WordPress has grown leap & bound from a blogging platform to a full-fledged open-source platform to meet all kinds of web-related needs. Today, it is the most powerful CMS in PHP open source community, with immense flexibility to yield any scale of application that modern clients and their end-users expect.
WordPress has updated its code-base and integration capabilities to support right from power-users to seasoned WordPress developers for simple to highly complex needs — myriads of themes out in the market to meet the expectations of power-users and developers.
WordPress extensions, plugins, and components are in abundance in the market, and the official WordPress extension marketplace is the biggest one among all PHP open source platforms. The same goes true for its community of developers who constantly strive for innovative tools and techniques to sharpen their skills to thrive and grow in a fiercely competitive milieu.
My goal in writing the post is to introduce WordPress developers, particularly newbies and mid-level WordPress designers and WordPress programmers. Let me explain the top ten categories of WordPress tools to get going on the path of being a seasoned developer with a bright future.
WordPress Design Tools
A standard Web Development Company always starts web development right from the web designing stage. It involves wireframe creation mostly with hand drawing and prototypes development with digital tools. After the final approvals of a prototype, WordPress designers create WordPress website design in professional tools.
1 – Sketch:
Here, WordPress designers apply professional tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch. Today, Sketch has beaten Adobe design tools in many respects. Photoshop believes in a raster design tool while Illustrator a vector tool, but Sketch is a super mixture of both kinds of design approaches.
It has Corel Draw-like vector design capabilities with visual tools and an interface. Similarly, it offers raster designing tools with the latest effects on your pixels. It can prove an excellent prototyping tool to create interactive prototypes simulating an almost final version of your website with the right plugins.
It also allows your design to convert into ready-to-use code without passing an extended slicing and HTML, CSS, other scripting labor processes.
2 – Uilang:
Apart from graphics designing tools, WordPress developers are also looking for more advanced tools to create a language-based UI for more dynamic designs. Uilang is an excellent choice for it. You can add interactive elements in your WordPress UIs without going to get your legs in dirty codding.
You need not jump on jQuery and JavaScript like complicated coding. You can build notification banners, animated switches, navigation popovers, tabs, and accordions per custom needs. It also enables WordPress developers to create interactive prototypes as per need.
WordPress Code Framework
We know the power of frameworks in the management or organization of code and the web development process. Some code frameworks can give you a solid code base for a quick head start to create a WordPress site with enough complexities. It prevents developers from reinventing the wheel for repeated tasks.
3 – Roots:
It is a package that contains multiple tools to design a robust WordPress application faster than a standard IDE for WordPress. It has three main components, such as
- Trellis, a LEMP stack for server-side coding.
- Bedrock is a WordPress boilerplate.
- Sage is a WordPress starter theme.
Sage helps you to start small by creating a theme. Bedrock assists developers to organize projects better, enhance configuration, and manage extensions with the help of Composer. Trellis makes tasks of DevOps easy by providing automatic provision for WordPress hosting.
4 – Prettier:
We know following the best coding practices is tough for WordPress developers. Their code needs formatting and reprinting according to the best possible styles. It is Prettier makes the code pretty to read and indexed by bots.
Prettier supports JS, JSX, Angular, Vue, TypeScript, CSS, LESS, Flow, HTML, JSON, and other scripts for code formatting. It brings clean and consistent styles in the code while reprinting it.
WordPress Theme Development Tools
WordPress has a highly popular and most used asset, and it is WordPress themes. Developing themes and selling them in WordPress marketplaces is a lucrative business for many seasoned WordPress developers. Therefore, theme development tools are in demand among WordPress development communities. Let’s check some tools in due course.
5 – Underscores:
It is a kind of starter theme. It means it provides tools and a platform to create a new theme in custom ways. You can use it as a parent theme and leverage its following offerings.
- HTML5 templates
- Template tags
- Code snippets
- Exemplary CSS layouts
- Some tricks & tweaks for excellent development experiences
6 – Theme Check:
When a WordPress developer makes mistakes in project coding, its impacts restrict only that project, but it affects all users or subscribers when errors are committed in a theme. Thereby, themes should be foolproof in the first place.
Theme Chick is a proofreading tool for theme code. It catches mistakes sharply and confirms that your code follows the best coding practices and standard coding recommendations.
WordPress Extension/Plugin Development Tools
Extensions are real gems in the WordPress community. It enables developers to customize the project to meet the needs of any domain without affecting the core of WordPress.
Therefore, plugins are hotcakes that sell quickly in the marketplaces. Some tools are helping developers to create innovative and unique plugins to meet the expectations of the market.
7 – WordPress Plugin Boilerplate:
It is a startup type of plugin that lets you take and make an innovative plugin for your ideas or requirements. It provides a standardized, well-organized, and object-oriented foundation to create superb extensions quickly and cost-effectively.
It offers some outstanding features, including code organization, code snippets, setup for public & admin hooks, and heavily documented to guide you throughout the plugin development process.
8 – Developer:
It helps developers create an environment that helps develop the best plugins using various tools. It allows you to develop plugins for self-hosted as well as WordPress platform-hosted websites.
WordPress Migration Tools
Migration is a usual phenomenon on any popular platform. Some migrations take place cross-platform, while some in-between versions or, say major updates. Whatever the migration needs, the security of data and resources is the prime focus. Smooth migration is expected everywhere.
9 – Duplicator:
Thereby, WordPress developers are using various tools during the migration process & Duplicator is the favorite among many. It provides solid backup plans for database backup and code plus resources back up to assure quick restoration if any mishap occurs during the migration process.
It also offers a migration wizard with a comprehensive user interface to go fast and comfortably in the process. The premium version contains advanced features such as cloud storage, email alerts, and scheduled backup.
WordPress Debugging Tools
Everyone wants to create a bug-free and high-performance application. Therefore, WordPress developers are seeking the help of efficient debugging tools.
10 – WordPress Enable Debugging:
WordPress already possesses a few inherent tools for debugging, such as
- WP_DEBUG – you have to set the constant true to receive debugging messages. It would help if you changed wp-config.php to enable it.
- WP_PLUGIN_DIR – it helps to use standard global paths.
- dbDelta() – it help in database management.
- Use the Black Box plugin to add a thin black bar to the top of the web page.
Who Will Help You in Advanced WordPress Development?
WordPress developers are abundant in numbers, but finding quality developers is daunting. SysBunny has accumulated WordPress talents after a long journey. You will have Avant-grade WordPress developers to jot down in your next-generation WordPress development projects. Let’s discuss it.
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