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

• Adobe Document Cloud
• Quoteroller

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

• Bootstrap
• Bourbon
• Cutestrap
• Foundation
• Materialize
• Semantic UI
• Susy

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

• BigCommerce
• Easy Digital Downloads
• iThemes Exchange
• Magento
• PrestaShop
• Shopify
• WooCommerce

Finance and Accounting

• Quickbooks
• Freshbooks
• Xero
• Schilling Business & Tax – Planning Tools
• TurboTax

Font Shops

• Font Squirrel
• Fonts.com
• Google Fonts
• Lost Type Co-op
• Typekit

HTML

• Entity Conversion Calculator
• HTML Entities
• HTML5 Element List
• HTML5 Boilerplate
• HTML5 Please

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

• Harvest
• Toggl
• TomatoTimer

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

• Creative Market
• Envato Market

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

• Textbroker
• Toptal
• UpWork

Payment Solutions

• Authorize.Net
• Braintree Payments
• Clover Donations
• Donate.ly
• Dwolla
• PayPal
• Stripe

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

• 17 Hats
• Asana
• Basecamp
• Bureau of Digital
• Planbox
• Podio
• Jira
• Redbooth
• Trello

Prospective Clients

• Tornado Terry’s

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

• HootSuite
• Twitter Feed
• Who Unfollowed Me
• Buffer
• Bit.ly
• Twitter Analytics
• Nuzzel
• TweetDeck

Startups

• BetaList
• The Founder’s Institute
• Product Hunt

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

• InfiniteWP
• iThemes Sync
• Maintainn
• MainWP
• ManageWP
• WP Curve
• WP Remote
• WP Site Care

Women In Tech

• Code.org
• Girl Develop It
• Girls Who Code
• Girls Learning Code
• Ladies Learning Code
• Women And 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