Web & Application Development for Small Business!

Custom Web Development & Internet Marketing are some of the most cost-effective ways to increase your profits, expand your customer base, and grow your business. I'm Richard Hibbitts and I specialize in helping small businesses achieve their goals through the efficient use of technology. My specialties include custom web & application development, MySQL database architecture & Internet Marketing.

I currently use the following technologies:

  • Core Java SE, J2EE
  • PHP 4 & 5, CakePHP, CodeIgniter
  • Javascript, jQuery, AJAX
  • MySQL, Sqlite, JavaDB (Apache Derby)

Please, take some time to browse around the site, and read some of my technical and business related posts. My Portfolio is located here. If you'd like to speak with me about a project, about ways to make your business more efficient, or about building your presence on the web, please use the Contact Form
Thanks for stopping by.



Latest Posts in Small Business Web Development:


Google voice is now online!!!

Posted by: rhibbitts

Hallelujah! Google voice is now open to the public. If you're not familiar with it, Google Voice is a new service from Google, that allows you to connect all of your various phone numbers together via an easy to use web interface. Voicemail, call forwarding, all of the bells & whistles, all via one phone number. So, fo instance, my new Google number is (919) 386-9321. So, if you call that number, I can set it to ring my cell phone when I'm out of the office, my office phone during business hours, and my home phone in the evening. I can check my voicemail from any phone, or have .mp3's of my voicemail messages emailed to me. Google Voice has been in a testing phase for several months, but now that it's public, I foresee big changes in how we communicate.
So what does this mean for your business? Well, you now have the opportunity to be even more accessible to your customers. Imagine having a Google phone number for your customer service department that is completely managed online. Now that's power. So, I'm advising all of my clients to sign up for a Google voice number immediately. You can request an invitation, here.

Leave comment (0) 26 Jun, 2009

Invoicing the easy way

Posted by: rhibbitts

Keeping track of who owes you money, is always a headache for any small business. Thankfully, there are several helpful tools out there that can help you stay on top of managing invoices. Two web based tools of note are Freshbooks
 and Blinksale. Both are simple to use, easy to manage and contain powerful features that allow you to generate invoices, invoice templates, enter paymentsetc... You can even (for a fee) have your invoices mailed automatically. Freshbooks also has a very nice integrated time-tracker that allows you to track the time you spend on specific projects. However, for my money, nothing beats Bamboo Invoice.

Read more Leave comment (0) 24 Apr, 2009

How to Set up ScribeFire for Nucleus CMS

Posted by: rhibbitts

I've been looking at ways to make it easier for me to post here more regularly.  Between projects, work, life, etc... I don't post as often as I should.  So I'm currently trying out the Firefox Add-in ScribeFire.  Scribefire is a "blogging client" that allows you to write a post offline, and it automagically posts it to your blog.  However, since Nucleus isn't the most popular of blogging platforms, there are some quirks to installation.  First of all, ScribeFire has an excellent auto-detect feature.  You simply enter the URL of your blog, and it generally detects whatever settings it needs.  It doesn't detect Nucleus, however.  For Nucleus, you have to "Configure Manually", choose metaWeblog API from the drop down menu, and use
http://yoursite.com/blogdir/nucleus/xmlrpc/server.php
as your API URL.  Voila, it works.  This posting is the result of my first use of ScribeFire, so we'll see what happens.

Leave comment (0) 02 Feb, 2009