Do we really need a new workspace for every single video?

Hey David Laycock,

I've experienced the same issue. Here's a fix that has kept my sanity:

1 Workspace Per Stage Rule

Open only 1 workspace per Stage or Course (depends on the nature of the course).

• When you click to open it, rename it immediately. Examples, "3 page portfolio site", "jQuery - image gallery template", "JS - hide and show some text", etc. Sometimes you don't need to rename the title, but if you're looking to use these for your personal projects I strongly suggest you rename them.

• You can also rename your Workspace later by going to Workspaces and clicking on the gear to the right (settings). Rename your Workspace to your liking and click "Update Workspace".

Warning! - be careful when doing this. You might accidentally miss a small change here or there, which can, in turn, lead to more frustration and lots of time lost. My next suggestion should prevent this problem:

Keep it Tidy

1. During each Step in a Stage, open up the Workspace to see if there's any new content (If there's not - and often the Treehouse teacher will tell or show you this - then go to Workspaces and delete that Workspace. You don't need it). Otherwise, copy the content you need and then delete the now redundant Workspace.

2. Condense and Delete. Condense your Workspaces where you can. I have an HTML Workspace that encompasses nearly all the HTML courses I've taken. It's a bit cluttered as a result, but it's all in one place so it's easy to search and not spread out across multiple Workspaces.

This step takes more time, but it's a heck of a lot better than sifting through countless, similarly named Workspaces, right?

Additional Tip

Save your Workspaces into logically organized files and folder via Dropbox (or your cloud storage of choice). Upon Stage or Course completion, I manually 'sync' my Treehouse Workspaces to Dropbox. That way, all my data is backed up. Plus, loading a text file is still a bit faster than loading Workspaces.

Future Hope?

Treehouse is always refining how they do things. Perhaps they'll come across our mutual concerns and create a more intuitive solution to Workspaces. I'm sure they're already well aware of some of the deficiencies in how Workspaces are organized. I'll take this opportunity to audaciously suggest the following:

1. Upon clicking "Launch Workspace", allow user to Create New Workspace or Open Saved Workspace

2. Allow user to bulk delete Workspaces

3. Allow user to create folders within Workspaces for more efficient organization

4. In addition to renaming the Workspace title, allow user to add descriptive subtext underneath the title. For example, allow user to change:

Front End Optimization using developer tools

Started from Chrome DevTools

To:

Front End Optimization using developer tools

Made my site faster using devtools extension, resizing images, and doing other rad stuff. Started from Chrome DevTools

Closing

Something I keep in mind, too, is that Workspace technology is pretty remarkable! When I began using Treehouse, the only option was to download the project files and go from there. Workspaces is a huge step up and I'm really thankful that Treehouse implemented them. They keep getting better, so I'm sure we'll see some new changes before too long (and most likely better than my recommended changes above).

Hope that helps, David!