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90 Essential Tools For WordPress Web Designers and Developers - GoDaddy Blog
90 Essential Tools For WordPress Web Designers and Developers - GoDaddy Blog
90 Essential Tools For WordPress Web Designers and Developers - GoDaddy Blog
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Editor’s note: This post is part of our collection on managing multiple WordPress sites.
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WordPress powers just over half of the websites on the internet, making WordPress design and
development lucrative niches for web pros. And because WordPress is an open-source
platform, skilled developers can do just about anything they like with it.
But that openness comes at a price: You can easily end up spending so much time tweaking a
particular site that you’ll overshoot your estimates and lose money on the job.
That’s where having the right WordPress tools can be lifesavers. Time is money for freelancers,
so tools that can save you time on a coding or design job can pay for themselves many times
over (especially considering that some of these tools are free!).
Here’s a roundup of the best tools for each aspect of WordPress site design, development, and
management.
Jump to a section:
Design tools
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Design tools
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Development tools
Management tools
Design tools
Themes and frameworks
Whether you develop your own WordPress themes or prefer to buy them off the rack, there’s a
tool for you.
#2: Underscores
A popular starter theme. You can use Underscores as a basis for creating your own custom
theme.
#3: Avada
The top-selling WordPress theme is popular for a reason — namely, its flexible design options
and robust framework. Avada makes designing custom WordPress sites fast and easy.
#6: StudioPress
A theme studio and marketplace. They also sell the Genesis framework, widely considered to be
one of the best on the market.
#8: WP Rollback
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#8: WP Rollback
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A plugin that automates the process of rolling themes and plugins forward or back. It Home
can save
you a ton of time when you’re testing out a new theme.
Elements
Graphics, icons, fonts, and photos can make or break a site, but placing them manually can be
awfully time-consuming. These tools make creating, revising, and placing page elements quick
and easy.
#9: IcoMoon
Create your own icon font using IcoMoon’s 5,500+ free vector icons, or pick out an icon pack to
jump-start the process. Icon fonts load faster than bitmap images and are supported by all
browsers, making them an excellent design option.
#12: Sketch
A design tool kit that includes vector editing, pixel precision, export presents, prototyping,
grids, and guides, among other tools. Having all of these tools in one place can save you time
over assembling them piecemeal.
#13: Unsplash
Unsplash is a library of free high-resolution photos, many of which were donated by
professional photographers. All the images are licensed for full commercial use in perpetuity.
#14: uilang
A simple UI-focused programming language for manipulating CSS classes. It lets you create
custom user-interface components that react to the click of a button, switch, or tab.
#15: Attachments
A plugin that lets you directly associate media items with any post by adding a meta box to the
postediting screen. It makes adding images to posts much faster and less tedious than the
default WordPress process.
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This directory of almost 900 different open-source web fonts is searchable by type and
language. Using a custom font can give your sites a unique look and feel.
#17: Dimensions
Need to know a site’s exact layout? This Chrome extension measures the distances between
elements on a website by tracking your mouse movements.
#18: MeasureIt
Like Dimensions, this Firefox extension can help you determine a page’s measurements. It
draws a ruler on your screen to tell you, in pixels, the width, height, or alignment of page
elements.
#24: Infogram
A plugin for creating interactive and fully responsive charts, infographics, and maps. If you’re
designing sites that are heavily data-driven, this can be a huge time-saver.
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A plugin that lets you use the shortcode ‘[advanced_iframe]’ to include webpages via an iframe;
it’s available in both free and pro versions. You can also modify the resulting frame to create
just the right look.
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps guarantee that your beautiful sites receive plenty of
traffic, while marketing tools get those visitors clicking on the “buy” button.
Development tools
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Software development of any kind gets a lot easier if you have the right integrated development
environment (IDE). Here are some of the best options for WordPress developers.
#34: PhpStorm
A robust IDE that can automatically detect if your project is a WordPress site and speeds things
along with full-scale code completion for built-in WordPress functions. It supports PHP,
JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
#35: Aptana
This open-source IDE supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby. While not specifically
designed for WordPress, it’s a good choice for coding web applications, with a solid debugger
and integrated preview browser.
#36: AceIDE
A plugin code editor for developing WordPress themes and plugins. It includes common IDE
features, such as code completion, find and replace, and syntax highlighting.
Coding
Tools that enhance your coding environment and help you take shortcuts here and there can
greatly improve productivity — and increase your profit margin on WordPress development
projects.
#37: WP-CLI
A command-line interface that lets you do pretty much anything you can do in WordPress
admin, and a few things you can’t.
#38: GenerateWP
The bundle of web-based tools takes your input and turns it into valid WordPress code snippets
of various types. Most of the tools are free to use, but a few require a premium membership.
#41: Coda 2
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#41: Coda 2
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A text editor with strong integrated file management and a number of utilities, including an
HTML validator and built-in debugger.
#45: Bedrock
Another boilerplate, Bedrock modifies the standard WordPress installation file structure for
easier customization and enhanced security. It includes Composer, a PHP dependency
manager.
Debugging
The more complicated a site is, the more bugs it’s likely to have — and the harder it is to find
them. It’s a good thing that other developers have built some fabulous tools to help you find and
squash those pesky bugs.
#48: Firebug
A browser add-on for Firefox that lets you edit, debug, and monitor webpages in real time.
Shortcodes Debug Bar Constants Debug Bar Post Types Debug Bar Cron Debug Bar Actions
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Shortcodes, Debug Bar Constants, Debug Bar Post Types, Debug Bar Cron, Debug Bar Actions
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and Filters Add On, Debug Bar Transients, and Debug Bar Remote Requests. Home
This plugin logs deprecated files and functions and suggests replacements, if available. It helps
you to keep all of your WordPress sites up to date with the very latest versions.
Testing
Your customers won’t be happy if your code breaks their WordPress website. The right tools
make thorough testing a snap.
#64: Duplicator
A plugin that lets you move or clone a WordPress site to a new location. You can use it to easily
move a live site to a localhost or sandbox location for testing.
#65: FakerPress
Quickly create text, images, attachments, and other content for testing, thanks to this plugin.
Once you’re done testing the site, it can then delete the fake content for you.
#66: Reset WP
This free plugin resets the site’s database to its default installation values within seconds, and
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#67: Export Database
A free plugin that exports a WordPress database, either in SQL or ZIP form, with the click of a
button.
Local/virtual servers
A virtual server gives you a safe environment in which to test your latest batch of code, but it
can be complicated to set up and maintain. Luckily, these tools can help.
#68: InstantWP
An open-source WordPress development environment for Windows and MacOS. It includes a
built-in SSH terminal and web-based file manager.
#69: XAMPP
An open-source PHP development environment for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Because it
supports PHP and MySQL, it has everything you need to run WordPress from your desktop or
laptop.
#70: WampServer
A Windows web development environment for developers using Apache2, PHP, and MySQL. It’s
similar to XAMPP but only works on Windows machines.
#71: MAMP
A local-server environment designed for MacOS that comes in both free and paid versions. It
does run on Windows machines but is probably best for developers who use Macs.
#72: DesktopServer
Lets you quickly create multiple virtual servers for Windows and MacOS; it comes in free and
paid versions.
#74: Trellis
Like VVV, Trellis is an open-source Vagrant virtual machine; however, it has a slightly different
feature set. For example, Trellis supports PHP 7.2 but not phpMyAdmin, while VVV does the
opposite.
Management tools
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Management tools ®
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Collaboration
Bringing other people onto a WordPress project gives you access to extra skills and resources
but can also complicate the project immensely. Collaboration tools keep everyone pulling in the
same direction.
#75: Slack
A popular workplace chat platform that comes in both free and paid versions. Multiple channels
help you keep conversations organized and on point.
#77: Trello
A free collaborative project-management tool that uses virtual cards to create Kanban boards.
#79: Asana
A team project-management tool for organizing tasks and workflows. You can see just what
projects and tasks each person is working on, how they’re progressing, and who will tackle the
next part of the task.
Productivity
Organization is a key part of staying productive and can enable you to build sites more quickly
and accurately. These tools can help even the most disorganized WordPress pro stay on track.
#81: Airtable
A cross between a spreadsheet and a database, Airtable is great for organizing all kinds of
information. Save time by using templates like their Design template, their User Feedback
template, or their Product Planning template.
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A time-tracking tool that helps you see which activities are eating up your workday hours. By
comparing your time spent to your rates, you can then see which jobs are the most profitable.
#83: Toggl
A simple but free time tracker that can integrate with WordPress via a browser extension. Like
Time Doctor, you can use Toggl to figure out how profitable your work really is.
Administration
Once your latest WordPress site is up and running, these tools can help you manage it and any
related activities. The more you automate your day-to-day tasks, the more time you have to
spend building new sites and performing other highly lucrative activities.
#85: Adminimize
A plugin that allows you to make changes to the WordPress administration area by activating
and deactivating various fields. It even lets you add your own custom fields.
#86: Shake
An online tool to create, sign, and send legally binding agreements quickly and easily. The basic
version is free, but you need to be a paid LegalShield member to access premium features.
#89: Dobby
A free plugin that hides admin notices from other plugins. The result is a clutter-free
WordPress administration panel.
Conclusion
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Conclusion ®
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The sheer number of excellent WordPress tools can be overwhelming, so the real challenge may
be identifying which ones are the best for you.
One approach that can work well is to begin with a single category from the list above —
whichever one is most important to you, either because you use it the most or because you
have the most trouble with it — and start sampling the tools in that section.
Once you’ve picked out your favorite tool from that group, you can wait until you have another
chunk of free time to move on to the next-most-important category, and so on. That will help
you keep the time you spend “tool surfing” to a minimum so that it doesn’t get in the way of
your billable time. And once you’ve deployed these tools, you may find that your next
WordPress project is your most lucrative one ever.
Andy McIlwain
Products Mentioned
Email
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