Tools I use for Web Development

Here are some of the tools and technologies I use:

WordPress

WordPress is simple, popular and open-source, i.e, free. WordPress estimates:

  •  73 million websites run on WordPress;
  • 19% of websites run on wordpress;
  • 100,000 new WordPress sites created every day.

WordPress’ advantages are:

  • Easy to display any type of content, for any graphic design;
  • Adding new pages or changing existing pages is easier than using a wordprocessor;
  • There are lots of people around who can configure wordpress.

WordPress’ disadvantages are:

  • It is not that good for e-commerce;
  • Load times can be slow, if you use too many plug-ins and widgets.
  • Security problems can arise, if you don’t regularly update to the latest version.

SASS & LESS

Both these tools are CSS pre-processors, for creating the stylesheets. The huge advantage is the tools use variables, so if you don’t like a particular colour shade I’ve used, then it just means changing one variable.  Both also support mixins, which are pre-programmed CSS code, enabling me, for instance, to achieve complex hover effects, with a single line of code.

XAMPP & Netbeans

This is my current development environment, which enables me to run WordPress on my laptop. This is quicker than forever uploading files to the website host, to see if they work. It also means I have a back-up of your website on my laptop.

Roots Framework with Bootstrap

I don’t use 3rd party themes, mainly because they never quite do what I want. I used to code my own themes from scratch, and write my own CSS.

Currently, I use the Roots Framework which uses Grunt and Bower to automatically pull and minify JavaScript libraries, and has a basic theme structure already set up. Then it is mainly a matter of writing a little PHP, and the appropriate HTML for Bootstrap.

Both the Roots Framework and Bootstrap are fearsomly complex, but once understood, extremely powerful and quick. However, Bootstrap is by no means bug free, so usually wind up writing some, but not that much additional CSS, using the LESS pre-processor.

GIMP

I use GIMP for editing images. It is relatively easy to crop, resize, and optimise the resolution for the web. It is also quick to remove backgrounds, and straighten photographs up.