How To Setup Freecamp To Manage Projects

Express the business side of your digital lives. Share your experiences and/or your comments regarding a business or organization.

No advertising.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
jack_indigo
Forum Contributor
Posts: 186
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:25 pm

How To Setup Freecamp To Manage Projects

Post by jack_indigo »

Freecamp = Basecamp for Free. Basecamp is a project manager for teams, easy to learn and use right away, slim on features, and yet provides a way to have private areas outside of client view, and client areas too. There's a way that 37signals provides for you to use it for free in a limited fashion.

1. The Administrative Account. First, go to Gmail and create a new account per project. Remember -- per project, not per client. That's what you have to do with Freecamp. So, if I have a project named "Durex Paints", then I might create an account like "durexpaints.freecamp@gmail.com". Now, login to your Gmail and have it forward all mail to your other primary mail account and then archive messages. I call this email account your "administrative account".

2. Bookmarking Freecamp. Add this bookmark into your bookmarks. You'll be using it a lot.

https://signup.37signals.com/basecamp/Free/signup/new?source=basecamphq.com

3. Signup To Freecamp. Now choose that bookmark and sign up with the new Gmail account you created. When it asks what to name your site, choose the project name, such as "Durex Paints", and not your client name like "Durex". Don't forget to bookmark that site URL.

4. Project Creation. When you login for the first time with the administrative account, create a new project simply called "Project". This makes sense later on when you start using it -- you'll see. Note that Freecamp doesn't give you the ability to create more than one project. So, that's why we create one Freecamp arrangement per project.

5. Caveat # 1 -- Use Other Means For Group Chat. Go into Settings and turn off the Chat tab. You can use Gmail or some other deal for private chats. There's a way to get free chat, but I haven't the time to mess with it.

6. Caveat # 2 -- Use Other Means for File Sharing. Notice that you don't get file sharing/attachment support in Freecamp -- we'll handle that later.

7. Project Color. Set your project color. I like to have a different set of colors per project as kind of a visual aid to me.

8. Project Logo. To make your client smile, add in the logo for the project.

9. Default Discussion Threads. Create at least two minimum discussion threads under "Messages". These are: Status Updates and Questions. If you want to create others, then so be it. They also let you create Categories, but I don't use them and simply delete them. The problem I have with Basecamp categories is that I can't take an individual comment in a thread and give it its own category. Instead, I must set the entire thread to a category. Since I'll often have only just a few threads, it doesn't seem like I'm gaining any huge benefit by using categories per like the 5-6 threads I start. Most of the time when interacting with my client or project member, I'll just be appending to a given thread. However, some people don't function that way and want a LOT of discussion. For those people -- yeah, create dozens of threads and use Categories.

10. Adding Accounts. Now go to People and Permissions tab and start setting up the user accounts, starting with your own, and your client setup should be last. I highly recommend you make the username their email address because they can't forget their email address. BUT FIRST! you'll need to get their phone number, their IM handle and preferred IM provider, and their photo. You can often find their photo either in Gmail, a gravatar, Facebook, or Twitter. If not -- add a generic "man" or "woman" icon instead. Add these accounts to the email addresses you already know them by, and give them a super easy password like "camper1happy" for now -- they can always change it later.

11. Thread Subscriptions. Take those discussion threads you started and edit them. You'll see a permissions area -- assign who will get notified on those updates. I usually uncheck the administrative ID and check off the user accounts I created.

12. Project Spec Checklist. Go to the To Dos and start adding in the functional spec for the project.

13. File Sharing Alternatives. Now signup with Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/pricing) on the free account system and use that for file sharing since Freecamp won't give you a file space. If you don't like that for one reason or another, then consider setting up a subfolder on your hosting provider as an FTP point with a user/pass just for your client -- if your hosting provider allows this. Your clients can then install the FireFTP plugin for Firefox to read/write files in there. For whatever you decide, create a new WriteBoard in Freecamp to leave a message about where the project's file sharing area is, and any user/pass that one might need.

14. Administration Power. Decide who on the project should have administration power and map that in via People & Permissions.

15. Login and Start Using It. Now logout from your administrative ID in the system and start using your own email address.
Post Reply