Every website existing on the web should use lot of resources besides human effort. For example, creating images and videos need special tools and investment of money and time from site owner. On this site we use many tools, some we had changed over the period of time but some are being used for years. We want to share such valuable resources so that a new blogger can choose correct resource for building a site.
Images – Snagit
Snagit is the useful image processing tool from TechSmith having many features. We use it mainly for the following purposes:
- Creating feature images and other images on this site.
- Capture image on the screen or from the web.
- Capture a short video capturing screen activities.
Videos – Camtasia
Camtasia is a top video processing tool from TechSmith to create effective videos. You can edit, trim, zoom and do many other simple tricks on the videos to make it more user friendly and sharable.
Image Sharing from Mobile – Fuse
Fuse is a free app from TechSmith used to easily share the photos on the iPhone to Snagit and Camtasia.
Since all three tools Snagit, Camtasia and Fuse are from the same company, they work seamlessly without much effort.
Code Editor – Brackets
Since we need to practice lot of CSS and HTML coding – one of the best editors available is Brackets from Adobe. Brackets with extract allows you to integrate the preview of your coding on Chrome browser. And on top of all it’s a free tool!!!
FTP – FileZilla for Mac
FileZilla is the life saver for our site to backup and modify the WordPress files easily. We love to try new plugins and site modifications which most of the time will result in white screen of death. It is difficult to troubleshoot from the cPanel hosting account and we use FileZilla to reset the files quickly.
Also from the backup point of view FileZilla on Mac works seamlessly to download the complete site to local environment. If you are new to FTP, learn how to use FileZilla.
Platforms – WordPress.org and Weebly
Our core interest is building sites on WordPress and Weebly platforms. We have a dedicated testing and demo sites in order to create how-to articles and demonstration. All our WordPress content is stored and checked on the local environment using MAMP setup. And we use iCloud for storing the backup and sharing content among devices.
Learn 300+ WordPress tutorial and 200+ Weebly tutorial to take your site to next level.
Browsers – Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari
Google Chrome though consumes lot of run time resources is our browser choice since it supports most of the latest developments. Also Chrome is undoubtedly easy and secure compared to Edge or even Firefox. Safari is only used by less than 5% of people on the earth – so, it’s a good idea to deal with the browser used by more than 60% of the users.
Mobile Apps
Though we don’t have dedicated mobile appa for our site we use Google AdSense, WordPress, Weebly, Google Analytics, Canva, Fuse, iMovie, etc. to monitor status, create stuff on mobile and sharing purposes.
Other Resources
Besides the ancillary resources mentioned above there are primary resources like domain, email, hosting, theme, plugins and VPN without which we can’t run a website. These resources are bought from different vendors and evaluated time-to-time for the quality and pricing. At this point of time we use the followings:
- Hosted with SiteGround cloud VPS, additionally we do have some sites on Bluehost and Weebly
- Using GeneratePress premium theme
- Domain registered with GoDaddy
- Email service from GoDaddy with the domain
Plugins We Use
Plugins are backbone of any WordPress site and we use the following plugins on this site:
- Yoast SEO – best search engine optimization plugin
- WP Rocket – ultimate caching plugin (we use with SG optimizer)
- Akismet – automatic spam filtering
- TablePress – beautiful way to create tables in WordPress
- Ad Inserter – AdSense advertisement management
- All In One WP Security – protection for the site
- Redirection – redirect manager as we migrated from .html to WordPress setup
- Contact Form 7 – simple contact form plugin
Summary
In summary, its not an easy task to run a website both from money and time perspective. This is the reason you could see million of sites started and dropped off in-between. We wish all the bloggers and webmasters to evaluate the need right at the beginning and choose the required tools from long-term thinking. Also having right tool will save huge time, which can be spent on the core activity of site creation.
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