Friday, April 20, 2012

Why a To - Do List is useless! (Time Management)

Our existence in itself is a time based phenomenon. We are on this planet for some odd 60 - 80 years (mostly). Our actions won't effect us an ounce before our birth and after we are gone. What time will hold is our ability to have an impression on it (read history).
Time is the costliest commodity. Time is money. It is wrong. We can't buy a lost second by all of the world's wealth. Thus every second, every moment must be spent very wisely.

To start working on Time Management the need to feel the importance of time is crucial. If the value of time is not percieved and realised there will not be any attempt to protect it. By daily reviewing over efforts spent for the day and where we could have done better is a key to realise the same. A manual time log will be very handy. 



When i get overwhelmed by my To-Do list i resort to a quick fix approach. I call this the "Right Away Technique".

If you have so many things to do and you are not able to decide then pic the most urgent, most pressing task. Pick a task such that if you didn't do it the whole world will come down. Decide on the task and do it. Period.

Once done with your First "Right Away" task pick the second Right Away Task. Pick it, do it. Move to next.

The difference between a To - DO list and right away approach is that you create a to do list and then start working on it one by one. While in a RA Technique you just think about the most unprocrastinable task. Everyother task goes off your mind. You are in the most alive present and your whole focus is on completing this task rather than thinking about the whole list.


If we are able to prioritise our tasks half the battle is won.  

Distractions are the worst enemy of a time manager. I bet that as soon you'll start to make a time managemnent plan the distractions will start to jump in. Here self discipline and ability to say NO comes in very handy. Willpower to say no to unplanned movies, parties and other stuff plays a major part.

Stick to a daily regime and complete it by all means. Regular practice will reduce the will power needed to get the tasks done. The saved will power could be used for harder tasks such as dating Selena Gomez and buying LinkedIn.

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Thursday, April 5, 2012

How Content Management System Works (Non Technical)


Many times it becomes very difficult to change content of our website. There could be several factors. The designer is on leave. The design company is over charging you for every single change. The list might be endless.

http://amitstheory.blogspot.com

To tackle such situations a CMS comes very handy. CMS is short for Content Management System. It is a piece of software embedded (mostly) in your web design pages. With the help of a login system the user can himself update his existing content. It could be addition of a new text, modification of an existing one or deletion of some text or images. 

How a Content Management System works:

A CMS saves all the dynamic information in a database such as Mysql or xml file system.
When the site is requested by browser (user) the currently available text / images are pulled from database and loaded into the webpages which are rendered along with the fixed design.

CMS Flow

To manage this data a login system is present which show all the information to a user in web forms in editable mode. The user (admin) can edit the text, change images, and do other stuff as per the complexity of the cms. Once done he need to save the same to the database. This updated info will now be available to be seen to the viewer of the site.  

Popular Content Management Systems:

The popular cms currently available can be categorised into free and paid. The most popular free cms available are:

1. Wordpress
2. Drupal
3. Joomla 

While Wordpress is blog based it is one of the most used for ease of installation and use. Drupal is thought to be more of techie oriented but its new version is more bent towards user friendliness. Joomla is more developers and designers oriented.

All of the three are freely downloadable and have a great community support. Many free and paid plugins are available for each of them. A plugin provides additional functionality like login, gallery etc.

Many companies sell monthly / yearly membership plans for their theme services for these cms platforms.

Free Wordpress themes->

http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/19/100-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes-for-2010/
http://www.artfans.info/37-the-best-and-coolest-free-wordpress-themes-2011/

Bonus: Wordpress ECommerce Themes:

http://www.webdesigndev.com/web-development/10-incredible-ecommerce-wordpress-themes

Free Drupal Themes ->

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/27-best-looking-free-drupal-6-themes/
http://creativefan.com/100-best-free-drupal-themes/

Free Joomla Themes ->

http://www.joomla24.com/
http://www.bestofjoomla.com/component/option,com_bestoftemplate/Itemid,46/

What are the other free / paid CMS solutions?  


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