There is a lot more that goes behind custom WordPress development apart from design and layout. No matter the experience, if WordPress developers don’t take advantage of the latest tools, there are chances they are not giving the optimum results. Right from the beginning to the end, all development tasks can be made easier with the help of WordPress tools. Just like we always look at the bright side of things, how about a list of best tools for WordPress developer?
Sounds great right? Before we tell you the top WordPress tools for a developer, you need to the reasons a developer requires a toolkit at his disposal.
☛ Why Developers Need a Toolkit?
If you have ever worked in WordPress, you probably have a toolkit but are not aware of the same. For instance, most developers have their favorite text editors they prefer for web development.
A developer may have his preferred browser too where he likes to test his application. All these things are components of a toolkit. A toolkit is basically a cluster of various tools that a developer uses to provide the best outcome.
15 Best Tools for WordPress Developer:
1. Atom
Developed with Node.js, Atom is a cross-platform text editor. It can be used to edit any type of file and supports extensions and themes. This text editor can also be used if you want to collaborate in real-time. Atom also enables you to push codes in GitHub without the help of any other tool.
As it is open-source, Atom aligns perfectly with WordPress platforms’ overall goals. Thus, the convenience that Atom provides to the developers makes it one of the top WordPress development tools.
2. Sublime Text
It is a cross-platform source code editor. It may not have as many features as Atom but it is definitely lighter and better. But Sublime Text does provide a substantial amount of plugins and themes. These options are enough for customization.
Some of the best features of Sublime Text are Command Palette, File Switching, Goto Symbols, Multi-Edit, Snippets, and Keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Apart from these two, there are a variety of text editors available in the market. The range of text editors begins with basic text editors to the most advanced ones. It is advisable to choose a text editor that you are most comfortable with.
3. Local by Flywheel
Flywheel is among the most famous managed WordPress web hosts. They also provide a local WordPress development tool by the name of “Local”.
The benefit of Local is that it has a user-friendly interface. You can not only set up multiple local WordPress websites but also configure each of them as per your requirements. You get the option to stop these websites or save them as reusable blueprints. If you are already a Flywheel customer, then a single click can push your local website to a live account.
Due to all these reasons, Local by Flywheel is considered to be the best WordPress development environment.
4. XAMPP
XAMPP is an abbreviation that stands for cross-platform, Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl. It doesn’t give you a dashboard as good as Local. But you have complete control over every component.
XAMPP requires lesser resources than Local to function efficiently. If you are tech-savvy, then this platform is not very hard to work with.
Its low maintenance quality makes XAMPP one of the most useful tools for a WordPress developer.
5. Buddy Works
It is a simple development tool that provides seamless integration as compared to the other CI/CD tools. Apart from this, Buddy Works can integrate with GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket. The features like faster update time with a good UX make it a popular WordPress developer plugin automatic.
Buddy Works aims to ease and automate the entire website building WordPress process. Thus, ranking among the best tools for WordPress developer since its launch.
6. Deployer
It is an open-source tool for the deployment of PHP based websites. It is considered to be one of the best-automated tools as it saves you from making errors and helps you discover bugs. Therefore, making it the perfect WordPress development tool for a website.
7. Draftium
Draftium is one of the most preferred prototyping tools for a WordPress developer. Why so? Because it enables you to structure a website within a few minutes with the option of more than 250 pre-built blocks and 300 prototype templates.
It has a neat UI making it completely user-friendly and lightweight. You will find multiple templates that can be customized with the help of an editing tool. You can remove unwanted details for a better presentation.
With Draftium, you can get going with your projects in a very little time.
8. Parcel
It is an enchanting WordPress plugin. Parcel performs the functions of a bundler for web applications. Parcel provides you support for HTML, CSS, and JavaScripts. It is believed to be the fastest and trusted bundlers for a web application.
It makes the development process hurdle-free by increasing the speed of your startups. Additionally, Parcel rebuilds as it uses multi-core processing for compiling the parallel codes.
9. Postman
It is a great tool for any developer who wants a powerful one-stop solution for their API workflow. Any WordPress development company you hire will tell you that setting up a testing environment is quite a task. But Postman is here to change that.
It is very user-friendly and focused on testing. You can easily set up multiple environments for testing and even share your test cases between them. Thus, reducing the time spent in API testing.
10. Theme Check
If you want to go for modern WordPress theme development, then Theme Check is the tool for you! There are times when due to the smallest of errors your theme may be rejected from the official repository or it may cause problems in the later stage.
Theme check ensures that this doesn’t happen by thoroughly checking everything as per the latest official practices.
11. Beaver Builder
It belongs to the premium category of drag and drop page building plugins for WordPress. When you’re just starting out, Beaver Builder comes with an onboarding tour to help you know things.
It makes the whole WordPress web design process easier by providing you with a live drag and drop interface. You can add elements by simply dragging them from the sidebar to the page. If you want to edit any of these elements, just click on them. Beaver Builder comes with modules that allow you to add things like sliders, backgrounds, content blocks and much more.
Apart from this, it has 30 beautifully designed landing pages templates that help you create a stunning website super fast.
All these qualities make it not only one of the best WordPress design tools but also one of the productive tools for WordPress developers!
12. Thrive Architect
Thrive Architect is one of the high-quality WordPress website building tools. It has a lot of new features as compared to its previous version – Thrive Content Builder.
You don’t necessarily have to be a professional developer to create mind-boggling websites with WordPress. Tools like these do the job for you.
Thus, it can be rightly said that Thrive Architect is a robust tool with drag and drop functionality. It not only makes your business easy to manage but reduces the expenses of hiring a web designer.
13. Speedline
Speedline will measure the progress of the current page and gives a rating based on how quickly the content loads. As ultimately the users will care about what’s showing on the screen.
It will give you a better understanding of user experience as it focuses on the loading speed of the content. Of course, there are parameters to measure your site’s performance, but this is the most crucial.
Hence, Speedline made it to the list of the best tools for WordPress developers!
14. FontAwesome
With FontAwesome you have custom typography and iconography at your disposal. You can use their entire icons library on your website. Some of the icon categories with FontAwesome are web applications, accessibility, transportation, gender, and file type icons, etc.
FontAwesome is constantly working on improving these sets of icons.
15. Trello
As a developer when you are working on too many tasks together, you also need to keep a track of other tasks. Trello exactly helps you do that! It is a free organization tool for project management. Trello enables you to collaborate with other team members in real-time as well as know what is everyone else working on. Here are some things that you can do with Trello:
- Classify different projects into separate boards
- Make use of the columns to keep a track on the progress
- Cards to manage tasks of the other team members
We are sure you will agree that a project management tool is as important as other tools for a developer. Therefore, Trello made it to the list of best tools for WordPress Developer!
Conclusion
Every task in the world becomes easier if you have the right set of tools to do your job. The same principle applies to WordPress developers too. However, the increasing popularity of WordPress development has resulted in new tools coming up in the market every day.
So, the developers also need to stay updated with the latest launches in the market. Once, you have your time, allow them to use their preferred set of tools and they can work wonders for you!
When you hire WordPress development services with the right tools at hand, you can rest assured of getting the best in class results. It is a known fact that a user-friendly website with stunning UI/UX is the key to attract your target audience.
We sincerely hope that our list of best tools for WordPress developer did give you some insights into their importance.
Do you still need some understanding of how these tools can improve the performance of your WordPress site? Ask our experts on [email protected] for everything you need to know to make your WordPress project successful!