Life as a web designer can be insanely busy. We have multiple clients, each making numerous demands on our time. We work in a fast-moving sector in which we have to constantly relearn our skills. We also read endless posts that encourage us to network and develop our “personal brand.”

With so many demands on our time, and things set to only get worse, all we can do is put in more and more hours to get things done. Unfortunately, there are still only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. If things continue at this pace, most of us will simply run out of time or collapse from exhaustion.

If we want to be successful in this highly competitive world, we will have to work smarter rather than longer. This is a lesson I have had to learn from experience since starting as a web designer back in 1994. As I got older, pulling the all-nighters that defined my early career became impossible. Eventually, the pressure overwhelmed me and led to sickness and depression.

This forced me to reconsider the way I work and helped me discover five secrets that enable me to get as much done as possible without burning out. My hope is that by sharing them here, I can help the next generation of web designers avoid the fate that befell me and many of my peers. Unsurprisingly, the secret to getting more done in less time begins with being organized.

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.

To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot

WordPress has a perfectly adequate commenting system built-in. But it can quickly grow unwieldy and commenting can take up a lot of system resources if you run a high-volume site.

That’s why alternative commenting systems such as Disqus (recently integrated on WDD) and Intense Debate have been developed.

They handle your comments for you, making it easier to moderate and manage comments, and to view analytics related to blog comments.

Below we’ve taken a look at five major commenting systems available for WordPress (all are also available for other platforms).

We’ve also covered a few interesting alternative commenting systems and methods that you might want to look into.

If you run an online business, drawing customers to your website is vital for your continued success.

While lots of effort tends to be spent on SEO and gaining new visitors, ensuring they return is another matter. Email newsletters are the perfect opportunity to inform your past visitors of reasons to return.

Even if you don’t use email newsletters for your own business, you’ll likely run into a client who wants to use them sooner or later.

Email is one of the oldest forms of online communication, and one that hasn’t evolved much since it’s inception due to it’s use on a wide variety of devices and a lack of solid formatting standards.

Therefore, it’s safe to assume that at least one of your subscribers is going to be viewing your email on a 20-year-old computer running an obsolete operating system and you should take that into account.