I’ve been a little quiet lately due to some changes that I had been making on the backend of my website.  For those that don’t know, I tend to be a web geek, and once I get my mind set on something, I will search high and low for the answer until I find it.

Well, within the past few weeks, I had been evaluating different open source applications for project management.   And I must say, I’m pretty impressed with the stuff that you can find out there that is completely free and pretty dang powerful.  Especially if you are running a web server with php.

I’ve found several different applications that can do project management, and I have to admit, most of them are impressive, but there was one that just stood out WAY above the rest.  I didn’t even know anything like this was out there until I stumbled across another blog that had done some comparisons between different open source web based applications for project management.  First, the runner ups.

ProjectPier – This software has been out on the web for a while, and is actually highly recommended.  Fast, stable, and works pretty well for project management.  I was actually considering sticking with this until I had found my final answer.  Not to mention that the software hasn’t been updated in quite a while.  I tend to be weary of abandonware.

Collabtive – I found the UI to this software to be pretty simple and refreshing.  Not to mention that it was developed fairly recently, which means that it still has a lot of life and potential.  Due to it’s simplicity, I’ve considered using it for clients since my final solution might be a bit harder to understand, but I haven’t made a final decision yet.

Feng Office – Wow!! What can I say?  This software is off the chain. Right now, I have a demo running at http://office.marcellusking.com.  The username is demo as well as the password.  This thing had document management, project management, calender with ical support, and a few other bells and whistles.  I plan on using this software to collaborate with other photographers, clients, etc… to collaborate on anything photography related and to also keep track of my own projects.  Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like when I log in under my account.

Since I have several projects that I’m a part of, any tasks for projects that are assigned to me will show up on my main view when I log in.  I can also click on the projects individually to see just the tasks for that project.  I’m actually VERY excited to see what I can pull off with this software in the near future and to see if enough people that I network with are interested in taking advantage of it.

Welp, back to the grind!