5 Useful Tools and Resources for Every Web Designer and Developer

To bring any website design to live, every designer has his or her tool of choice or look for the Best web designing services. The tools and resources help to simplify the process and make the web design more creative and unique. It also makes the designing process fun since back in the day; it was all about coding. Today you can create or build an intuitive website using graphical user interfaces. If you are an upcoming designer or a professional one, here are several tools and resources that will be of great use to you in your graphic designing work.

HTML5 CSS3

Backbone – Websites are built on HTML and CSS. HTML is a standard markup language that is used to define the layout of the web pages, and its counterpart CSS defines the visual look and formatting of the various elements. The latest version HTML5 is enhanced with multimedia functionality. Any designer should learn this web development language since it’s elementary and quite easy to use compared to other web-based complex languages like PHP which integrates well with HTML.

Notepad++

Editor – Designing a website also involves some coding and scripting. That is why you need one of the best code editor tool called Notepad++. This nifty tool has various useful code editing features which include, Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding, PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace, customizable GUI, document map, auto-completion, and multi-language support.

XAMPP

Local Development Environment – Before loading your site on an actual server, sometimes you may need to simulate a server on your computer to enhance development. If you want to achieve this effectively, then the premium version of XAMPP will do an excellent job for you. It is an open-source local development environment that allows PHP and MySQL development on an Apache server. Why it is loved by many developers, is due to its easy installation process and it’s also free to use, which means you don’t need to subscribe to any web hosting package to benefit from it.

Twitter bootstrap

Frameworks – You may know how to code but still need a quick way for easy front-end web development. That is where bootstrap steps in. This framework has incredible tools to develop responsive websites. All manner of developers is accommodated with this tool, which also helps to implement HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You will find coding work cut out for you at the front end of your site resulting in more focused web development. It also allows complex hidden segments of your websites.

CMS

WordPress – For your content management system, you need a world-renowned platform like WordPress which is considered as the best CMS. It is a free blogging platform that powers over 80 million websites. You can use this system to build your blog or a large enterprise website. What makes this platform so accessible is its simplicity and incredible functionality, which allows anyone to create and run any website. It also has an array of tools called plugins for better delivery. You can easily venture into the online world using world-class themes and plugins that simplify the website running process. WordPress also has a very intuitive dashboard that allows users to customize various capabilities without touching a single line of code. The customization capabilities also allow users to customize their websites according to their taste or business requirements.

Analytics Tools

Google Analytics – When it comes to web analytics, only one tool comes to mind, and that is Google Analytics. In an era where various data from different sources help to give insight on different perspectives, you need a reliable tool that can run effectively and present data in an easy manner. If you choose Google Analytics as your analytics tool of choice, it will help you find out more about your site and how it is viewed out there. The insights given are not obvious. It doesn’t only give you the most searched website but also ideas about your backlinks. If you know how to use this information well, it will help you make the right decisions when it comes to SEO efforts, which will eventually improve your site visibility and general ranking of your website.

Bonus Tools 

Firefox add on

Firebug – Firebug is a great tool when you want to test your site on a browser. It enables you to edit and debug your code as you browse your website. It gives you a live view of the action as you edit your HTML, CSS or JavaScript. The best thing of this tool is that it allows you to open it in a separate window or assign it a small section in the Firefox window. This way, you can do all your activities without it getting in your way. By clicking a small section of the web page, you can find specific HTML elements. You can also make use of this tool as a debugger for JavaScript as you develop your website’s looks. By editing the CSS with firebug, you to tweak various colors, backgrounds, and effects to get the best final product in your web design.

Templates and Web Design Software

Template Toaster – My ultimate tool that caters possible areas of web design, is Template Toaster. It is an awesome program that allows you to create templates and themes. It is used in WordPress to build themes and also supports Joomla, Magneto, and Drupal. This template generator enables web designers to design and develop HTML5/CSS3 websites. The good thing about this theme generator is it doesn’t require your coding skills, as it has a great graphical user interface for simple drag and drop for whatever you want to add to your template or website. Template Toaster caters to every web designing need and it is quite comprehensive.

Conclusion

Above mentioned tools and resources will help you build and design an effective website so that you can expand your web designing portfolio to appeal to more clients. If you use them in the right manner, you are going to achieve desirable results.