Over the past few years the web development community has steadily increased its numbers. Due to the creativity and resourcefulness websites have become increasingly interactive and diverse.
It’s complicated enough with all the different devices that now have access to the Internet to make a website that will look good and function properly across platforms. This is why there are an abundance of tools and services out there that will make web developing a lot easier for everyone involved.
Gridgum
There are a lot of market places for themes and templates out there, but what sets Gridgum apart from the crowd is their stress on quality rather than on quantity. Gridgum aims to become a niche market place by selling templates that are beautiful and unique as well as responsive. Gridgum’s themes and templates are designed for WordPress sites and can be used for many things. No matter if you use them for a personal blog, portfolios or even e-commerce sites, you can rest assured you’ll get both the looks and the reliability. Just take a look at their gallery of Bootstrap themes, it’s been receiving a lot of good feedback lately. As a Gridgum seller you’ll get 70% on an exclusive theme and 45% for a non-exclusive one. You’re also allowed to offer an installation package that will charge extra. If you decide to sell your theme on Gridgum, keep in mind your theme should be responsive, it should have a documentation in English and it should be tested on several browsers. Gridgum takes care of the buyers as well. After you’ve decided on the perfect theme, you’ll receive points on your order which can later be used for redeeming a discount. In addition to this, you can pay through PayPal on Gridgum without the PayPal surcharge that some other theme marketplaces add. You’ll also be able to directly contact the author of the theme or reach out to Gridgum’s staff who will gladly assist you with your issue.
ExpressionEngine
Managing the content of your website will be very easy with ExpressionEngine, a tool created by EllisLab to make your work with your websites easier. The fact that the content is separated from the design will give you the freedom to display it anywhere you want in your pages. The application doesn’t need any modifications in order to suit a certain type of site, ExpressionEngine works with all sorts of websites from personal blogs to eCommerce, real-estate, university or tourism. Moreover, even if you’re not a programmer you don’t need to worry, because ExpressionEngine is very easy to use and doesn’t require any development or design skills. However, if you are a programmer, you’ll immediately discover that ExpressionEngine is one of the most extensible and powerful content management tools you’ll find. If, by any chance, you encounter problems with the tool, you can go to ExpressionEngine Answers, a community resource where you can get help to solve your problems quickly.
HTML5 Maker
If you’re looking for a way to make your personal blog stand out or maybe you’re looking to start an ad campaign, you’re probably in search for an easy way of creating your own animations. HTML5 Maker is one of the best online services that provides a way of creating animated multimedia content such as banners or sliders and you don’t have to worry about having any design or development skills for that. The HTML5Maker has many great features that will help you get creative in no time. The Online Animation Editor and the Online Image Editor will get you started on creating animations easily. You have a large variety of ready-to-use templates you can choose from. Also, the animations will be compatible with Google Double-Click and Google AdWords. Plus, you can also embed your animations from the cloud into your website and share them as a Template with your customers or friends.
Argento
If you’re planning to open an online shop or maybe you already have one and you’re looking to improve it check out Argentotheme.com. They offer one of the best Magento templates you’ll find. Argento is a highly functional template that looks great and was developed based on the best eCommerce strategies and in accordance with Magento developers’ guidelines. The template is, of course, optimized for SEO with tags and HTML attributes and it is also responsive. Argento scales to adapt perfectly to any screen resolution and works with iOS, Android and BlackBerry so there’s no need to design a separate mobile application for your website. Argento also features many popular extensions like products highlights, AJAX search, easy sliders and many others that will transform your website into a very user-friendly one. Plus, you don’t have to worry about the installation process because the team of developers at Argento theme offers to install the template for free in less than 24 hours, so you can get your online business started as soon as possible.
Themify
One of the best choices when you’re looking for a new theme for your website is Themify.me. They provide a large variety of functional themes that also look great on any resolution or device. The themes are very easy to customize with the help of tools such as the Drag&Drop Builder, custom widgets and shortcodes, so you don’t need to be a programmer to be able to customize your own template. More importantly, there’s a brand new set of tools Themify.me is now offering called the Builder Addons. These tools extend the Themify Builder and can be used with any Themify theme and the Builder Plugin. Here are a few things about some of the Addons. To draw attention to your images, you can use The Pointers tool that places animated text boxes and other pointers to the content you’re trying to emphasize. The WooCommerce is a great tool you can use to customize your shop pages. Plus, with the ProgressBar application you can display the progress of an ongoing project in an animated and fun way.
Templates Master
Templates Master is one of the best providers of highly functional Magento themes. They design the templates based on improved HTML and they also pay special attention to SEO. Moreover, they always come up with updates so that their products will work with any recent Magento releases. Because losing time means losing money, Templates Master is coming to your aid with the Magento Page Cache tool, designed with the sole purpose of making your store faster and helping you pay less for your hosting packages. The Page Cache tool is based on core Magento architecture that supports both static and dynamic blocks and is also very easy to install. Installation instructions and manual are provided as well as 1 year of free support from the developers at Templates Master so there’s no need to worry if you’re having any problems with the tool. The Page Cache also has some additional extension setting that will allow you to set flexible cache rules.
Free Icon Maker
Free Icon Maker will help you create beautiful iOS 8, Flat and 3D icon sets for free. Free Online Icon Maker offers a gallery of over 1000 ready to use modern icon styles. You just have to take your pick and move on to customizing your icon just the way you want it. Since you can create an unlimited number of icon sets, you can play around with colors, gradients, sized, inner shadow and drop shadow until you’re fully satisfied with your icon. You can even upload your own vector (SVG) icons and share the icons sets when you’re done with them. With Free Online Icon Maker it’s easy to add beautiful icons to your personal blog or mobile and web application designs. Free Icon Maker lets you download up to 50 icons at once which you can use for personal or commercial purposes. The Maker Editor is intuitive and even though no designing skills are required for Icon Maker, you will feel like a designer.
BugMuncher
BugMuncher is a very useful tool that will allow your site’s users to highlight the problem they have on the website and send the screenshot straight to your mail box. BugMuncher is a quick solution that will save you a lot of time in pinpointing the issues that your users are facing. Besides the screenshot with the highlighted problem you will also receive vital data about the user, like what operating system they are using, on what browser they opened your web site, what installed plugins they have and even what path they took through your web site. By passing custom information about your users into BugMuncher you’ll be able to use all the data for recreating the conditions under which the feedback report was sent. You’ll be closer to fixing the problem faster than you thought. BugMuncher supports all web browsers, including Internet Explorer down to version 7 and can be integrated with services like GitHub, Zendesk, Trello and ActiveCollab.
Tickera
With the Tickera plugin for WordPress you’ll be able to create fully customizable tickets and sell them directly through your web site. Tickera does not take any commissions, it is very user friendly and has a lot of cool features that will allow you to better organize your events and handle the check in process. This WordPress plugin has support for barcode readers in order to help speed up the check in of your attendees, making sure less people are left outside waiting. Also, you can check in your guests directly on your android or iPhone device. Tickera allows you to have the same template but different styles for more tickets. For example, you’ll be able to create VIP, Premium or Standard tickets for the same event. As a plus, you can use any payment gateway you want: Tickera offers over 85 of them in over 50 countries and they are all built-in so you can change between them at any time.
Kukook
Job hunting is one of the necessities of adult life that most of us could do without. Applying for jobs is stressful and often fruitless, which quickly becomes a source of endless frustration for those in search of a job. Luckily we know a way to increase your success rate when it comes to searching for a job, using Kukook resumes for your applications. Kukook is a service that offers elegant, professional resume templates that are sure to make you stand out from your competition. On average a recruitment manager will give only 3 seconds of his or her attention on any given resume, but with Kukook you have an excellent chance to engage their attention for much longer than that. Kukook resumes are creative and designed to be both visually pleasing and functional. All you have to do is go to Kukook’s website, browse through their gallery, choose the template that best suits your needs and modify it as you see fit in Word. It’s as simple as that. From there on you are sure to recieve the attention you deserve from HR talent searchers.
MotoCMS
What do you do when you’re in need of a beautiful web site but you don’t have the skills or the time to build it from scratch on your own? Rely on MotoCMS, a website builder (content management system) that will help you achieve exactly this in no time. Your web site will be mobile and SEO friendly and you’ll have an intuitive Image Editor and an extensive Media Library to make sure everything looks polished. MotoCMS’ websites are optimized to comply with the Google Webmaster Guidelines so everything will always be up to date. Your web site customization will depend entirely on you. If you want to add a subscription by email button, an MP3 player, custom widgets, a search field or a stylish embedded photo gallery you’ll just have to spend 2 minutes on adding them. Still, if you encounter problems and need the extra help, reach out to MotoCMS’ staff who will gladly assist you with anything.
Opinion Stage
Opinion Stage will help you get feedback from your users and attract views from social networks with a minimum amount of effort. It allows you to create social or standard polls and promote them on your website in less than 5 minutes (registering for an account included). Opinion Stage lets you customize your poll by choosing between answers with multiple choice or head to head (only 2 answers). Also, you can choose what else will be displayed, like the numbers of votes or voters. Another cool feature of Opinion Stage is its helpful dashboard that will help you stay on top of things at all times. Just at a glance you’ll be able to check how your polls are doing, how many times they have been shared on social networks and even how many users your polls are bringing to your site. Once you are ready to check your polls’ results, Opinion Stage allows you to filter them by gender, time span, location or social network.
Webflow
Webflow is a website builder and it may seem to be one of the many dozens, but in truth it stands well apart from most of its competitors. Webflow offers you a top-notch drag-and-drop builder that allows you to define your website visually in a matter of minutes. Moreover, you have full control on design elements straight from Webflow’s UI without having to use Photoshop anymore. What’s more, Webflow helps you create production-ready websites, not just mockups and all the code it generates from your configurations is both HTML5 and CSS3 W3S compliant.
Uptime Robot
Do you like to always be in control of any situation where your website or server is concerned? Then Uptime Robot is the tool you need in your portfolio. Having your website or server go down unexpectedly is a dismal posibility, but it is one that should be considered and handled properly nevertheless. Uptime Robot will help you be informed if such a mishap were to occur. Within Uptime Robot’s modern and easy to use dashboard you will be able to define up to 50 monitors that will keep a close eye on your website or server and send a request to it every 5 minutes. If a problem arises you will be informed instantly through a medium of your choice: mobile push message, email, SMS, RSS and more. But this is not all that Uptime Robot can do for you, this tool offers you the possibility to monitorize your uptime and response times as well and provides you with valuable statistics that will help you improve your website or server. Uptime Robot even offers an API that you can use to integrate it into your mobile apps.
Adverts
Adverts is the newest WordPress plugin released by the team that created WPJobBoard and it benefits fully from the knowledge that came from the experience. This plugin comes with a one click installation that will run as smoothly as for any other WordPress plugin and will offer you a dedicated classifiedes website or it will add this function to your existing site. Adverts respects all of the developer conventions defined by WordPress and is guaranteed to work seamlessly with any theme worth its money. In addition to this, Adverts can be extended with shortcodes and can be integrated with third party plugins like Yoast SEO or Jetpack. Moreover, Adverts was created to be modular, this means you get a core functionality with it to which you are free to add or deactivate any other modules that you find you need or don’t require, as is the case. Also, one of the best parts about Adverts is that it comes with full support guaranteed to answer your needs in less than 24h.
CoffeeCup
CoffeeCup boasts to be the only app that makes custom, content-driven, responsive layouts and it has a lot to back up its claims. Using CoffeeCup you will be able to create your very own website without writing one line of code. You will have access to a responsive layout maker, HTML Editor and professional Form Builder straight from CoffeeCup’s interface. Moreover, CoffeeCup offers you over 70 search engine and site usability factors that you can analyze as you develop your website.
Daily Hosting
Web hosting solutions vary according to the type of site, the number of daily users and several other factors. DailyHosting.net provides many examples and a lot of information on each type of web hosting solutions, which will help you make the best decision for your own web site. Daily Hosting offers hosting guides that will bring you up to speed with all the concepts you’re unfamiliar with. The reviews are also extremely useful since they show you exactly what hosting solution suits every type of sites. You can go for shared hosting, the most popular service out there. It is the most affordable option and it’s used for hosting many different kinds of web sites from personal blogs and photo portfolios to e-commerce sites. If you need hosting for a heavier volume of traffic, however, then VPS hosting is for you. It’s more expensive than shared hosting, but also more reliable. Finally, dedicated hosting is the most expensive of the three, appropriate for application based websites.
GoJS JavaScript Library for HTML5 Canvas
GoJS is a JavaScript library that allows you to implement interactive diagrams on the latest browsers and platforms. With GoJS you can get started by reading the technical introduction and learning how to build an app using a diagram and model data. Following their step by step description you’ll get familiar with everything that is required and become a pro in no time. GoJS lets you create diagrams from scratch with complex Nodes, Links and Groups due to the templates and layouts that are customizable. Another cool feature of GoJS is its wide range of advanced tools that will make user interactivity more entertaining: pan, scroll, select, delete, undo operations, drag and drop, copy and paste and even explore and have fun with GoJS’ extensible tool system for custom operations, event handlers and overviews. GoJS supports graphical templates and data-binding of graphical object properties to model data which allow you to easily create interactive diagrams.
XQual
XStudio is a simple to use test management solution which incorporates an open source (LGPL) SDK allowing to interface with all types of automated tests. XStudio will handle the complete life cycle of your Q&A/testing projects from start to finish: products, releases, requirements, specifications, Agile projects, tests, test campaigns, test reports and defects. What sets this management solution apart from the crowds is the versioned data which enables you to quickly get the necessary metrics and indicators like the test coverage, progress and the team’s performance. With XStudio you’ll be able to plan, execute, schedule and archive the test campaigns, both manual and automated. XStudio uses MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server or MariaDB for data storing and can be used from Windows, Linux or Mac native client and even through any web-browser. XStudio also comes with a wide catalog of almost 50 ready-to-use launchers. All of these come with their binaries, source codes, configuration files and build script within the XStudio package.
VirtueMart
VirtueMart is a full eCommerce solution for the Joomla! Content Management System. It is intuitive and easy to use for beginners. At the same time, it offers plenty of helpful benefits that will help you get your eCommerce site started right away. With VirtueMart you won’t need to worry about reaching a client or product limit; you’re allowed to have an unlimited number of customers, orders and categories. You can easily add the plugins, components, templates or modules you need in order to fully customize your site and meet your clients’ needs. VirtueMart’s Dynamical Calculator will make sure all your prices and taxes on your site are correct. This useful tool will automatically calculate your discounts and tax for you, taking into consideration the shopper’s group, their country, state and time. What is more, you’ll also be able to display several currencies for your clients. The stocking/inventory tool will also come in handy for sending customer alerts on products running low or for checking how many products you have left. In addition to all of this, the team over at VirtueMart has just launched VM3, this update aims to create more flexible, robust core to the product by cleaning up some of the strucure and refreshing the code in order to make it more compact. Also, dependencies on Joomla! have been reduced, while the integration has been polished and refined. Head on over to their website and see what more VM3 has in store for you.