You’ve probably all had a new inquiry come in whereby the client wants the content managed on their site, but perhaps doesn’t have the budget for a custom CMS, or where even using WordPress could take a little too much time. For me, this is where Perch comes in.

Set-up

Perch is a fantastic little CMS that takes no time to set up and with the addition of a few tags in your HTML files, you can cms’ify areas of your website in literally minutes.

So here’s the ‘skinny’..

• You pay £35 + VAT (can’t grumble at that) for a single license
• Download your copy of Perch from their site (beautiful might I add)
• Create a new MySQL database.
• Navigate to the appropriate address on your server and follow a really simple set-up process.

That’s it, Perch is up and running! All you do now is add some editable regions (more on that below), login and start adding your content.

Making content areas editable couldn’t be easier

All you need to do to be able to edit the content on a specific page of your site is add the following code at the very top of your HTML.
<?php include('perch/runtime.php'); ?>

Follow that with this little code snippet in place of the content you want to make editable and you’re done. ‘Main heading’ should be edited to best describe the type of content that will go here;
<?php perch_content('Main heading'); ?>

Once you’ve uploaded that and refreshed the Perch admin area you’ll see that region is now visible. Click it, assign it a template (anything from a simple content block to repeating news items) and you’re away.

Documentation & Support

The people behind Perch have recently updated their documentation, which takes no time at all to skim over. Take a look for yourself at how simple and easy Perch is to set up and use and maybe consider it for the next simply CMS project that comes your way.

I’ve now used Perch on several client sites and would highly recommend it.

Tim Ferriss

This guy is amazing! I won’t go into all he has achieved here, but I was lucky enough to receive his book ‘The Four Hour Work Week‘ as a gift and I’m currently working my way through it. Most of the points in the book are superb and really get you thinking about the way most of us work. One of the main points that jumped out at me was Tim’s idea of having mini retirements instead of gearing your whole working life towards one big retirement. I’m not sure how feasible this might be, but I certainly like the idea (and can see the benefit) of taking three or four breaks during a year.

I’d also highly recommend you check out Tim’s blog and watch a few of the video entries he records with Kevin Rose of Digg. A favorite of mine is a video where Tim and Kevin talk about their top 5 favorite books.

Jason Fried

As I’m sure many of you know Jason is the guy behind 37 Signals, the makers of web apps such as Basecamp and Campfire. I don’t really know that much about Jason and 37 Signals, but this article I came across is a great insight into some of his personal beliefs about running a business – ‘The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals‘.

If you’re familiar with Tim Ferris (who I mentioned above) then you can see some overlap between both of their ideas and key philosophies regarding work – for example the elimination of meetings. Both guys believe in hard work, but go about achieving it in different ways from the normal 9-5′ers (Tim being the more extreme of the two in his ideologies).

You also might want to check out 37 Signals second in command David Heineimeier Hansson’s ‘Unlearn Your MBA‘ audio podcast and Jason’s video interview on the O’Reilly Community website. Pretty interesting stuff.

Leo Babauta

I can’t say that I’m an incredibly healthy, focused or organized person, but whenever I find myself wanting to try and better different aspects of my life I always find myself coming back to Leo’s blog ‘Zen Habits‘.

All of the articles are well written and the majority will get you feeling excited about trying to simplify your life, which is the main premise of Leo’s blog. If you really want to live a simpler life you can even try reading the Zen Habits book ‘The Power Of Less‘

Alan Sugar

Business Zone asked Sir Alan Sugar (star of the BBC’s The Apprentice) to answer a few questions about running small businesses, preparing business plans and the personal traits you need to have to become successful. I only just came across these short videos earlier today, but found them to be very helpful none the less.

I’m still not 100% decided what to make of Sir Alan, but you can’t argue the guy has been successful and knows a thing or two about business.

Your links…

If you’ve bookmarked a few articles you think might be beneficial in supporting this post then please by all means post them in the comments below. I look forward to reading them!

Firebug

Pretty similar to the web developer toolbar above, but the thing I love most about this plugin is the ability to edit live websites. Lets say a client comes to you and notices their site not displaying correctly – no problemo! Fire up Firebug, click the ‘Inspect’ button on the top left of the window and you can inspect every element on that webpage. Its so awesome that even the CSS associated with the element you’re inspecting will be brought up in the right hand Firebug window too. You can make changes to it and see them represented on your website right before your eyes!

This tool is a great timesaver for me simply due to this one feature, and to be brutally honest, thats all I really use it for. However there is much much more that Firebug has to offer. You just have to spend time playing around with it. What are you waiting for? Go ahead and Download Firebug Plugin.

Web Developer Toolbar

This is essential for any web designer / developer! I bet thats millions of us that rely on this tool daily, so If you’re one of the few that doesn’t have it yet, grab it now. Just listen to what this guy below has to say about it!

The Web Developer Toolbar is great for working on your own pages (but also good for figuring out how others work) – by Hartz on November 17, 2008

My sentiments exactly! It has so many features, and is the perfect tool for someone new to CSS and to the experienced developer. Here are some of its most handy features;

• on-the-fly validation of web pages
• viewing the CSS and HTML of web pages
• editing CSS of websites on-the-fly
• disable/enable JavaScript, Cookies, CSS, Images
• re size the browser window for common resolutions – 800 x 600 etc
• outline CSS elements (my favourite feature Shift + Cmd (Ctrl) + F)
• …and much much more!

This plugin offers so much that you won’t know how you lived without it once you’ve used it. It makes editing websites and building them so much quicker. Download Web Developer Toolbar Plugin.

ColorZilla

Being a designer you’re bound to notice an interesting colour, or colour combination on your travels. With ColorZilla you can find out the exact hexidecimal code value for it from within the browser. No longer do you need to take a screenshot and paste it into Photoshop. Download ColorZilla Plugin.

ScreenGrab

Taking screenshots can be a right pain. I know that from my Windows machine at work. I use a mac keyboard, so for some reason the Print Screen button doesn’t work. Before I discovered ScreenGrab I was searching around for a decent bit of software that allowed you to take screenshots. More often that not they aren’t free, or they don’t let you take screenshots of full web page (the areas below the fold etc).

You’ll be glad to know that ScreenGrab lets you copy or save, a selection of a webpage, the full window, or the whole page. Result! Download Screengrab Plugin

Cooliris (formerly PicLens)

Searching for images can take up a lot of valuable time. Cooliris will save you loads though as you’re able to browse for photos from Google, Flickr, Photobucket, Yahoo, DeviantArt and a few more sites. I think you can even browse YouTube videos to waste even more of your time!

This is obviously no substitute for scouring the usual image sites such as iStockPhoto, but if you’re looking for something quick, maybe for a blog post (be sure to add credits) then this is for you. Download Cooliris Plugin