Methods to share drafts/work with client

[amandawhite.ajw]

I am starting to develop all of the systems for my business and wanted to get some opinions on methods to share drafts/work with clients. I have looked into using Basecamp and there was another site (I cannot remember the name and foolishly didn't bookmark!) where clients could even write comments directly on the draft, but I am not sure if these are the best ways to share files with clients. Thoughts?

 

Thanks.

Amanda

[falkencreative]

I think it depends on your clients, and whether you are willing to pay out monthly for some sort of service. I usually embed a .jpg image within an HTML file and send the client a link so they can see the mockup like it would appear in the browser, and take care of any comments over email.

 

There are a lot of project management tools (usually for a monthly fee) that allow you to upload and manage images, and give people a way to comment on them, along with other project management type features. Basecamp is one option, and here are a few others:

 

http://www.activecollab.com/

http://www.teamworkpm.net/

http://www.projectmanager.com/

http://www.huddle.com/

 

To be honest, if all you need is a place to upload images and a way to enable clients to comment on those images, a simple commentable image gallery or a customized version of Wordpress would probably also work fine. Even something like Google Docs might work too.

 

EDIT: This might be another option to look at. Their free plan may be a good fit: http://www.conceptshare.com/tour.html

[amandawhite.ajw]

Thanks for the tips and links. I will definitely check them out.

 

And Conceptshare was the other site I had looked at, good to find it again! Thanks!

[LSW]

You may be able to do that with PDFs, you can write comments on those, but not sure if they need the full writer version or not.

 

You could embed images in a word document.

 

Look into Adobe Flex 4 a.k. Flash builder 4 - there is a free IDE you can use and just the most basic web site would allow a certain amount of animation to make it look professional and they could e-mail their comments to you or store them in a database for you. You could include minor Flash animation to it to show what parts of the site would look like in use. It would make a very interesting and professional way to show them your plans and current work.

 

As I said it is a free IDE or Eclipse Plugin, if needed you would use Blaze DS which would power it (also free) or just use basic getters as on any HTML web site. Worth taking a look at and not really all that hard to learn if you keep to the most basic site, if you let yourself get to into it you could spend more time on the demo than the site itself. Best yet you could create a template for showing all sites to come when needed

 

Flex in a week video training (free)

 

Introducing Adobe Flex 4.5 SDK

 

 

Flex Test Drive - Build an application in an hour