My client (who is the owner of a thriving personal services law firm) expressed his frustration at the lengthy delays in getting sites created and online – he noted that the production of his most recent site has taken almost 6 months.   It seems that every revision takes at least a week to get implemented.  In fact, I suspect that it was this delay that prompted him to call me – as an attorney I can prepare content about legal topics.  By contrast, his web design company was using writers who were not lawyers, nor were they knowledgeable about the legal issues addressed by the web site.   As such, they would produce content that contained factual errors, someone from my client's office would review and point out the mistakes, then it would go back to a writer for revision, more mistakes would be made and the process would repeat itself over and over.  Because our client's web site was being developed in a proprietary development environment, the web site designer was the only person who could make any updates.

Just a note, by the way, for those of you who want to outsource content about a technical topic or one where unique knowledge is necessary, you will need to be involved in the content creation process – otherwise you will face ongoing frustrations.

During this conversation, the paid advertising rep and I looked at each other and almost simultaneously asked "why are you not using Wordpress to produce this site?

Wordpress, as you may know, is an "open source" blogging platform that is widely used and very flexible.  Open source means that there is no cost whatsoever to download the software and there are a plethora of "plug-ins" that add flexibility to the base software's functionality.  The site you are now reading is a Wordpress site.

Because it is open source software that has reached critical mass in terms of its use and popularity, the software is regularly updated and upgraded.  Anyone is free to suggest proposed changes to the software – the supervising engineers review these suggestions and incorporate the best of them into the production updates.   I suspect that for many of the volunteer programmers, a development credit on the Wordpress site would be valuable resume fodder as well as positive publicity within that developer community.

I first started using Wordpress around 2 years ago.  At that time, Wordpress was primarily a blogging platform.  Since that time, the software has been significantly upgraded to the point where it can function as the backbone to a more traditional looking web site.  In fact, I have seen Wordpress used as the structure for a multi-user membership site, a storefront site for selling multiple items and just about any other application you could imagine.

More recently, I have been using Wordpress to create web sites, rather than my previous site authoring tool – a program called NetObjects Fusion.  Other common web authoring tools include FrontPage (a Microsoft product that has now been discontinued), and Dreamweaver.

I suspect that for very complex applications, tools like Dreamweaver offer a very high degree of precision in developing sites, but for all but the most unusual applications, I have reached the conclusion that Wordpress now offers enough functionality to the vast majority of web projects.   I actually use a customized version of Wordpress called Semiologic Wordpress, which comes packaged with a number of customized plug-ins along with support from a knowledgeable community of developers and users.

The biggest advantage to Wordpress arises from its existence as a web based tool.  Dreamweaver, NetObjects, FrontPage and the like reside on someone's computer.  If that person is sick, disappears, wants more money from you or experiences a system crash, your web site becomes an orphan.  At best, you will have to wait until the developer reappears, and at worst, your web site becomes an orphan, and would need to be recreated in the event of catastrophic failure.

By contrast, Wordpress exists on a remote server.  It can easily be backed up, and anyone with appropriate login credentials can modify the look and feel, or add content.   The site administrator (the person who uploads the file and creates the site) can add other administrators, author, editors or contributor – each with defined authority to work on the site.

The design of your Wordpress site is contained in the applicable "theme." The theme controls the look and feel of all of the site's pages – once it is set up, you simply log in and create or upload your content.

In my client's case, recreating his sites in Wordpress would allow me to log-in and add content directly without having to submit that content to three other people and a week's delay.

Wordpress also happens to be extremely SEO friendly – I generally see my Wordpress sites quickly move up the search engine listings.

Wordpress is not perfect.  If your server is slow, your Wordpress site can also run slow as its "brain" is a database called mySQL which does require some horsepower.   Further, like any popular software, it can be the target of hackers (although the Wordpress community is extremely diligent about adding protection against hacking).

Ultimately, however, given the popularity of Wordpress and the ease of finding a knowledgeable Wordpress consultant, I am now recommending Wordpress as the platform of choice for my consulting clients, and unless your application requires some exotic functionality you should consider it as well.   I like to spend my time focusing on written, audio and video content, not on programming and tweaking design code, and I find that Wordpress based sites require a whole lot less of the non-productive work that seems to be inherent with local design software.

I also use a utility called "L-Clock" which puts a configurable clock on my System Tray.  Now I will always know what time it is, despite my wife's insistence that time has no meaning for me!

There are, of course, many reasons to have an accurate clock.  If you use an online backup program, for example, you will want to schedule your backups for 3AM when you are most likely not online.  An accurate system clock insures that your scheduling does not cause a utility to run when you need full processing power.

Atomic Clock Sync can be run manually, or set for automatic updates.  Highly recommended.

First and foremost, it is web based.   This means that your Gmail account is not tied to your home or office computer.  You can access it from any computer or computing device that is attached to the web, and this includes web enabled wireless phones.  If you don't currently use more than 1 computer, you will and it simply makes no sense to tie yourself to a particular machine.  My wife is dealing with this problem right now.  Her email goes to an account that is processed by Outlook on her office machine.   At the same time, she uses a Verizon "wireless synch" service to send those emails to her wireless phone/pocket PC device.   Although the Verizon service is reliable, it does get out of synch periodically necessitating either a phone call to customer service or my time in reconnecting the synch.  Additionally, her email responses from the phone/wireless device do not end up in her "sent" directory on the Outlook program on her office computer unless she sends herself a copy.

By contrast, I use Gmail for my office email.  I can check it at home, at the office on or my Blackberry.  Gmail can be open on 5 computers at the same time and it always stays in synch.  It automatically saves work in progress as a draft, so if I start an email at work, but then have to run home, my work in progress shows up as a draft when I open Gmail at home.  I also added the Gmail application to my Blackberry so I can receive and respond to emails in real time.

Gmail also has a robust search feature, it allows you to label emails based on the sender or the topic and Google gives you enough space to save everything – I am going on 2 years and I have plenty of space.  I have several Gmail accounts for different businesses so as a practical matter, space is not an issue.

Google also updates Gmail regularly and new features are frequently coming on line.  There are also a number of third party applications that add to Gmail's functionality including applications that allow for multiple signatures, applications that allow you to upload files to Gmail and use it as an external hard drive, backup utilities, etc.

I suppose that Gmail would not be a good choice if you still use dial-up or have only periodic access to the Internet.  There is also the risk that Google will someday start charging for Gmail or that it may snoop into your email messages, but I think we should all assume that any email is not "secured" no matter who the provicer.  All in all, Gmail functions as a simple, elegant and powerful email application that will enhance your productivity.

The first tool I want to discuss in this series is called Foxmarks, which you can find at Foxmarks.com.  Foxmarks is an add-on to the popular (and free) web browser Firefox.  It syncs and backs up your bookmarks and passwords across multiple computer.  Here's how it works for me:

I work on three computers regularly – my office desktop computer, a laptop that I take with me everwhere, and a home machine that I use primarily for video editing.  Before Foxmarks, I had three different lists of bookmarks (favorites).  If I saved a site to Favorites at home, that site would obviously not appear on my Favorites list at work unless I wrote myself a note or sent myself an email.

Foxmarks works by creating a web based "master bookmarked favorites" list.  If you install the Foxmark add on to each computer and then log in to your web based account, Foxmarks sychs all of your bookmarks and each machine has an identical "Bookmarks" list of favorite sites.

You can also log in to your master list from any computer to access it, thereby making your bookmarks portable.  A new feature adds password portability to the service but I have not yet activated that.

The add-on also reminds you to synch your local machine to the web based master list if you add a site to the local Favorites list of any computer that you happen to be on at that time.  All in all, Foxmarks functions as an essential tool in a world where more and more people own or work on multiple computers.

Foxmarks gets my highest recommendation as an essential tool.  Here is a link to the Foxmarks blog if you want to learn more about the service and about forthcoming features or if you want to post a question.

I have no idea how Foxmarks makes money, although I do note that its founder is Mitch Kapoor, who gave us Lotus 1-2-3 back in the early days of the PC.  Presumably Mitch doesn't need any angel investors.

One clue to what Foxmarks may have in mind can be found in its about us page:

We are hard at work analyzing over 300 million bookmarks managed by our systems to help users discover sites that are useful to them. By combining algorithmic search with community knowledge-sharing and the wisdom of crowds, our goal is to connect users with relevant content.

Sounds like a social networking application may be on the drawing board.  Whatever they do I'll certainly check it out as these folks have saved me hours with a must-have application.