Comments on: Web Work 101: Setting Up Your Home Office

By: Lloyd from OfficeDeskReviews

Lloyd from OfficeDeskReviews — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:51:39 +0000

Being as I work from home mainly, my office is the room where I spend the majority of my time in my house. You have to put the time and effort into getting your set up right,you dont want your productivity to suffer. You’ve given some great advice Dawn!

By: Futons

Futons — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:29:16 +0000

Thanks for the tips. I can’t stress enough the importance of a good chair if you are working long hours. I often work 16+ hour days and even with a good chair have developed some back problems. I have to say that I love my home office.

By: My Home Office | SpecialityMoney.com

My Home Office | SpecialityMoney.com — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:10:29 +0000

[...] previously covered planning your home office and setting up your home office here on WebWorkerDaily. Here I share a real-life home office: mine. I’m not a decorator [...]

By: WebWorkerDaily » Archive My Home Office «

WebWorkerDaily » Archive My Home Office « — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:01:15 +0000

[...] 2009 (6:00am) Meryl Evans No Comments We’ve previously covered planning your home office and setting up your home office here on WebWorkerDaily. Here I share a real-life home office: mine. I’m not a decorator [...]

By: WebWorkerDaily » Archive Web Work 101: Wrap-up «

WebWorkerDaily » Archive Web Work 101: Wrap-up « — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:32:57 +0000

[...] Web Work 101: Setting Up Your Home Office [...]

By: tim

tim — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:50:05 +0000

Some thing I’m going to pay attention to when I set up my home office is desk space. As someone who doesn’t work well with clutter, a desk space that is clean and free of clutter will help productivity.

By: WebWorkerDaily » Archive Web Work 101: Planning, Budgeting and Goal-Setting «

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:07:05 +0000

[...] telecommute, what mistakes to avoid, how to find support, about joining groups, how to set up your office, and some of the tools of the trade. In this post, I’m going to get back to basics. The key [...]

By: TelBitConsulting

TelBitConsulting — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:32:17 +0000

Videoconferencing can help you stay in touch. If you do not have company support there are free versions available such as oovoo, skype (point to point only), SightSpeed. If you have company support, or need to connect to standards based systems, there are many choices.

By: Dawn Foster

Dawn Foster — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:42:28 +0000

Tim,

Well, when you carry your life and your business around on a macbook that you lug around town all day ... :)

I'd probably do daily or maybe weekly if it was a desktop.

By: Tim Haughton

Tim Haughton — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:44:23 +0000

Every 6 hours?? That is hardcore.

My source code is in Subversion, hosted off site, and I use JungleDisk to do weekly backups.

+1 for dual monitors. If you don't have them, you don't know what you're missing.

+1 for an outstanding chair.

By: Blogging Elsewhere at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 17:54:21 +0000

[...] Web Work 101: Setting Up Your Home Office [...]

By: This Weeks Helpful Reads… Week 146

This Weeks Helpful Reads… Week 146 — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:28:52 +0000

[...] Web Work 101: Setting Up Your Home Office by Dawn Foster… Some of the things Dawn lists are “gimmies” but there are some Must haves and some Should haves that you may not have considered. She did a poll of her Twitter followers to get their input and you may find some of the responses (including comments) interesting. [...]

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:22:51 +0000

if you are looking for online backup an want to find a cost efficient solution you can try CloudBerry Explorer that works on top of S3. my name is a link to the website

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:45:45 +0000

I’d give anything for an extra room in the house with a door I could close! My office? Try the kitchen table and a laptop! My son took my office 7 years ago for his bedroom. You guys are living in luxury!

By: someguy

someguy — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:08:56 +0000

ben/@bhenick

I had in mind brown-outs to the mains (older building in an older neighborhood + hot day = unreliable power for the whole neighborhood), though I have on occasion tripped a circuit too in my newer space. Both are good reasons for even a cheap $60 UPS.

By: ben

ben — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:51:10 +0000

My own checklist was meant to be as platform-, process-, and location-agnostic as possible.

It's been more than ten years since I lived in a place where the air conditioning was on the same circuit with computers etc., so I hadn't considered local brownouts when discussing UPSes, thus what someguy said.

Not everybody reading is a Web developer... but since we're on the subject, if the thought of going down to the bare metal (i.e., doing production in a text editor) gives you the cold shivers, it wouldn't kill ya to train up. The underlying problem is evident in micro every time a new version of Photoshop is released: some "improvement" breaks or vastly complicates task performance. Frankly, the thought of being dependent upon a single vendor for my tools gives ME the cold shivers.

In the same vein as having a separate work area, if you live alone, do NOT put your workspace in the bedroom, no matter its size. Beds have a tendency to start singing a siren song when you're burnt out the night before a big deadline and can't spare the time.

If you must have a futon sofa or comfy chair near your workspace, set a task on your workstation that will play appropriately rousing music, and create a shortcut to its properties dialog on your desktop. The impact on mood compared to that of a monotonous, blaring alarm is near to immeasurable.

Proceed on the assumption that you WILL have people over from time to time for the sake of business.

Placing your desk near a window is recommended, provided it doesn't face east or west.

Arranging your workspace so that you work facing the door (or primary ingress) is also recommended; the alternative is to completely disengage from the task of the moment at every interruption. This is doubly true for anyone who's vulnerable to clinical anxiety.

To clear up any ambiguity from someguy's comment (convention ftw!), I'm actually @bhenick on Twitter.