Our meetup on 5/11 was a round table discussion that I facilitated. Members of the group were lead through the discussion with topic suggestions and contributed their experiences, tips and tricks, and which tools they frequently use.
I took the following notes during the presentation.
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Acquire new jobs
-network with people who bring jobs
-facebook page for their company - just basic pr there
-never burn any bridges
-pro bono non profit work <-- where they learn to use the tool
-update social networking, linkedin, twitter, etc.
guru.com websites
odesk - done hiring on them
Ethics of the job
-someone stealed technology <-- didn't follow up becuase of bad press and their lack of success
licensing
-some have inherited bad stuff. joel explains to his clients ahead of time
-some want information copied. statistics were given as an example. You have to agree to the disclaimers.
-patent tried to get on OSS - sometimes you have to let them figure it out themselves. In this case it was gpl - also not changing binaries.
CRM
-joel uses high-rise. Its a hosted solution. They also link with basecamp for PM.
-raffel and mike use sugar crm. Jim is quoted as loving it.
-google docs - spreadsheets.
-quickbooks etc.
-mac; billings
-trac
-footprints
-web2project -< joel mentions it - but he hasn't ever used it
-jira <-- project/issue tracking -- this was mentioned as somethign - starts at $10. agile software (zend uses this)
Track time
-google docs
-billings again
Value Add
-give out the basics of things - like SEO
-implementing google analytics
-make it easier to switch to another developer (better return on investment)
-tech support comes first - development stops - and move on to bug
-front end stuff added in.
--finding that a lot of people are required to do this - jquery, etc....
-some do affiliate links for hosting
-google apps
-red anvil reselling hosting
-slicehost vps
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libraries
-PeAR says mike - doesn't like to reinvent stuff.
-smarty templating
-blueprint css
-rolled your own css framework
-yui reset
-wp framework - for wordpress
-yui grids
-jquery -->load it from cdn
-don't use mootools most people say - then some arguments about how mootoolls is actaully ook - jst really js'y
-apc caching for php opcode - also use it to cache the data
-memcache
-zend framework
-yii framework was mentioned as being able to use zend extensions
-using css tidy and js lint, html purifier.
-zoop framework = bad
-code ignitor was used instead
-cake php is mentioned as one of the first frameworks - and brought out from rails
-IDE
dreamweaver? People laughed
notepad++
EclipsePDT
PHPed - nusphere
-eclipse pdt + xdebug on ubuntu was listed as issue. Maybe not best to use there?
-net beans was mentioned to use. has debug in it
Some talk about version control
-mercurial was actually easy according to mike.
- some mentions about svn and git
-mercurial was mentioned as git deluxe.
some tools used
drupal
joomla
wordpress
modx -- used for designers primarily
concrete 5-- for smaller businesses
elgg <-- piece of crap
phpnuke - cms -- no one seems impressed?
silverstripe - cms - arlen heard nice things.
phpmaker -- for quick crud
xataface - used for creating crud stuff too - not a lot of updating.
sass / less <-- generate css on the fly
Database / tools
-mysqlgui tools
-navicat
-dump schema to svn
-php my admin
-run the statements from .sql
-home grown stuff is ussed sometimes
deployment
-joel tried phing
-capistrano - need sto do ruby
-xinc
