Time management is an important thing today. If you don’t know how to manage your time, how to find time for great things, you will hardly achieve your goals. How to find out where is your time? You will need to track it, using a simple notepad, of a software package, if you like to do it more professionally.

I have been searching for an utility that allows to track time and to categorize it. Software should be able to create reports so I could see all my time spent at a glance.

There are some similar applications created for Linux. You can check Hamster, Gnotime (not supported), and Timebox : these are the most well known. I would like to show you an application, that can be run using Wine: Timepanic.

Timepanic is an application for tracking time spent at the computer (Windows version) and other time (Pocket PC edition). If you need to keep track of the work you do and when you do it, and want to stay on top of tracking projects or your business, then TimePanic is the ideal solution.

It allows you to improve your efficiency at work,keep on top of all your projects. watch an overview of all your priorities, see where the time is going in your day, see which projects/clients consume the most time. and many other features.

Timepanic is not only a computer application; it comes bundled with a Pocket PC version. It is used if you have a Windows Mobile Phone, or a Pocket PC, and you would like to track your time out of office. It is very useful to track traffic times, waiting, and any other activities that are a part of your life and you want to keep track of them.

The most useful thing of Timepanic as the ability to create reports. Reports will show you how much time is spent on each of your projects or time category so you could see it and make necessary changes.

If you are a time management fan, you must have this software.

If you need to communicate with your customers to solve their problems, you definitely need a help desk. A place, where all most popular questions are answered and users have the ability to ask if anything remains unclear. If you are running a service, a web hosting, or anything else related to a big number of potential customers, help desk software will make it easier to communicate with them.

There are lots of help desk scripts available on the web. Everything depends on your current needs; if you’re installing it for the first time, you should better choose a free or open source solution. Here is a big list of software to choose from, but I will tell you a little about the script I really like. It’s Hesk.

IMHO, it’s a great script for a beginner and for a pro. Interface is very clear and you don’t even need a documentation, as it’s hard to do anything wrong with this script. Take a look at a screenshot:

Let’s find out what are the features:

Customer Interface:

* Submit new tickets
* Attach files
* Obtain detailed information from customers with custom fields
* SPAM prevention
* Suggest related articles before final ticket submission
* View existing ticket status
* E-mail notifications of staff replies
* Browse knowledge base

Knowledge base:

* Unlimited knowledge base articles
* Unlimited categories and subcategories
* Quick and Easy search capabilities
* Post attachments to articles
* Count article views
* List newest and most popular articles
* Rate articles

Administrator interface:

* Unlimited administrators and staff accounts
* Restricted access to some functionality for certain staff
* Powerful ticket search ability
* Manage knowledge base categories and articles
* Manage staff accounts
* Manage canned responses
* Customize help desk settings
* Modify your profiles and signatures
* Autoclose tickets after X days
* E-mail notifications of new tickets and replies
* Customers can easily rate staff replies
* Easy translation into any language

You are welcome to download your free version.

If you can propose any other simple and free scripts, please, post them in comments.

Sometimes you need to show your domain stats to somebody. Directadmin provides this functionality: it is possible to create a link to stats at its statistics page.

But what should you do then you don’t need stats to be public? As you can see, there is no option to disable public stats view.

The solution comes very simple. In order to provide the ability of viewing public stats, Directadmin creates a symbolic link to stats in user directory. All you need is to remove this link using Directadmin file manager.

All you need is to delete this link. Simple, isn’t it?

It is not a secret, that most e-mails that are sent by PHP mail() function are not delivered due to spam filters enabled. Even if you pass all the necessary headers, your message is often delivered to SPAM folder and in fact will never be read. In order to avoid this, we will send e-mails using a free class and Gmail SMTP. You need to have a Gmail account to use this method, but I think it should not be a problem. You will also have to pass your Gmail password to this script.

First of all, we will need a class to send e-mails using SMTP. It can be obtained here. We will also need a Gmail account, that has SMTP enabled. Make sure to check your settings tab to enable SMTP (it is enabled by default, but it is better to check this once again).

Then we will use the following code:

$mail = new PHPMailer();
// Recipient’s e-mail address
$email=”me@lampdocs.com”;
// Message text (may contain HTML)
$milo=”Some text comes here”;
$mail->Mailer = “smtp”;
$mail->Host = “ssl://smtp.gmail.com”;
$mail->Port = 465;
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // turn on SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = “youraccount@gmail.com”; // SMTP username
$mail->Password = “yourpass“; // SMTP password

$webmaster_email = “youraccount@gmail.com”; //Reply to this email ID
$name=”Preferred Buyer”; // Recipient’s name
$mail->From = “youraccount@gmail.com”;
$mail->FromName = “Youraccount.com”; // Edit this to select “From” header
$mail->AddAddress($email, $name);
$mail->AddReplyTo($webmaster_email, “Youraccount.com”);
$mail->WordWrap = 70; // set word wrap
$mail->IsHTML(true); // send as HTML
$mail->Subject = “This is my test message”;
$mail->Body = $milo; //HTML Body
$mail->Send();

All you need to start using this free script is to set up your Gmail access information and compose a message. All the necessary headers will be created automatically.

This method allows to send e-mails with html links, as most e-mails sent using other methods are blocked by spamasassin, or similar anti spam software.

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