Hi, I’m going in to doing a bit of freelance just to pay for the reseller account I have and earn a bit on the side. Because of this I can’t really afford to spend a lot of money on apps and tools to get myself organised so I was thinking if anyone has any ideas to help me out.
FTP:
I’m currently using Filezilla which is very usefull.
Editor:
I’ve been using editplus for ages having brought an old version and Ive recently switched to PSPad Edit which does pretty much the same thing - I haven’t used it for much yet.
Photo editor / vector graphic
I’m currently using Gimp on ubuntu but I cant get the hang of it - might just be that I don’t know enough about it.
I’m also looking for:
Freelance organizer, time tracker, organiser. Ideally im looking for something that is open source and a web application - something i can install and use on my webserver.
Helpdesk / ticket system - somewhere where clients can post problems and request support - perhaps an account manager for them. Ideally the same as above.
Design or draft creator - something where I can create a rough design of the websites and share it with clients - this can be a desktop app.
Anything else that I need to do freelance - any free advice (see what I did there :D)
Filezilla is definitely tops. As far as an editor, I like textpad, been using it for years when I can’t just use vi on the server.
I’d also recommend open office, which is an MS office replacement - some of your organization stuff can be taken care of using its spreadsheets. Or I’d look into online web-based stuff, I seem to think that Google has some tools that may be useful.
I have open office installed on my ubuntu machine and used it for writing invoices when I’ve done odd jobs for friends and family. I have google account and have used google docs for the spreadsheet use - it never even occurred to me that I could also use it to keep track of my expenses etc. Thinking about it I could also create a shared folder and write up a brief on what ive agreed with the client and share that out with the clients account (if they don’t have one I can create one based on their domain and give them the login details) that way we can use it as a contribution tool and its always available where I can access the net!!