Suggestions for Hooboy

[Boston Guy]

HB:

 

I've followed the tales of your technology woes with interest and have decided to offer a few suggestions. You may or may not find them interesting or useful, but I offer them with the best of intentions.

 

1. Backup your laptop and any other computer systems you may be using. This may sound flippant, but I don't mean it that way. We rely too much on our computers these days to expose ourselves to the risk of losing what's on them.

 

Backups are not sexy or fun -- until you have a system die or get stolen. Then having a reliable backup in hand can be one of the world's most comforting feelings.

 

Since you use laptops, an internal backup probably isn't possible. But good external backup devices are easy to buy and easy to use. A 10GB tape drive can generally be had for around $200 and you should have at least a few tapes to provide for a backup rotation.

 

Deej and the others here may wish to offer additional suggestions for backups, including options that work well for them. One thing I wouldn't suggest is trying to use a CD-based form of backup. Rewritable CD's simply don't have enough capacity to backup new laptops in any kind of easy or effective manner.

 

2. Store one backup someplace else. At least once a month, take a backup tape and put it someplace else, in another building. Just rotate them. That way, if the building with your laptop and backups burns down, you can still be back up and running easily with data that is at most a month old.

 

3. Consider not carrying all of your tools with you. Since you travel so much, you might want to consider using a remote strategy to access at least some of your tools. There are many options for doing so, but GOTOMYPC.COM provides one of the slickest.

 

It allows you to connect to your home or office PC from any web browser anywhere. You need to specify two passwords to connect and their security seems pretty good. Once you've connected, you can do everything you would be able to do if you were sitting in front of your PC.

 

Since you don't want to leave your laptop turned on an accessible to the world, you need some kind of firewall for your Internet connection. A simple way to get one is to buy a DSL router (assuming that you use DSL) and connect it to your incoming DSL. You then connect your laptop and any other computers to the private network side of your router. It sounds complicated but it's not at all and it can all be set up in 30 minutes. If you go with a wireless router, you get the added benefit of having a wireless network in your home or office. However, there are considerations there that you should think about and, if you decide to go that way, talk to a knowledgeable person before buying the equipment. The only suggestion that I would offer is to choose 802.11b over 802.11a for home use. It's slower but more effective in terms of getting through walls.

 

Finally, if you decide to leave your software at home and access it through GOTOMYPC.COM, you should try to have someone who can go over and turn the computer and/or router on or off should need be. You don't want to get to Rio and find out that your home system is no longer on the Net.

 

By the way, a DSL router is at most a $200 to $300 solution, even with wireless capability. And GOTOMYPC costs $125 per year or $20 per month and they offer a free trial. I think it's a very slick product.

 

4. Get an assistant. Find someone -- anyone -- who can help you. No one wants to work every day and it gets harder and harder as the months go by. Find someone who can do what you do from time to time so you can take a break. Or, alternatively, break up the task. Do the research yourself and let someone else do the website update. That way, you've given yourself a backup and also some free time. Both are important, if only for personal satisfaction.

 

And, by the way, I suspect you'd find more than one volunteer who might be willing to help you do this on at least a part-time basis. (Sorry, I don't include myself in that group...)

 

5. Get ahead of yourself. This might sound funny, but you've given yourself a difficult deadline -- posting reviews every day by 3:00 am EST. That's tough to do every day without fail. And when you miss the deadline, everyone is aware of it. So make it easier on yourself:

 

a. Choose one day a week when you say that no reviews will be available. Perhaps that will be Saturday night. But give yourself a break.

 

b. Get ahead on the reviews. Even if it means publishing fewer reviews for a week or two, hold some back and prepare seven to ten days worth of reviews. Then all you need to do is post them to the Website on that day -- or, better, have your assistant do it on the designated day. That way, you're always a week or so ahead and if you have a couple of days where it's tough to do anything it's ok because you have a built-in buffer.

 

6. Consider moving away from Frontpage. It's old and not so good. Other products are considerably better. Yes, you'd need to learn the new product but I'm a firm believer that you can teach old dogs new tricks. And other products can take a Frontpage-created Website and work with it.

 

One of the best products is Dreamweaver. It's much more powerful and robust than Frontpage. It does use a different user interface, so it takes a little getting used to. But once you're used to it, it's very easy to work with. For large or complicated Web sites, it's a lot easier than Frontpage.

 

A document that describes some of the differences is located at http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/product_resources/dw_frontpage_white_paper.pdf

 

7. Look at your upload strategy. Some people upload or synchronize their remote websites with their local copy by using their web authoring tool's upload capabilities. If you are in this boat, you can save yourself a lot of time by using an different FTP tool. One good one that is extremely reliable, easy to use and very inexpensive is WS_FTP Pro. You can see it at:

 

http://www.ipswitch.com/Products/WS_FTP/

 

Again, I offer these suggestions with the best of intentions and no criticism intended at all. And they are offered only from the point of view of someone way on the outside looking in. You may have already considered all of these options and may indeed have your technology all well in hand.

 

Regards,

BG

[Flower]

Some good ideas probably many of us can use.. I just got a 120 GB fire wire La Cie back up that is extremely fast for $269 at MicroWarehouse. And I agree that Dreamweaver is THE way to go. IMHO :+

[+ Lucky]

How come BG's post did not fit my screen and Flower's did? I don't understand stuff like that.

[Boston Guy]

Because the message board software will not split or break up URLs and my post contained a long one. That forced the software to calculate a wider than normal width for the entire message.

 

 

BG

[+ deej]

I agree with Flower. Those FireWire drives are one of the best buys in the biz right now. You can back up entire drives quickly, and the price is low enough to have several of them.

 

About the reviews, current problems will resolve themselves as Daddy brings up a database-based system for posting. Hoo will just set a "release date" once vetted and they'll magically show up on the right day, so the manual uploads will be a thing of the past.