Tools, Links and References for WordPress Professionals
My primary development tool is a narcoleptic 2011 Macbook Pro. It works hard, but those old bones just don’t function like they used to.
Recently, after completing a fresh install of the OS, I was transferring my favorites from a backup and it occurred to me that I have a rather large collection of WordPress and web development favorites that could use some organizing so I thought I would take the opportunity to do some housekeeping and share some of them here.
Accessibility
- A11y Command-line Tools – Accessibility Audits for the Web
- An Intro to Accessible WordPress Themes
- ChromeLens
- The A11Y Project
- Wa11y – The Web Accessibility Toolbox
- Useful Accessibility Tools for WordPress Development
- WAVE Web Accessibility Tool
- WCAG Overview
- WordPress Accessibility
- WP Accessibility – Fixes common accessibility issues in your WordPress site
Analytics
- Clicky.com – Web Analytics in Real Time
- Crazy Egg – Visualize where your visitors click
- GlobalStats
- Google Analytics – Mobile, Premium and Free Website Analytics
- Google Analytics Academy
- Keen IO – Analytics for Developers
- Kissmetrics
- Mint – An extensible, self-hosted web site analytics program
- Piwik – Open Source Analytics
API’s
- APIs.io – API search engine
- Data.gov
- Facebook APIs and SDKs
- Facebook Graph API Explorer
- Google APIs Explorer
- ProgrammableWeb – Mashups, APIs, and the Web as Platform
- PublicAPIs – Directory of public APIs for web and mobile
- Twitter API Overview
Blogs, News, & Personalities
- 10up
- 24 ways
- Advanced WordPress
- Adventures in JavaScript Development
- A List Apart
- Bill Erickson
- BobWP
- Brian Gardner
- Carrie Dils
- ChrisLema.com
- Copyblogger
- Cory Miller
- CSS-Tricks
- Half-elf on Tech
- Daniel Espinoza
- Dave Rupert
- Filament Group
- ManageWP
- Mark on WordPress
- Matt Report
- Matt Mullenweg
- Patrick’s Programming Blog
- Paul Irish
- Pippins Plugins
- Post Status
- Rafal Tomal
- Scotch.io
- Six Revisions
- Smashing Magazine
- StudioPress
- Stuff & Nonsense
- Sucuri Blog
- Syed Balkhi
- The Bourn Creative Blog
- The Next Web
- The Smart Passive Income Blog
- The Web Savvy Marketing Blog
- Torque
- Trent Walton
- WebDevStudios
- WP Beginner
- WP Tavern
- WordPress.com News
- WordPress.org News
- WP Engine
- WP Mayor
- WPMU DEV
Cheat Sheets
- Cheatography – Cheat Sheets For Every Occasion
- Emmet Cheat Sheet
- PhpDoc2Cheatsheet
- PhpStorm
Conferences
- BDConf
- CaboPress
- Circles
- Collision
- Dallas Startup Week
- Digital Commerce Summit
- Digital Summit Dallas
- Lone Star PHP
- Nonprofit Technology Conference
- PressNomics
- Prestige Conference
- Squares
- SXSW
- WooConf
- WordCamp Central
- WordCamp DFW
- WPCampus
Content Marketing
- CoSchedule – Content Marketing Editorial Calendar and more
Contracts & Proposals
CRMs
- Agile CRM
- Capsule
- CiviCRM
- Neon
- Presspoint
- SalesForce
- UkuuPeople – Simple CRM for WordPress
- Zoho
CSS
- Codrops CSS Reference
- CSS Font Stack – A complete collection of web safe CSS font stacks
- CSS3 Selectors
- CSS Guidelines – High-level advice for writing sane, manageable, scalable CSS
- CSS Lint
- CSS Stats
- CSS-Tricks
- CSS Wizardry
- cubic-bezier.com
- Little CSS Stuff Newcomers Get Confused About
- :nth Tester
- Sass – CSS with Superpowers
- Less – CSS with less than super powers
- The Image Replacement Museum
- YUI Grid Builder
CSS Frameworks
Design
- Adobe Color CC – Color scheme generator
- Design Principles
- Favicon Generator – Generate favicon pictures and HTML
- GoodUI
- Lorempixel
- Material Design – Google Design Guidelines
- Pattern Lab – Build Atomic Design Systems
- Placehold.it – Quick and simple image placeholders
- Pixelapse – Github for Designers
- Stripe Generator
- Subtle Patterns – Free textures for your next web project
- Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator
- Wireframe.cc
Development
- A Front End Engineer’s Manifesto
- Google Hosted Libraries
- Laravel
- Modern.IE – Virtual Machine (VM), Windows Virtual PC & Browserstack
- Move The Web Forward
- PHP.net
- Standardista
- W3C Markup Validator
- WordPress Coding Standards
- RegExr – Regex playground
- WP Test – Theme Unit Test Data
Don’t Forget to Eat
- AllRecipes.com – Recipes, food and cooking tips
- Domino’s
Ecommerce
Finance and Accounting
- Quickbooks
- Freshbooks
- Xero
- Schilling Business & Tax – Planning Tools
- TurboTax
Font Shops
HTML
Iconography
- Dashicons
- Genericons
- IcoMoon – Icon Font Generator
- NounProject
- Pictos
- Symbolset
Inspiration
- Allur.co
- Awwwards
- Blog Design Heroes
- CartFrenzy
- Dribbble
- Edits Quarterly
- Folio Focus
- Media Queri.es
- MinimalExhibit
- Ministry CSS
- Simple Desktops
- The Phraseology Project
- The Design Inspiration
- TYPEinspire
- Typespiration
Invoicing, Time Tracking
JavaScript
- Angular.js
- Backbone.js
- Ember.js
- Flickity
- Infinite Scroll
- Isotope
- Handlebars.js
- JavaScript is Sexy
- JavaScript Operator Precedence
- jQuery
- Masonry
- Modernizr – Feature detection library for HTML5/CSS3
- React.js
Learning
- Codeacademy
- Code.org
- Girls Learning Code
- Girls Who Code
- Ladies Learning Code
- Lynda.com
- Treehouse
- Udacity
- Udemy
- WordPress Lessons – Codex
Legal
- Docracy – Free Legal Documents
Local Development
- Atom
- Brackets
- DesktopServer
- PhpStorm
- MAMP Pro
- Pressmatic
- Sublime Text
- Transmit
- Varying Vagrant Vagrants
Marketing
- AdSense
- Growth Verse
- Warrior Forum
Marketplaces
Misc
- Built With
- Calm.com
- Can I Use
- Charlie
- CitySounds
- Dan’s Tools
- Email Address Encoder
- Godark.us – A Google Custom Search Engine
- Google Voice
- Humans TXT
- Jekyll
- Kraken.io
- Skype – Audio & Video Teleconferencing tool
- Small PDF
- SoundManager 2
- This Day In History
- TinyPNG
- Unix Time Conversion
- Zapier – Automate all the things
- Zoom – Video Conferencing
Nonprofit Tech
- CiviCRM
- Clover Donations
- Donate.ly
- Google Grants – Google AdWords grants for nonprofits
- Neon
- NTEN – Nonprofit Technology Network
- PurposeWP
- TechSoup
Outsourcing
Payment Solutions
Performance
- WebPagetest – Website Performance and Optimization Test
- GTmetrix – Website Speed and Performance Optimization
- Pingdom – Website Speed Test
Plugins
- Backup Buddy
- bbPress
- BuddyPress
- Debug Bar
- Developer
- FakerPress
- Gravity Forms
- Imsanity
- iThemes Security Pro
- Jetpack
- Log Deprecated Notices
- Monster Widget
- Ninja Forms
- Query Monitor
- P3 Plugin Profiler
- Polylang
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- RTL Tester
- Theme Check
- User Switching
- WP Migrate DB Pro
- WPML
- WP REST API
- WP Rocket
- WordPress Plugin Handbook
- WordPress Plugin Boilerplate
- WordPress Plugin Boilerplate Generator
- WordPress Reset
Project Management
Prospective Clients
Responsive Web Design
- Am I Responsive?
- BrowserStack – Responsive Design Testing across Mobile and Desktop Browsers
- Grid – A simple guide to responsive design.
- Microsoft Edge Tools
- Responsinator
- Responsive Web Design – Ethan Marcotte’s 2010 Article
- W3C mobileOK Checker
- Webmaster’s Mobile Guide
Security
- Certbot
- Let’s Encrypt – Free SSL Certificates
- Sucuri Sitecheck – Website malware scanner
- VirusTotal
- WPScan – WordPress vulnerability scanner
SEO
- AdSense
- Google Keyword Planner
- Open Site Explorer
- PageSpeed Insights
- Screaming Frog – SEO Spider Tool
- Search Engine Land
- The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
- XML Sitemaps Generator
- Yoast Academy
Social Media
Startups
Stock Photos
- Magdeleine
- Death to the Stock Photo
- Public Domain Images
- Gratisography
- ISO Republic
- Jay Mantri
- New Old Stock
- Picography
- TheStocks.im
- Unsplash
Theme Frameworks and Starter Themes
- Components
- Genesis
- Roots – HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme
- Underscores – A Starter Theme for WordPress
Theme Shops
- Appfinite
- DesignerThemes.com
- Headway Themes
- Mint Themes
- StudioPress
- Themify
- ThemeZilla
- UpThemes
- WPZoom
Training
- Appendto.com – Web Development Training for Teams
- Sidekick – Interactive tutorials for WordPress
- Video User Manuals – WordPress video tutorials
- WP101 – WordPress video tutorials
Typography
- Golden Ratio Typography Calculator
- Google Web Fonts Typographic Project
- The League of Moveable Type
- TYPEinspire
- Typespiration
- Type Scale – A Visual Calculator
Version Control
- Bitbucket
- Git – Fast Version Control System
- GitHub
- GitLab – Open source git repo management software
Website Hosting
- Cloudways
- DigitalOcean
- Flywheel
- Liquid Web
- Linode
- Media Temple
- Pagely
- Pantheon
- Presslabs
- ServerPilot
- Synthesis
- WP Engine
- Endurance International Group – Evil web hosting list
Website Maintenance
Women In Tech
WordPress
- AtomPub – Codex Page
- Codex
- Core Contributor Handbook
- Developer Code Reference
- GenerateWP
- hookr.io – WordPress Hook/API Index
- ThemeCheck.org
- Theme Review – Code Auditing, Expert Feedback
- WordPress Filters – List of WordPress filter hooks
- WordPress Actions – List of WordPress action hooks
- WP Fill Me – WordPress Filler Content for Theme Testing
- WP-Snippets
- WP Wallpaper
- XML-RPC – Codex page
- XML-RPC.com