My arsenal of tools

[golles]

Hi

I though it may be worth a quick post to share some of the tools we have built up over our time on the internet. Focused on website / domain investment. I have been earning a living on the web through one form or another since 2002 and many of these tools have been found along the way. I know when I was starting out the lack of tools was a hindrance so I hope this list helps those on the early part of their web career as I sure the seasoned professionals have most of these in daily use already.

I haven't linked to the tools, but you can Google and quickly find them if you are interested.

In no particular order.

• artisteer - site development this is in no way leading web design / development tool BUT it is extremely useful for quick site makeovers and especially useful for non technical people. It allows you to create a layout then automatically generate a theme / template etc for popular content management systems - wordpress, joomla, drupal etc or static html
• Content Management System - Wordpress - can be a royal pain managing a multitude of sites on a CMS especially when their updates etc, but wordpress is about the most flexible and easiest to use with some great plugins.
• Xenu Link Sleuth - spiders a site and grab a list of page s/ urls, status codes, broken links, title tags etc and allows generation of a site map - great for du-diligence work when buying a site and seeing some quick wins from an on page SEO factor.
• Screaming Frog Spider - as per xenu but with a few more features - free up to 500 pages - then will need paid version.
• SEO Tool Bar from SEOBook - firefox toolbar allows quick sense check on any site from and SEO perspective
• Chrome Extension - SEO Site Tools - as per SEO Book tool bar but does same things in Chrome
• Chrome Extension - Chrome SEO - As above just by a different provider.
• Firebug - firefox / chrome plugin that allows analysis of web page analysing html, javascript, css and page load time with extra page load plugin.
• Web developer toolbar for Firefox - as per firebug with a few different features too.
• Rank Checker from SEObook - for quick and dirty keyword rank checking for a particular site.
• Advanced Web Ranking - more advanced website rank reporting (this is a paid tool and quite expensive). We also run a very small SEO agency and use this tool for ranking reports for clients. It is very extensive and powerful.
• Roboform - password management and a host more - I literally couldn't live without this.
• MySQL Administrator - use for administering databases and create autobackup schedules for databases from your PC.
• Filezilla - FTP client.
• Tweetdeck - although we are not huge social media players you cant avoid it these days - tweetdeck allows us to manage multiple twitter (and other) accounts from one place.
• Camtasia Studio - allows for very professional looking screencasts - we use this mainly for tutorials but may be of use dependant on your web business model (paid tool).
• Notepad++ - great simple text editor.
• PDF Creator - generate pdf from anything - installs as an extra printer and literally anything you can print you can turn into a pdf.
• Sizer - allows you to see what youe website looks like at different screen sizes.
• Faststone Photo Resizer - it me me literally years to find this tool. Bulk image resizing and optimisation - amazing software.
• Skype - for the obvious.
• WinHtTrack - allows copying of an entire website - great if you have just purchased a domain and content - quick way of getting all the content copied. Or if you are moving a site to a new domain etc.
• Winmerge - for comparing two text files - we use for comparing files for things like version upgrades a and looking for changes. It has a multitude of other use too.
• Winrar - winzip alternative with a few more features.
• network-tools.com - find anything you need to about a domain, ownership, technical / server setup etc.
• domaintools.com - as above
• google keyword tool - keyword research - we have nothing as good for keyword research - any other suggestions?
• domainlore - uk domain drop / auction
• freshdrop - find recently dropped international domains.
• outlook - email - yes we still use it I am looking for better ways to manage email - but not found one that we are 100% happy with.
• ietester - test your wesbite on all versions of internet explorer
• paypal - for obvious
• escrow.com - for obvious
• odesk/elance/scriptlance/99designs - for all the stuff we don't want to do or can't do in house.
• 123-reg / moniker / godaddy - for some domain name registration management.
• opensrs - we have a reseller account with tucows under their opensrs platform for some domain name registration and management.
• dropbox - sharing files on occasion.
• graphic river / themeforest other envato sites - for quick graphics / themes etc.
• textbroker - for quick and dirty content creation - not exceptional but serves a purpose on some occasions.
• majestic seo - paid for tool but handy for backlink checking and analysis.
• open site explorer - as per majestic seo
• gravity forms - wordpress plugin for form creation

ok, this is getting too long.......that's enough to start things off - there are a few other bits but nothing out of the ordinary.

what tools do you use?

[ScottJ]

I think one of the best tools I have come across came from a mention on this forum: Warrick

[grynge]

jdownloader - makes it easy grabbing media from large sites like youtube etc..
uestudio - multiple reasons, editing any file, quick search-replace over 100,000 files
total commander - multiple reasons, quick batch renaming, crc check, quick ftp,
broken x disk manager - I have 100's of hdd's so this keeps a track of all files and simple search for me

and a myriad of tools I have written myself from quick batch files to complicated db scrapers

[golles]

blimey @scottj thanks - how have I missed warrick? that is very nice.

@grynge - thanks also - great additions to the list - like the total commander

[TheGreenMan]

Im surprised this thread hasnt gotten more attention than it did! I hope im not out of place bumping something like this, but it would be interesting to hear what some of the other players are playin with haha. And personally, I think this thread has potential for a stickie

-tgm

[Clinton]

TGM, I was hoping to promote it to a sticky if it attracted some interest and a few more good posts.

Anyway, I'll add mine:
Domain Punch Pro for managing domains. The info it collects is awesome, so is the support
Thunderbird for email (I use OE as well for some email, but in comparison Thunderbird simply rocks)
Gmail (for filtering spam)
quikinternet - one of my ISPs. They've given me great service and quick response times over several years
Putty
Filezilla FTP (when security isn't such a big concern. Do you know it stores your passwords on your hard disk in text form!?)
Notepad++
7Zip
Gimp
123LogAnalyzer (I have a copy from when it was free)
Comodo Firewall

Maybe more later...

BTW, the OP's MySQL Administrator is not available anymore. But there's MySQL Workbench instead.

[TheGreenMan]

Interesting, i know what a lot of the basic programs are, but its gonna take some searchin to determine what some of em are. I meant to suggest thunderbird to the op but forgot haha. And ive always prefered winrar over winzip, but thats mostly ui preferences ha. Thank clinton!

[grynge]

MozBackup if you run thunderbird/firefox makes for simple backups and transfer from machine to machines.
Get All Mails plugin for thunderbird it allows you to receive all your accounts emails with 1 button click.

[108flowers]

Thanks for bumping this. Being a newer member I hadn't seen this thread. There are a number of things that I didn't know about and would probably have never found on my own. Making it a sticky would be a great idea.

[jamesuk]

Some good tools here. I use Google Apps extensively for collaboration, accessing documents on my smartphone, email and knocking up agile SEO tools. I also use "If This Then That" - iftt extensively - well worth checking out. You can define "recipes" that define an action to take based on something happening. For example, send a text message if Amazon has a new free app of the day, automatically populate Google calendar with specified events, receive an alert when somebody posts something on CragsList that matches your search term etc.