James Gaskin, a columnist and editor for Network World and author of 16 books, called up a couple months ago to talk about hosting. Not for his business, but for yours--what we do to help small businesses have an appropriately secured, backed up environment.

He wrote up the results in one of his columns, and just sent us a link to a podcast of the column. It's a nice summary of why small businesses should work with a computer consultant, with Freelock being the subject of the first half of podcast.

Listen to it here!  

We've been getting a lot of questions lately about exactly what services Freelock provides. So here's a quick breakdown of our three core services:

1. Open Source consulting
2. Custom LAMP web application development
3. Linux server administration and maintenance

We think business solutions, even commercial offerings, are a long ways from delivering what businesses really need. And since all technology comes with a steep learning curve, we advocate setting aside a technology budget of money and time to learn and develop human processes to make the best use of computers as tools to help you get your work done, rather than leaving you hanging trying to figure out how to use that expensive ERP system you just bought. We aim to become technology partners for small businesses, the designated IT expert much like they would have a CPA and an attorney.

Read on for more detail, and in coming weeks we'll get this site reorganized to make our services more clear! 

We use sports metaphors for all areas of life, and business is no exception. Our favorite sports metaphors often come from baseball or football: we hit home runs, strike out, and get sacked. But no sport compares to running a business like sailboat racing.

Sailboat racing depends on many skills and factors that don't exist in other sports. In sailboat racing, you usually have more than one opponent, and teamwork is critically important. Not only does racing involve situational tactics, you also need to have a longer term strategy for the race, and this strategy may change over the course of a race series. In addition to how well you race your boat, sometimes environmental factors such as a wind shift or unexpected current can completely change the game. And while even the slowest boats may occasionally win a race with a lucky break, you have to be consistent in all these areas to come out of a regatta or race series on top.

I know of no other sport that provides a similar breadth of factors contributing to success. And the more you drill into these factors, the more parallels you see with running a business. Let's take a look at a few of these key areas.

What's a content management system? The term means different things to different people. We define it to be simply a web site that helps you manage content.

When you go to a typical web designer to get a web site, you get something that works like a brochure: snazzy, branded to fit your business, and static. Very expensive to change--you need to go back to the designer to make the slightest change. 

Basic web sites work in a similar way. Most web designers use tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, or Microsoft FrontPage to manage your entire site. To change anything, you need to get your designer to open up your site and do the editing. You may be able to purchase tools that allow you to make these changes, too, but then you need to install them and learn to use them.

There is a better way. A content management system allows you to  make changes to your own site, without going back to your web designer. You type in your username and password, and click a link to edit virtually any page in the site. Special links allow you to add new pages, or manage other parts of your site.

At Freelock Computing, content management systems are among our most popular products. We convert static web sites into content management systems, often making them look identical to the way they looked before. We can implement a new design from your designer, create a custom template, install add-ons, provide training, hosting, software administration, and support. If you need a custom add-on to one of these systems, we can develop it, and we regularly integrate these systems into other parts of your business system, such as capturing a lead for your sales team to follow up.

Read on for our favorites, and not-so-favorites.