Starting off your web design freelancing career might not require advanced tools and applications, but you’ll soon realize that’s organization is key. Thankfully, many entities have reached that same conclusion, and therefore there are numerous tools on the table for you to make your pick.

Project management tools help freelancers and agencies collaborate and organize tasks between the different members to meet milestones and sign-off projects with their clients. It might seem like a bit of a luxury to have at the beginning, until the 3rd or 4th client gets angry due to late work and brands you unprofessional. That’s when it becomes the kind of tool you simply cannot live without.

A quick Google search will inevitably lead you to 37 Signals’ hot shot, Base Camp. It is by the far the most popular project management and collaboration application in the market. Its fame is not unfounded; Base Camp’s sleek interface makes it a breeze to create milestones, assign tasks, share files and more. The main problem is that Base Camp’s value is a function of its add-ons – from billing, invoicing and financing, to time-tracking and aiding widgets, it’s a growing list. In theory, the concept behind plugins is genius, but when you consider how much you have to pay for Base Camp alone, and then the individual add-ons that make it sufficiently comprehensive, the package becomes rather hefty. Realistically, you’re looking at about $50 a month, which will only rise as you gain more clients and projects.

Even if you find Base Camp the ideal solution, chances are it doesn’t need to be your starting point. Enter ProjectPier, the “free, open-source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams.”

With ProjectPier, you can add client companies (with members), projects, milestones, task lists and tasks. Together, these features qualify it as a reliable project management system. Moreover, you can share files, start forum-like messages, and collaborate with co-workers and clients.

ProjectPier message details

What makes ProjectPier special is that it’s free and open-source, meaning with updates, it can only get better and offer more powerful functionality. On top of that, it is hosted on your own server, which gives you complete control (and privacy). The installation process is a straight-forward one, with your standard shared hosting supporting PHP and a MySQL database doing just fine. I’ve personally installed it at http://manage.tarekshalaby.com

ProjectPier with a nicer theme

Don’t be pushed away with its 90s Geocities-style interface – thankfully there are alternative themes. I personally prefer the Zura Blue Steel (shown here). You might also notice its email notifications’ feature is not complete, and there’s no way to view all of the upcoming milestones in a traditional calendar, but it is still the number one choice in my book.

The part I like most about ProjectPier, is that my clients actually find it very user-friendly and easy to use. It doesn’t take me the standard ‘technical courses’ to get the clients to add files to it, check out and comment those that I post, and follow up on the tasks as they are being completed. A must-have for any freelance web designer/developer, and I would go as far as saying the same to agencies and small to medium companies in the field.

NOTE: Credit to Omar Mohamed from Hadaye Helwan, Egypt for hand-picking ProjectPier when we were looking for a project management tool for our startup touringa (which is my next post’s topic – stay tuned!).

When working on any web projects, organization is key. Perhaps when you are working on your own, using a handful of tools to be sure that you are on top of things is not a priority – it could in fact become a waste of time. However, once you start collaborating (the key word) with others on projects, it is crucial that you establish a system of communication. Between the projects, tasks, milestones and tickets, you’re sure to be left MIA if email and chat programs are your paths to international communication.

A very popular web-based project management tool is Base Camp by 37 Signals. Although its price tag is not at the attractive end at the spectrum, when you are ready to work with a group and are bidding for bigger projects (with a goal of making more profit), Base Camp’s monthly charge is a small price to pay for a significant increase in efficiency and productivity. The long list of alternatives (both open-source and commercial) could be discussed at another point, the one aspect that I wanted to pay close attention to is tracking issues and bugs.

Without a doubt, one of the best and most popular bug tracking tools is Bugzilla. The free and open-source application can be installed on any server and provides a web interface to be accessed from any browser. However, aside from an interface that could confuse a designer or two, Bugzilla’s main problem is that it requires ‘root’ access on the server it is installed on, which virtually eliminates the vast majority of web hosting providers. If you are not willing to invest in a dedicated server (see my posts on the different types of hosting), or at least a Virtual Private one, nor setup your own server at the home or office, then you’re in a need of an alternative – ideally one that runs entirely using PHP and MySQL.

WebIssues client on Linux

Look no further, for the ever-progressing planet of the beautiful open-source brings you WebIssues; an open-source, self-hosted issue tracking and team collaboration tool by Michał Męciński. Just visit the website, download the zipped file to be unarchived and uploaded to your server (preferably under a sub-domain such as bugs.mywebsite.com). You’ll need to do edit the configuration file and type in the address and login of the database that you’ve created for the application to use. After that, download and install your WebIssues client (available for Linux, Mac OS and Windows) and start reporting bugs.

As oppose to a strictly web interface, WebIssues provides a powerful access via the desktop client. Think of it as replacing your webmail with a desktop email client; performance is much better, the options are much easier to access and far more advanced, and searching/filtering is a walk in the park.

Some of the main features, besides the aforementioned desktop client access, include:

• Easy searching, filtering and sorting of all issues
• Fully customizable issue types, which allows you to tailer the interface for your particular projects
• Different permission levels and security

WebIssues desktop client on Mac OS

Perhaps more importantly, WebIssues strength lies in it’s strong database structure, and its easy-to-use API which allows you to add to it as you see fit. With time, not only will the application itself improve, but developers contributing will introduce even more features and enhancements that we could all benefit from. After the inclusion of an extensive system for reports, as well as a basic web interface, it’s hard to see WebIssues being outdone by any competition.

A core part of a team’s collaboration on web projects consists of tracking all of the bugs that arise, otherwise finishing off projects will become an impossibility. The free, open-source WebIssues allows you to do precisely that, regardless of the OS you use, while hosting it on your own server.

NOTE: WebIssues was first spotted by Omar Mohamed (website under construction), a web developer from Helwan, Egypt.