Free/Open Source Software

You don't need a new website. You need to make your current website more effective! How can you do that? There is no single answer -- websites are part of a larger system, and you need to consider many different aspects to make your site effective. We've been making websites since the start of the web, and know what makes them work -- as well as not work. Take what we have learned to make your site better!

Software we're grateful for #3 - NextCloud

To wrap up our round-up of awesome open source packages, and to get back to business, our final selection for the year is NextCloud.

Sustainable/Open Business

Software we're grateful for #2 - HomeAssistant

For the holidays, we're highlighting some awesome Free/Open Source software -- three amazing platforms that have gone far beyond any commercial/proprietary competitor.

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Software we're grateful for #1 - Matrix

In the spirit of the holidays, we're doing a few posts on Free/Open Source projects that we use every day, that isn't what we sell.

Sustainable/Open Business

Leaving Google Calendar, going to NextCloud Calendars

After 15+ years, Google cut off our "forever free" business account yesterday.

Sustainable/Open Business

Picking a technology for internal use

The only kinds of proprietary software Freelock actually pays for are development and testing tools – tools we use to actually create our work products, or provide us with access to tools we otherwise can’t support (e.g. testing across a bunch of browsers we don’t have).

Sustainable/Open Business

Picking a technology for a client project

Aside from the technologies we choose to develop expertise in and market prominently, we can support a range of related technologies without much trouble. Given our experience and expertise, this means we’re comfortable in just about anything in PHP. If a client comes to us with an existing platform and want our support with it, we’re happy to provide it.

Sustainable/Open Business

Insight

What do you need to know about your website? What don't you don't know? Freelock's new Vision Plan covers a different topic each month, doing a deep-d

Technical Debt and CMS maintenance

As we onboard a slew of new clients due to our joining

Sustainable/Open Business

Website Effectiveness

Your website is up and running, but something's not quite right. It's not bringing in the results you expect -- and you're not exactly sure why.

You're not coming up in search. You have a lot of traffic, but nobody reaches out for your services. You struggle to post new content, it seems like it should be easier. You're worried about getting hacked. The website feels slow, and sometimes you can't even edit it. It takes a bunch of steps to add a new customer. You have no idea what to do next.

Picking a technology to develop expertise and sell services

Just like doing a client project, we apply DevOps to the decision-making process. Don’t start with a blank slate – start with something, anything, apply the requirements, and iterate.

Sustainable/Open Business

WordPress vs Drupal is like Word vs Excel

Seems like every day this month I've answered the same question: Why should I use Drupal instead of WordPress? And this is the answer I've come up with. They are entirely different applications, about as different as Microsoft Word is from Microsoft Excel.

Sustainable/Open Business

Why have a technology decision-making process?

In short, choosing a particular technology allows us to:

Make a decision once and leverage the results over and over
Increase profitability
Increase developer satisfaction

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