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! 

Open Source Consulting

In this area, we help businesses choose, install, customize, administer, and integrate a variety of open source business applications. We do a needs assessment and create a roadmap for a client, helping them identify the most effective place to spend their technology dollars. While we cover file/print servers, email, and web sites like most small IT consulting shops, our specialty is the business application layer, which we identify as Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Financial systems. We provide hosting for all our solutions, or deploy on a business's in house servers. We offer maintenance, ongoing support, and training, as well.

Specific packages we've deployed include:

Marketing: Joomla, Mambo, PostNuke, Word Press, Serendipity, PHPList, Mailman, Dada Mail

Sales: SugarCRM, OS Commerce, ZenCart

Operations: ClearHealth, Subversion (for document management), MediaWiki, Project Auriga (in-house developed time/project/task tracking)

Financial: SQL Ledger

Custom LAMP Web Application Development 

Custom development of LAMP/LAPP applications. We've developed complete content management and client extranet systems from scratch, completed projects started by others, and provided consulting services for other web design companies who need help with more technical, data-driven aspects of their designs. We have 5 local web development companies as clients, for whom we've written code when they've gotten over their heads. PHP is our specialty, and we specifically like using standard libraries wherever possible, especially Smarty, PEAR-DB, and PEAR-HTML_QuickForm.

Lately we've been doing a lot of AJAX development, adding rich client functionality to browsers and appropriately handling the server responses to make a complete coherent system.

We also develop custom add-ons and templates for specific open source platforms. We have the most experience with Joomla/Mambo, because we have deployed it for a lot of clients, but have some familiarity with developing for Word Press, Serendipity, SugarCRM, SQL Ledger, ClearHealth, and Gallery2. 

Linux Server Maintainance and Administration

Linux server maintainance and administration. We administer Linux servers and up to half a dozen applications on them for a flat $90/month per server. If we did the installation or have done a complete system audit, that covers upgrading to new OS versions when the current version reaches end-of-life. We do security upgrades, monitor security lists, do periodic checks of each machine looking for signs of intrusion, and provide assistance fixing anything that breaks during an upgrade we do. Under this, we'd like to grow into managing thin-client terminal server systems, so that one reasonable monthly bill can cover most workstations in an organization. Terminal Servers and Mail servers involve a bit more maintainance than a basic web or file server, so the monthly charge for them is $180/month.  

We currently manage servers with these distributions:

• Ubuntu
• Mandriva
• Fedora Core
• CentOS
• SuSE
• Red Hat