A Ghostbuster’s Guide to Chipmunk
You know the scene in Ghostbusters when Venkman gets slimed? Just covered head to toe in a green, ectoplasmic ooze?
That is exactly how I feel every time I start managing a new project or working with a new client: buried in a heap of new information and files that I know I need to organize so that I can find what I’m looking for later. So, I cram all the documents and images and fonts and graphics into 20 various folders, often within other folders. Maybe I come up with some naming convention or system and promptly forget what any of it means. I admit defeat before I even really try, knowing that no matter what I do, I will never know exactly where to look for that one version of that one image that was sent to me forever ago.
What did I call that folder? What folder did I put that folder in? Why did I give this project an obscure name that I’ll never remember? I know I was watching Ghostbusters that day. Marshmallow Man, maybe?
So, how do we make it easier?
By organizing smarter, not harder. You want a system that does a lot of the work for you and that’s inherently flexible. This is exactly why we created Chipmunk.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say you’re designing a website for a certain crime-busting, ghost-fighting client. You start by uploading their graphics and other assets, giving them names. Now make collections of different groups of content. Maybe you want a collection of all their jumpsuit-clad employee biography pictures. Maybe you want another collection for images of all the different villains they’ve thwarted. The sky’s the limit for how you can organize them.
But what if there’s some overlap? Pictures or content that belong in multiple collections? Who wants to keep track of all the different folders where a particular piece of content might live?
We experienced this all the time, so we came up with something that works better. Items in Chipmunk can live in multiple collections at the same time, without duplication. And when you add a sweet sepia filter to Zuul and save it, your updates are going to show up in every collection she’s in—while keeping the previous versions intact. There’s no need to duplicate the changes you made or deal with multiple versions of the same content. This fundamental change in approach frees you from extra work and confusion.
When you’re looking for your content later within Chipmunk, you can look wherever it makes sense for you at the time.
You can do it. Don’t get slimed by all the stuff you have to organize. Just get a better system.
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