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Business-Hacker like planning a bit in advance. Here I collected my favorite planning tools of this year.

Wunderlist

On top of my list is Wunderlist. The todo app of my choice. I am using Wunderlist since one of the first versions. I tested some alternatives from time to time, but I always got back to Wunderlist.

Wunderlist is free and comes with a advanced pro version with some more functionality. Which become interessting if you are working in a team.

I am using Wunderlist to plan everything. My website, my jobs, things like the WordPress-Workshop I do and even private things. I, for example, do have a list with places I want to visit.

Wunderlist is available on all common platforms.

ToDoIst

If you don't like Wunderlist, you should take a look at ToDoIst. The todo app comes with a similar functionality as Wunderlist. The free version is a bit more limited as Wunderlist. ToDoIst has got a very minimal design, which I like a lot.

ToDoIst is available on many platforms.

Toggl

Whatever I do, I'm tracking time. Toggl is always running. When I write a blogpost, work on a website or are on the phone. Time tracking is always on. Toggle somes with a nice overview of the tracked time and has a great set of features in the free edition.

If you would like to know, where your time goes. Try toggl.

Sunrise

I am using Sunrise to manage my dates. It depends on a Google-Calendard. I would like to recommend it, but is was bought by Microsoft some weeks ago. It will be integrated into Outlook, unfortunately.

Google Apps for Work

I use Google a lot. So I registered a Google-Apps-Account. Which currently costs 40 Euros. This way I do have access to many known Google-Tools using my own Domain. I am mainly using the calendar and google-drive.

Scapple

I really like using mindmaps. I like to sketch on paper. But when mindmaps become more complex and I want to change things a lot, I use Scapple. Scapple is a MindMap app running under OS X and Windows and costs 15 Dollar.

A changelog lists the changes of a product, for example an app. But a well maintained changelog tells you far more about the product, that just the last changes.

Nearly every software product comes with a changelog. Sometimes it's called "release notes", too. It's often shown on update notifications and gives you an overview about the changes that the update includes.

What does a Changelog contain?

A changelog documents the changes of the product. It shows, which new functionalities there are, if things changed and if the user has to react in any way. It shows which bugs where fixed and if functionality has been removed or limited.

When looking at changelogs of open source projects, you will often also see who made the changes and why.

A changelog tells us even more

The best case is, when the changelog is maintained since the first version of the product, so we can go back in time until then. The chronological list works with version numbers or release dates.

Especially changelogs reaching far back in time, offer a good view in what direction the product goes. At first you will see how active the developers are. You can also see their main focus. Are they working on new features or are they fixing bugs most of the time?

A view back in time will tell you in which direction the development of the products goes and looking at new features will give you a spot on what the product might look like in the future.

How is a changelog created?

There are mainly two possibilities to create a changelog.
Every change will be collected and a team member will write those changes into the file. Or the changelog will be generated automatically. That is easily possible by using a versioning system like git, which forces you to write a comment to every change you make.

There are some voices against automatic creation of a changelog, because those kinds of logs aren't that readable.

Which format has a changelog?

To be able to open the changelog without any additional software, it is delivered as a plain textfile. To make it a bit more readable, some developers use markdown to structure it.

Get more detailed information on the topic on keepachangelog.com

DTTSP

When you inform yourself about websites, you will stumble upon the term "content management system", or short: CMS. Today there is rarely a website which is not driven by such a system.

A content management system (CMS) is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifying content, organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment.
(Quelle: Wikipedia)

So, with a CMS you can manage the content of your website. You can create new content and edit existing. Why is that so important? You don't want to edit the sourcecode of your site every time you want to change some text or image.

The basic principle

A CMS is mostly based on a database or a structured file, which does only contain the content. That way the content and the sourcecode are detached, so you can change one of both without affecting the other.

Most systems also come with a media management, so you can manage your images (or other files), add them to pages or even edit them directly.

Many systems can be extended by using plugins, so they can fulfill different individual requirements.

To enable teams to work an a site, most CMS contain a user management.

The different types

There are numerous CMS which differ more or less. There are systems using a database, there are systems using simple textfiles, there are systems you have to maintain on your own and there are hosted solutions.

The choice is yours and depends on your needs and technical skills. You shouldn't rush into your choice, think about it (there will be more on that topic soon).

The installation of Kirby ist pretty easy. But if you want to install the content management system using git and keep it up to date, there are some things to pay attention to. In this video I'll show you how to do so.

Links aus dem Video

Die Kirby Webseite
Kirby Themes
Kirby Plugins
Tower Git-Client
SourceTree Git_client