The following are tools that I use on my personal projects. Some of them may be affiliate links so I may get a percentage of the sale if you buy using my links.
Fathom Analytics
Run by two guys I really enjoy following across the internet, Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, Fathom Analytics is the analytics software I use when I need analytics for my site/app.
In their own words “Fathom is a simple and private website analytics platform that lets you focus on what’s important: your business.”
Check Out Fathom Analytics Here
Figma
After using Sketch for a number of years (still a great tool) I discovered Figma a year and a half or so ago and haven’t looked back.
What do I love about Figma? How intuitive it is to use, and the simple sharing functionality for feedback and collaboration.
Tower (Git GUI)
Tower has been a tool I’ve been happy to pay for for several years. There are other really great git version control gui’s out there, but Tower is hands down the best one I’ve used.
One of the features I really appreciate is the “git flow” functionality which makes it simple to follow the git flow methodology for your repo.
Visual Studio Code
My code editor of choice is VSCode. I started with Sublime Text, then switched to Atom before finally ending up with Visual Studio Code. Along the way, I’ve dabbled with PHPStorm and a number of other editors.
VSCode is pretty good out of the box but I recently was impressed with the results of using this course to configure my VSCode setup.
Transistor.fm
I’ve been publishing podcast episodes since early 2011. Most of that time I was just hosting the files myself, but in the last year or so I’ve been following the work of Justin Jackson and when I heard that he was launching a podcast hosting service I was highly intrigued.
A few months later I was looking to start a podcast for my families farm and Transistor was the obvious choice. I currently have three podcasts (including one for NodleStudios) on the platform and couldn’t be more happy with the service.
CheckoutWC
If you have a WordPress site that has a WooCommerce store on it you really owe it to yourself to take a look at what Checkout for WooCommerce is doing. Essentially it turns the checkout experience from something horrible to a clean, modern checkout experience.
In the interest of full disclosure, my friend Clif runs CheckoutWC, but it is a great product that I use any time a WordPress site I build or manage uses WooCommerce.
WPSentMail
WP Sent Mail is one of the first plugins I install on any WordPress site I run. It gives me a great view into what emails WordPress is sending, what they look like, when they are being triggered, who they are being set to, etc.
WPSentMail has a wonderful “Airplane mode” that is great for local/staging sites, setting airplane mode makes so your WordPress site can’t send emails.
Full disclosure I actually work on and help with support for WPSentMail.
WP Rocket
If you’re running a WordPress website on a host that doesn’t provide a good caching option you should definitely take a look at WP Rocket! It has been a great tool in my kit for a number of years now.