MOO was born from a love of beautiful, high-quality print and design. You can upload your own business card design’s using their unique and intuitive online tools, or choose from MOO’s wide range of templates and personalise them with your own details. They’ve recently introduce a new range of Luxe Business Cards on 600gsm which really stand out from the crowd. Please click here to take a look at their range of products.

I’ve ordered business cards from Moo.com several times over the last few years (my most recent purchase being some nice rounded corner cards and stickers to promote my new portfolio website) and the quality is always superb.

The Prize

MOO have offered us 100 free standard business cards to three lucky winners on our blog. The prizes can only be shipped to the UK so I’m afraid this competition is only open to UK participants.

All  you have to do to enter is to leave a comment below to be in with a chance to win. Make sure you enter your e-mail address (this won’t be published on our website and we won’t add you to any mailing lists). We will choose three winners at random and Moo.com will e-mail you a special discount code to get the cards for free!

The Rules

The competition will run until Friday May 18th 2012 and the winners will be chosen at random. We regret that this competition is only open to UK participants.

The winners will be notified by e-mail and will receive a special discount code from Moo.com to use on their website.

Good luck!

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Hundreds of Project Management Apps

When it comes to the type of software I trial the most it has to be Project management tools and to do lists. In my search for the Holy Grail of perfect organisation for client projects these types of apps stand head and shoulders above all others. I must have tried hundreds over the years! Desktop web apps, iPhone apps and software that can be accessed on any device, the list is endless. Wunderlist, Asana, Basecamp, Firetask, Remember The Milk, Google Tasks, 2do, Toodledo, Things, Omnifocus, Podio, Teambox and most recently Wunderkit.

All of these apps have features that I like. Wunderlist is so simple and easy to use, perfect for making lists. Basecamp lets you work with a team, or even your clients, when collaborating on projects. Google Tasks integrates with Gmail and Google Calendar. Despite the plethora of choice I’ve never found one that fits in intuitively with my workflow but I think I’ve finally found the right one for me…

Say Hello to Trello

I remember signing up for a web app called Trello back in October 2011. Essentially Trello is a free project management tool for individuals or teams that can be used for pretty much any purpose.

Fog Creek describe their app as “a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process.”

It uses lists containing “cards” for each individual task. These are displayed in vertical columns making it easy to see a visual overview of a project in an instant. The thing that jumped out immediately was the speed and simplicity of it. Everything is so clean and clutter free but still allows you to store detailed information about each task. Clicking a card will flip it over to show you comments, check lists, due dates and votes (particularly useful for software development).

Despite my early favourable impressions I didn’t actually start using Trello for my client projects immediately because I knew the Wunderkit beta was being released as soon which I was really looking forward to trying. Trello was bookmarked and filed away as one to come back to in the future…

After a week of using the Wunderkit beta I was impressed but kept thinking to myself that I wish it did certain like Trello. Don’t get me wrong, I can see a lot of potential in Wunderkit and I’ll certainly be keeping my account to see how it develops and grows. The amount of work 6Wunderkinder have put it in to it is incredible and the design is absolutely sublime. Every pixel has been carefully created to produce a wonderful interface that I look forward to using and testing out more in the future.

The trouble is that, as with so many things, finding the perfect system for your workflow is a very individual thing. It soon became clear to me that what I wanted from a project management tool was something with Trello’s speed, simplicity and flexibility. I soon realised that Trello was my perfect project management tool all along, it had just taken me a bit longer to appreciate it.

How Trello Works

Trello is a very visual system. On a single screen (known as a board) you can see a snapshot of your whole project and what needs to be done at teach stage. This has many advantages and allows Trello to be used for a multitude of purposes.

For example, on my “Clients” board I’ve created a list for each stage of my web design process (eg. planning, design, development, testing, launch) and I drag each card across to the next column when each stage is finished.

My  target is to get all projects in to the far right column to indicate they’ve launched. I can click on any of the cards to see all the information about that client’s project. I can create check lists on the flip side of the card, upload attachments, make notes and set due dates. I can also allow my client to view these details and add their own comments and ideas.

A good way to see the kind of thing I am describing is to view Trello’s own public mobile app development board: www.trello.com/mobile

If you’ve read Harry Ford’s blog post on his visual task system you can think of Trello as a digital version of this in many ways. To see Trello in action below take a few minutes to watch the short video below. It explains how Trello works very clearly:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What I Love About Trello

I should point out at this stage that this blog post isn’t a paid review or a promotional post by a guest author. I just found Trello so useful, fast and so easy to use that I want to spread the word. You know the feeling when you see a great film or read a great book and you just want to tell everyone you know? It’s the same with web apps I guess.

I don’t just use Trello to manage my client’s projects. I’ve got boards set up for everyday lists, plans for the house and garden, my personal website projects, business ideas, recipes, travel ideas etc… You get the idea, you can use Trello for almost anything!

The amount of data you can store on each “card” is wonderful too. Simply click any card on your Trello board and you can add check lists, attachments, photos, embed videos, invite others to view the card and set deadlines and due dates.

Everything in Trello happens in real time. You don’t need to refresh the page, your changes show up instantly to anyone else viewing the board – perfect for collaboration. There is also a Trello iPhone app that works really well and the web app itself scales down nicely to smaller resolutions and tablet devices.

Trello Resources

There are several great resources on how other people make the most of Trello which you may find useful:

• Six Reasons I Love Trello
• Using Trello to Manage Projects
• Project Process Tracking with Google Docs and Trello
• Trello Online Collaboration Software at it’s Finest

If you haven’t tried Trello out then I urge you sign up at https://trello.com and give it a go. It’s free to use and I think you’ll find it very useful.

Feel free to leave a comment with tips on how you use Trello!

No related posts.

Online Proposals Made Simple

Quote Roller lets you easily create online quotes and proposals for clients. You can send PDF quotes directly to clients and manage your proposals online with real time statistics and analytics such as knowing when your client opens a proposal.

You can also save templates for your proposals to save time in the future and allow your clients to digitally sign documents online. The whole proposal process is streamlined to save you time and hassle.

If you’re looking for a way to close more deals much quicker, give Quote Roller a try! Quote Roller offers a freemium account and some really great upgrades. If you haven’t tried Quote Roller yet click here to create your free account and let us know what you think.

See Quote Roller In Action

Click here to view the embedded video.

Exclusive Competition for The Web Design Blog!

Quote Roller have kindly given us 10 special discount codes for our readers. The prizes include:

• Quote Roller is giving away 5 Basic Accounts at 50% OFF For 6 months!
• Quote Roller is giving away 3 Professional Accounts at 50% OFF for 6 months
• Quote Roller is giving away 2 Enterprise Accounts at 50% OFF for 6 months!

How To Enter

Simply leave a comment below to enter before the 27th April 2012.

We’ll then pick the winners at random and e-mail you a special discount code.

Good luck!

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Envato have really gone full steam ahead with their latest bundle with over $500 worth of high quality web design stock from GraphicRiver, ThemeForest, ActiveDen, CodeCanyon and PhotoDune that can be purchased in one bundle for just $20.

If you’ve ever purchased any of their previous bundles you’ll know the range of stock provided is always of high quality. This bundle even includes the gorgeous Redux theme by Orman Clark of Premium Pixels.

The Web Designer Pro bundle is only available for 7 days and ends on February 27th at 12pm (AEDT) so get in quick! You can also pay for the bundle using credit from any of the Envato websites that you made already have in your account.

Have a look below to see what is included or click here to view or purchase the deal on Theme Forest:

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Can you tell us a little bit about how you first got into the web design industry?

I originally trained and worked as an apprentice sign writer after studying fine art and animation at college. After a couple of years I decided that it wasn’t really for me and started my own company Brave Art, where I was going to be doing specialised painting of children’s bedrooms. I managed to get hold of the right people at the NHS and was planning a contract for painting children’s wards in Hospitals.

While designing my new companies website alongside a friend, he told me there was a job going at the company he was working for at Fubra.

He phoned his manager there and then and I got an interview that week, 2 weeks later I had the design job. I spent 3 happy years working for Fubra. I would recommend any young designer to work at a web company at the beginning of their career. I met some of the most awesome developers and designers and many life long friends that are all in my industry.

You recently launched your new portfolio which features some of your fantastic illustration work. Has drawing always been something you’ve been interested in?

Yeah my original passion was illustration, I studied fine art at college. I was lucky enough to have a great illustration teacher. Out of school and college I would take classes in human anatomy. Since working on the web I have always tried to bring my illustrative style into my site designs.

How have you found your first year as a freelancer? Have there been any surprises or revelations that you weren’t expecting when you started?

I have loved being full time freelance, if I am honest I didn’t realise it would be so hard. Being the only one running my small company I have to bring in new work, attend meetings, answer endless emails, let alone doing the actual work. One thing I wasn’t expecting was the odd troublesome client not paying on time. I have learnt that creating a solid contract along with payment terms will help you with getting money in from the off.

What is your normal workflow for creating a website from start to finish?

I always start my site designs with pencil & paper, I enjoy creating wireframes on paper as when making reiterations it is far quicker, they just don’t have to be perfect. The starting stages should be for idea making. Jumping straight into a wire framing program or Photoshop can sometimes stump my creativity. Once I have a wireframe story board sketched up and agreed with the clients I move into Photoshop. Allowing the wireframes to guide me but not rule the design I am to create.

A lot of clients ask for more than one website design or idea, I don’t mind doing this if they are willing to pay for the extra work days it takes. My strong belief is that after the wire framing stage you should have a good enough idea of what the site design will be like. One solid idea is enough to build upon and edit. If I don’t develop the site myself I use one of the many talented freelancers I know and have worked with in the past. Even though you are a freelancer having a small team of freelancers either on Twitter or Skype has been really beneficial. If my workload has got too much or I need a guy specialising in HTML5 then I know the guy to call on.

Do you still use the Visual Task System you blogged about? It is such a logical way to work through projects!

I do, I am still as of yet to find an online task system that works better than a visual task system. I have used pretty much all the task systems including Basecamp in the past they are all great but when I really want to remember a certain task I simply write out a post-it note and I have it in front of my all the time to remind me. If anybody wishes to read any more about it visit my blog: Why a visual task system has proven so productive

You and Phil Ricketts launched Remember The War last year which gained a lot attention not just for the quality of content and the message it provides but also because it was created in such a short space of time. Can you let us know how the project came about and what the process was.

On October the 5th I awoke to the news that Steve Jobs had died. I sat that day reading so many inspirational stories about the man himself it inspired me to get up off my arse and make one reality as soon as I could. That day I spoke with my designer friend Phil Ricketts and told him my idea. He was as excited about it as I was which was fantastic. The guy is brilliant, he has a great work ethic so I found it extremely easy to work with him.

Other than illustration and design I have a massive interest in History. When browsing the web for anything historical I found myself on sites made back in the late 90′s. We are not recording our world history in the correct way on the web. There has been a lot of talk recently about how our educations systems are outdated, well it is the same on the web. We do not utilise the technologies available to us to help teach our children in a interesting and modern way. This is why I came up with RemembertheWar.com to bring history on the web into the 21st Century.

We built RemembertheWar in a week! Still not sure how we managed it. We launched it as a remembrance site for World War 2 to coincide with Remembrance Day 2011. Due to the massive success of the idea with over 12,000,000 hits in our first 2 months we are looking to launch version 2 of the site very soon, with hopefully more Wars and historical events added in the future.

You (along with several hundred other folk from the web industry) recently attended Simon Collison’s New Adventures In Web Design Conference. The reaction to the conference on Twitter has been incredibly positive. What was your highlight?

It was a fantastic event, Simon did very well keeping it running so smoothly. All of the speakers were fantastic. Naomi Atkinson’s talk was great she touched on many things I can relate to including the education system and how we can help improve it as designers. I was looking forward to Kyle Steed’s talk a great deal and he didn’t disappoint, he made the whole thing very personal which I thought was awesome.

My favourite speaker of the day had to be Cameron Koczon who co founded Brooklyn Beta an event I really hope to go to one year soon. His talk was the most inspirational for me, he spoke about areas on the web needing more help from entrepreneurs and how startups can be created in these areas to solve these problems. I was lucky enough to have a chat with Cameron at the after party where we spoke more about the startup scene. To sum it all up NAconf is awesome and you all have to go

Are there any other web conferences you regularly attend?

I would love to attend a lot more than I do, time is my main issue or the lack of it. I try and attend lots of local web events to me, one being http://webmeetguildford.co.uk/. Local meet ups and events are just as important to go to as the large conferences like NAconf. You get to meet lots of local web people, be it designers, developers, SEO guys or whoever. As a freelancer networking is very important, I recommend you keep a look out for local web startups who will host events in your area. I have made lots of great connections in the past year and even some good friends who I now talk to frequently.

Where do you find inspiration on the web?

Twitter is definitely my main source of inspiration, following great people who tweet such awesome and new things all the time helps inspire me to change my designs and try new and exciting things. Dribbble is great for it but I don’t think you should let it guide you too much, being original with your style I think makes you an interesting designer.

Are there any other designers in the industry producing work that you really admire?

There are so many great designers out there at the moment, I love what Kyle Steed does on the web with web fonts and illustration. Mike Kus has a great personal style he carries through his designs. Jonnotie produces some great UI for his clients and I am currently beta testing his new app made specifically for designers Shipmentapp.

What hobbies do you have and do they help you ‘switch off’ from the internet?

In my previous job as a sign writer I got to travel around the country fitting signs, while on my travels I learnt to surf. The only problem is now I don’t really have the time and being land locked like I am I can’t just pop to the beach in my lunch hour. I play Xbox when I get a chance, to be honest I have definately spent far to much time on Skyrim Photography is another passion of mine, I seem to have collected far too many cameras which are now cluttering my living room.

The only thing I do daily to totally switch off is cooking, I am best at this with beer in hand and a lot of advice from Jamie Oliver.

Finally, do you have any tips for people looking to get started in the web industry?

I see a lot of very young designers on Twitter and Forrst talking about starting their own company. My main bit of advice would be to go work with your piers, don’t be afraid to have an open mind. The more you can learn from these people the better you will do in later life. By all means take on your own freelance work and get experience this way as well. But working alongside other people in our industry is the only way you will develop as a designer.

www.harryford.co.uk | Follow Harry on Twitter

Thanks for the interview Harry!

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These icons are released free of charge and can be used for any personal or commercial purpose without attribution. The icons cannot be repackaged or resold as your own work.

All logos and images used on the button designs are copyright to their relevant company or website.

How To Download

To download these icons please click here to visit my Dribbble profile where you’ll find the link to download the icons.

The full list of website icons include:

• Apple
• Dribbble
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Forrst
• Google
• Google Plus
• Gowalla
• iCloud
• Last FM
• LinkedIn
• PayPal
• RSS
• ShareThis
• Skype
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Yahoo
• YouTbe
• Zerply

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You’ve recently decided to become a full-time freelancer. How are you finding this so far?

I bloody love it! I’ve wanted to work for myself full-time for a long time and if you’ve spoken to me in person in over the last few years I’ll have probably told you so. “Ultimately I’d like to work for myself full-time” was starting to become my catchphrase. So I figured it was about time I took the plunge. I’ve no regrets so far and still have a roof over my head so that’s a win in my book.

Have you found that Twitter has made it easier to get new enquiries from potential clients?

I’ve found twitter to be a great resource for getting the word out about things I’m working on and of course staying in touch with my peers. It’s difficult to gauge how many enquiries come through it though. At the moment I’m finding a lot of my work is coming through collaboration with other designers and general word-of-mouth.

Do you have any advice on mixing freelance and family life when you work from home?

My son is brilliant at getting me away from my computer. He literally comes and gets me out of my office if I haven’t already met him at the front door when he comes home from childcare.

Getting established as full-time self-employed has in some ways been helped my the fact that my wife is doing a degree and is often studying or is on placement in the evenings so I never feel like I’m neglecting anyone. We always ensure we spend the weekends together so all in all my work/life balance is pretty good for our particular situation.

The new Naomi Atkinson website is fantastic. Can you tell us about your collaboration and involvement with the website?

Thank you! I’m really pleased with how naomiatkinsondesign.com turned out. The design was done by Naomi, the photography by Dan Rubin and the front-end development by me. It was a lot of fun to work on, Naomi is a brilliant designer who has great attention to detail and having access to Dans skills with a camera was just icing on the cake really.

Responsiveness was very important to us all. Once Naomi had nailed the look and feel of the design, it became a team effort to perfect how visitors would interact with the site and how it would adjust depending on the context it’s being viewed. I then went to work bring it all to life. I think we’re most proud of the team section. It’s a combination of jQuery and CSS3 transitions with a pure jQuery fallback for browsers that don’t support it. This results in a much smoother experience on mobile devices with native transition support.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you first got into the web design and development industry?

Well I was originally an IT Technician, I worked in the private sector as well as within education (several collages and a university). When I started working in IT we were still repairing computers, changing components and occasionally the old soldering iron would come out, but by around 2004 it had all become pretty much monkey work. A computer broke and you sent it back to Dell and installed a replacement. I was getting really bored!

I’d been looking around for an alternative career and for a while I thought I’d get into CG animation, join some gaming company and achieve stardom creating the next Half-Life. The only problem was that I wasn’t very good at CG animation…

Around this time (2004) I was playing a game called Guild Wars and was part of a guild called War Masters I believe… (might have just made that up, can’t remember) anyway there were about a hundred of us in the guild and we decided we wanted a website and a forum to share strategies and stuff, all very geeky, and I volunteered to build the site.

It all gain momentum from there really. I remember following Dreamweavers help tutorial on building a website, which was in tables, and a good friend of mine Paul Stanton (who I was working with at the time and who was already designing and building websites) hit me round the head with a CSS book and that got me looking into Web Standards.

I landed my first full-time position as a Web Designer/Developer in 2006.

What is your normal workflow for creating a website from start to finish?

If I’m doing the entire site from start to finish, my process is typically research => wireframing => design concepts => front-end build => cms integration => go live.

I aim to keep the client involved throughout the course of the project with an in-person kick-off meeting when possible and a training day/half-day towards the end of the project before go-live so that they can add more content to the site and any last minute bugs can be ironed out.

Like most freelancers I’m always reviewing and attempting to improve my workflow so if something falls down for one project I’ll modify my approach for the next. Nothing is set in stone, it’s all quite flexible.

Above Screenshot: Cambridge Pianoforte website design, front-end development and CMS integration by Ryan Taylor

Are there any other designers in the industry producing work that you really admire?

Oh yeah, tons. Naomi Atkinson, Dan Rubin, Elliot Jay Stocks, Mike Kus, Jessica Hische, Tim Van Damme, Ryan Downie, Oliver Waters, Simon Collison, Meagan Fisher, Sarah Parmenter, Roan Lavery, Jon Hicks to name but a few.

Do you have a particular web design conference or event that you never miss?

Not particularly no. I’ve been to Future of Web Design and Web Apps a few times, DIBI, dConstruct, New Adventures, SXSW. I try to attend as many as I can as I’ve found them to be one of the best ways to network with other designers and developers but it all depends on my schedule really. I’ll be attending New Adventures again in January 2012, Mr Collison throws a cracking conference so looking forward to that one.

Above Screenshot: The new Headscape website – Design, front-end development and CMS integration by Ryan Taylor

What hobbies do you have and do they help you ‘switch off’ from the internet?

I’m learning to play guitar. I’ve actually been “learning” for quite a long time (translate that as I butchered the thing once a week then put it back on it’s stand), but now I’m actually having lessons and have bought a decent guitar – a Yamaha APX 500 – which is my baby and hangs on my office wall. Apart from that when I’m not working I’m spending time with my family.

Finally, do you have any tips for people starting in the industry?

My advice would be to network as much as you can, attend meet-ups in your local area, collaborate with people and learn from them. Conferences are a great place to do this if you can afford them. I was lucky in that I met Paul Boag early in my web career and he’s been a good friend and mentor to me ever since, which is why when the opportunity arose for me to mentor someone myself I was happy to do so. I’m currently sharing my insights with a nice Canadian chap called Chad McDonald who wants to expand his skills into front-end development as well as design.

Thank you so much for taking the time to take part in our interview Ryan

Havoc Inspired | Follow Ryan on Twitter

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The mega talented Mike Kus has redesigned Gift Rocket, the San Fransico based online gift card website. As soon as you see the site it stands out as being one of Mike’s designs with a sublime subtle colour scheme and quirky illustrations.

2. Reverend Danger

Reverend Danger are a digital agency who specialise in harmonious interactive design and their website showcases their skills. Scroll down to page to view some of their animations and interactive website elements. Top work!

3. Autoglym High Definition Wax

The wonderful mix of strong red and dark grey colour scheme is complimented by clear product photography on the Autoglym High Definition Wax website.

4. Ala

Wow! The Ala Studio website shows off their bold design talent and creative coding with a memorable website. Scroll down their website and enjoy the various effects and visual delights!

5. MyChoicePad

The guys at FHOKE have rolled our another lovely design, this time MyChoicePad gets the benefit of their talents with a clear and easy to read site that does a great job of promoting their app.

6. Artua

Artua Design Agency create icons, websites, logos and user interfaces with a very high level of quality. Their portfolio speaks for itself!

7. Mathieu Clauss

Mathieu’s portfolio site is just as good as his client work featuring a lovely colour scheme and geometric design.

8. Nizo App

You’ve probably already seen the Nizo App website but if you haven’t click the image below and scroll down their site. Pretty incredible, eh?

9. Havoc Inspired

Ryan Taylor has recently started freelancing after working for Headscape and his new site is a superb example of a single page portfolio site.

10. Cake Sweet Cake

The Cake Sweet Cake website makes their products look good enough to eat. Mmmm, cakes.

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Firstly, a little background information…

At the start of January this year I was unfortunate enough to have my hard drive fail on my computer. Usually the panic that comes with this kind of thing is often followed by relief when you restart the machine or swap a faulty power cable and you are back in business! Not this time. Nothing I tried would get my hard drive to boot and a trip to my local friendly computer repair shop confirmed it was well and truly broken. That is when the panic really sets it.

You try and think how long ago you’ve backed up your files to an external hard drive. You realise you’ve got urgent client deadlines to meet. You worry your online backups may not have worked – after all, when was the last time you checked? And to top things of, if you need your computer to earn a living you can expect the inevitable lost couple of days while you reinstall all your software and files on a new operating system. Not a pleasant experience at all!

When this happened earlier this year to me I was quite lucky. Most of my music and photos (with the exception of about a months worth of recent files) were safely backed up to an external hard drive. My client work too was backed up both to a hard drive and via an online backup service. Two in fact! I use Dropbox for the active client work I am working on and also Carbonite for pretty much everything else on my computer.  A bit of a belt and braces setup to cover all bases as much as possible. Now it was time to see how they got on restoring my files…

How did Dropbox do?

Dropbox had everything synced and up to date (about 10 GB of files) and downloaded them to my computer in lightning quick time. That has to be the thing that impressed me most about Dropbox – the speed. It had uploaded all my files before the hard drive failure and downloaded them again in just a couple of hours. Perfect and highly recommended!

I was so impressed I’ve upgraded my Dropbox account to allow me to backup even more files. Having the ability to sync between more than one computer is a wonderful feature too. If I was to mention a slight downside to Dropbox it would be the large amount of system memory it uses to sync (either uploading or downloading) if there is a large queue of files but it does get the job done quickly! Learn more…

How did Carbonite do?

Carbonite had the bigger job of restoring about 150 GB of files. Because my internet connection is quite slow it hadn’t quite backed up everything and was missing around the most recent 10% of files. This isn’t Carbonite’s fault, more the fact that my broadband was a bit too slow to keep up to date with it. Something I should have considered more carefully in retrospect.

The restoration process was not as easy as Dropbox but once I’d worked out how it worked I had my files downloading and it restored most things in around 3 days on my slow connection. The speeds were not as fast as Dropbox but you are given unlimited space which is handy for larger backups. I’d recommend both Dropbox and Carbonite as they work in the background and give valuable peace of mind. Learn more…

How did my manual backups do?

I was lucky to have pretty much my whole hard drive backed up to an external drive too. The trouble is it can take an absolute age to back everything up (often more than a day) so I’d got in to the habit of doing it just once a month. All my files were safely preserved but I was missing a few weeks worth. A better solution would have been a system like Time Machine for the Mac. I do most of my design and development on a PC (don’t hold it against me!) and I’ve yet to find something that works as smoothly as this.

If you’ve got any recommendations for software like this on a PC please leave a comment at the end of this article! I now backup once a week to an external hard drive (usually after finishing work on a Friday afternoon) and leave it running until it has completed. Each week I swap between two different hard drives rather than trusting just a single drive with all the data.

What other things are there to consider?

I think I was quite lucky. Admittedly I didn’t get all my files back but everything important was recovered. It is all well and good having both online and manual backups in place but what happens if they go wrong?

Fire: A fire near your computer could damage the main hard drive and any external hard drives you may have in the vicinity. I’d recommend storing your external hard drives in a safe place whenever possible.

Theft: A horrible thing to consider but if your computer equipment was stolen would you have a way of getting your data back? It may be worth considering storing your external hard drives in a secure safe or even in another location.

Syncing Problems: Once an online backup system is setup the idea is you leave it to run in the background. Consider the possibility that the sync could stop, get corrupt or even reach your storage limit. Keep a close eye on these regularly to check files are backing up properly. Since having my hard drive fail I’m definitely on top of backups more. I got off lightly last time and don’t want to have to go through that again!

Below are some links to useful backup software and resources which I hope you find useful. So don’t delay, backup TODAY!

Backup Software

• Dropbox
• Carbonite
• Backblaze
• Mozy
• Backup Direct

Backup Links and Resources

• World Backup Day

What About You?

Have you experience the loss of your data and files? Did you manage to restore everything you needed? Have you had any good or bad experiences with backup software? I’d love you to comment below and share any stories or advice!

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