently got a safe for storing data on DVD and external HDDs. Can you really put a price on your data? The answer is yes. http://www.sentrysafe.com/

Your work is safe with me!