In addition to routine backups and regular maintenance of my computer throughout the year, I like to take the time and perform a full system restore. I take advantage of the holiday season when work is slow or I get to take time off from work to perform a full system erase and restore.

Here are the steps I take to ensure I get a freshly configured system at the beginning of each year:

As part of the annual Souther California Code Camp conference at USC October 15 and 16, I am making a hands-on presentation on how to design a visually appealing website using many of the widely supported CSS3 properties.

The screenshot below is what I came up with for this presentation. I can't get all the credit for it. I actually got inspiration from http://launcheffectapp.com. I did add my personal touch to an already beautiful website to demonstrate how to achieve visual enhancements using CSS3 instead of images or old methods.

As with any profession, there are essential tools that make the person using them more productive and efficient. Web designing is not the exception and below I outline some of the tools that allow me to be efficient, professional, and more effective in what I do. Although the essential tools for a web designer can be narrowed down to a hand-full, there are other tools that are not directly related to web designing but instead, allow you to run a more successful business by allowing you to better manage your time, more efficiently keep track of bookmarks, notes and documents and more.

If you’ve never heard of Drush (Drupal Shell), you don’t know what you’re missing. Drush is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal. It allows you to easily update and maintain your drupal site, among other things. It’s a time saver when updating your modules or drupal core. Instead or downloading, uncompressing and uploading your modules or core updates via FTP, you simply type a few linux commands and all the updating takes care of itself.

Disclaimer: These instructions offer no guarantee that your system will work the same way as instructions claim. Please make sure you test and backup your system before following any of these instructions.