Redkey News

Moving from Basecamp to Project Pier

We're always looking out for better ways of doing things here, be it something techy or part of the business process.

Recently I was re-evaluating our use of Basecamp for project management. Basecamp is a great product and we have been using it successfully for over 2 years now. However, it does also have limits and one of them is being able to customise it exactly to our needs. There was also the issue of where the data is stored, particularly uploaded files, and we realised that if we were to stop using Basecamp, we would have to download and archive all the data and files from our previous projects - quite a task (although I read somewhere that Basecamp now lets you use your own host for file storage, although I can't find the link... but this defeats the purpose of having everything in one place).

In short, we wanted to have more control (and my inner geek is excited about playing with new toys!). I was looking for something as easy to use as Basecamp, cheap, and to have it installed on our own server. This will allow us to play with it, customise it to our heart's content and create unique project management tools for us and our clients.

One cool example: In Basecamp (or any other similar web-based PM app), to amend an uploaded file, we would have to download the file, edit it, and then upload it again. How about editing it inside the browser itself without having to go through the download/edit/upload cycle? With our own app, we should be able to do this, especially with tools already out there like Zoho's Remote API that lets you integrate their doc/spreadsheet/slideshow editor into any web app.

Anyway, I had a look around, and found a few great but expensive apps, and, a free, open source one called Project Pier. It is based on a commercial app called activeCollab (which looks close to what Basecamp offers), is free and can be installed on our own server. Perfect!

Just one snag: it is still on version 0.8 and from the looks of it, development activity has been slow, although recent news shows that it has been picking up. This is just a small issue though because it's a good base to start building our own PM tool on!

Had it installed on our new client area (projects.redkeydigital.com) and, so far so good. It is very easy to use although pretty basic. I do miss Basecamp's great Javascript/AJAX user interface but it's a small price to pay for the ability to have your own product that you can customise which ever way you want.

We will be contributing any core patches back to Project Pier, but any add-ons that we have built will also be free and open sourced - our custom version is homed on github.

This isn't for everyone as most people will want a basic PM tool, sign up, and get on with it, but, if you need a solution that is unique to your own business, then do give Project Pier a look.

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Posted by Farez Rahman 

Simple business plan checklist

Sequoia Capital has a page on its site with very simple guidelines for writing a business plan and how to check if your startup has legs. Simple, yet useful. Recommended.

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Posted by Farez Rahman 

Redkey's clients get satisfaction :)

To all our beloved clients (current and future!), collaborators and partners...

Talk to us directly as though you're right there in our office next to our desks. Chat with us here: http://getsatisfaction.com/redkey. />
You can use our Getsatisfaction forum to ask about our services, give feedback, post testimonials or just say Hi!

We are listening.

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Posted by Farez Rahman 

Future financial and economic systems

So many new alternative technology for managing the world's economy and finance: LETS, complementary currency, microfinance, M-PESA, mobile commerce, P2P currency, modern day bartering, reputation systems...

Contrast this with the failing global financial system...

The difference: the new is/are distributed and localised, and the old is top-down...

I think the time is ripe for putting together a new global financial and economic platform...

Anyone know where these issued are being discussed and a new road maps is bring drawn - I'd like to join in this discussion?

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Posted by Farez Rahman 

Acquia Drupal

If you have been a user or developer of Drupal for some time, you would have heard about Acquia (http://acquia.com), the company co-founded by Drupal's creator. The aim is to provide some commercial clout to Drupal and formally provide paid-for services and support to organisations using the Drupal platform (http://drupal.org). It's a bit like Redhat who is providing services based on the free and open source Linux OS.

Acquia has now launched a service called Acquia Network that provides tiered service levels, with the basic service being free. To use Acquia's services, you would either need to download some of the modules that Acquia has created, or install a pre-packaged Drupal installation which will include the Acquia modules, amongst others (the other ones are open source modules that you can download yourself, but pre-selected by Acquia for you).

'Acquia Drupal' as it is called, is currently a Drupal 6 package and, as with Drupal, has a GPL license. Apart from the name and Acquia specific modules, I believe everything else is the same as a standard Drupal 6 installation.

From their site: "Acquia Drupal is the latest Acquia-supported version of the Drupal core, the latest Acquia-supported version of a number of contributed modules, the Acquia Network modules, and a number of high quality themes brought together in one integrated and commercially supported package. Some of these elements are individually available on Drupal.org, but finding and assembling the right versions of each package can be a time consuming process."

Here's what you can expect to get by using Acquia Drupal and it's free version of the Acquia Network service:

- Get notified when there's an upgrade available for your Drupal installation.
- Monitoring of your site to detect any code modification
- Check that your site is up and running
- Limited use of the Mollom web-form spam blocker
- All of the above on a control panel viewable through your Acquia account.

More is available in their paid-for subscription packages.

Although most of these services have been available for some time, the difference is in making them easy to use and putting them all in one single account - this should make it easier for site owners, or even developers, to start using these useful Drupal features without worrying about getting into anything too complicated.

I will be looking closely at using Acquia Drupal from now on for our client's projects here at Redkey.

Code snippets will not render properly in feeds, so please see original article.

Posted by Farez Rahman