As you can tell I've been busy lately with posting quite a few blog entries—well today at least. So much so, that I was going to save this entry for tomorrow but I decided to proceed since all I get on Twitter is the phail whale.

While doing a search for "cincinnati web" over at twitter, trying to find some interesting webologists to follow, I came across Renee Rist. Apparently she runs her own freelancing company, Ribbons of Red, out of Cincinnati. Aside from it being a very well done site, I noticed her "client area". I proceeded to click on it, as I

wondered what she might be using for this functionality, and noticed "projectpier" in the URI. After a quick Google search, eureka!

Project Pier, as the title of this post mentions, is an open source (OS) project management system (PMS)—get your mind out of the gutter. It is written in PHP and JavaScript with a MySQL back-end database.

Now, as an up and coming freelancer, I've been looking for an out of the box solution that I can brand and make my own. After a quick read, Project Pier seems like it will fulfill my needs:

• Create projects w/ detailed information like tasks, milestones, messages and files
• Provide clients with unique logins and access to their file
• Communication/collaboration on mock-ups and designs via a web interface

Of course this is all preliminary and I've simply just read the description from their website. However, I headed on over to the Freelance Switch and several people there have said some very good things about Project Pier.

Finding this has honestly motivated me to get some things finished, like this website. Then I'd like to get my a freelance site up for business only so I can separate my work and play.

An install of Project Pier will be added to my "todo" list and I'll report back my findings at that time. If you've used it, please provide your thoughts.

Thanks to Renee and her site for helping me stumble hopelessly onto Project Pier.

:cD