My Development Tools

As a freelance web designer and web developer, I use a variety of tools when developing websites.  This article aims to introduce you to these tools and tell you a little about what they do.

Sublime Text
I do most of my coding using Sublime Text. It’s simple, lightening quick and has many plugins available to benefit your workflow. I find this a useful tool for the majority of my front end development projects.

PhpStorm
When focusing on backend development work, I use PhpStorm. It’s better for larger, more complicated projects like Magento or Laravel as it offers some great tools to aid development.

Git
Git is a distributed version control system. It shows changes that were made to the code over time and allows you to backtrack if necessary and undo those changes. It’s also a great way of backing up all your work; you can use online sites like BitBucket and Github for storing your repository.

SequelPro
This is a great free tool for managing your databases on a Mac.

Grunt
Grunt is a Javascript task runner. I use it for compiling my Less/SASS files, minifying my Javascript and deploying my code.

Transmit
For FTP I use Transmit. It’s quick and simple to use.

MAMP Pro
MAMP is a local server environment combining Apache, MySQL and PHP for OS X and Windows. When developing websites on my Mac I use MAMP. It lets me quickly set up sites with no hassle.