Simple software is better
When we first started working on the skedsheet website and blog we had grand plans. We thought having a single, integrated platform for all of our needs would be the way to go. So, we chose Drupal; an open-source, really powerful platform that has plug-ins for blogging, forums, user management, billing… the whole nine yards.
It was pretty easy to turn on the right features and quickly have a forum, a blog, and a website. But then something funny happened – it was really ugly, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it look decent. Or, more appropriately, I couldn’t figure out “the right way” to make it look good, and I got paralyzed in getting things going.
We were hoping to be able to find a way to reuse design elements – it would have been awesome to have the website, blog, forums, billing… and skedsheet itself all look the same. But then it became clear – maybe we’re better off with something quick and dirty that fixes the problem we have now. Some day in the future we can concentrate on making it all seamless.
So for now, we’ve got a wordpress blog, a very simple static webpage, and no forums. And guess what? It is way easier.
Skedsheet is being designed with same idea – many of our JobTracker customers get hung up on “what’s the right way to implement this software?”, so we decided that rather than just simplifying the implementation more, we would try to eliminate it entirely. If you can use a spreadsheet and a calendar, a skedsheet is a no-brainer.
