Upside Downturn

I have spent so much time deslugging the garden lately. Wondering round in the rain or in the half-light with a bucket, gloves and salt picking up slugs and snails in the bucket and then salting them before they can escape up the sides. Then the next day the whole salty, slimy mess gets poured down the drain in the street and I start again.

It got me thinking how lucky I was to not have to repeat lots of the tasks I do on the computer over and over:

Designs

Ones you’ve discarded can be picked up again. Ones clients have rejected can be put into use on new projects. Save everything.

Stylesheets

Once you’ve got the basics it’s easy to tweak for use on a new site. Colours have to be changed but if it’s all structured in an order that you’re used to that’s easier, too!

Themes

Wordpress themes always seem really nice until you actually use them. Then you notice that they were all built by people with no real grasp of typography or styling (not to put them down – anyone that can actually put together a theme deserves respect!). Tweak the things that were wrong, thin down the code and get rid of all the META junk down the sides and you can download the theme back to your desktop to use on another site in future!

Macros/actions

Everything from Excel to Photoshop has a way to repeat sequences of tasks using just one click. Think about what you do a lot and get some set up.

Proposals/quotes

You can set up templates for this type of paperwork but even better is to copy your latest successful proposal to use for the basis of the next. Read through it, change what needs to be changed, add what needs to be added and it can only improve with time.

All very handy. Now, if only there was some handy app I could use for those damn slugs…

(PS. See the comments on Paolo’s last post!)

andy whinging