Recommended tech & dev stack

I’ve always loved to build, dabble, and tinker with things on the internet. Over the years I’ve spent making technical SEO tweaks, customising WordPress, and playing with CSS and JavaScript, I’ve developed a go-to set of tools, platforms and processes – and I’m happy to share!

Platform

I build almost everything in, on, or using WordPress.

The combination of custom post type support, extensible frameworks, and a powerful REST API makes it the perfect development toolkit for almost anything which looks and behaves like a ‘website’.

Increasingly, it’s the best back-end for app-like experiences, too, with an increasingly rich selection of mature headless frameworks and tooling, like WP Engine’s Atlas and Faust.js.

Environment

Where you code and the environment that you code in, can have a huge impact on how you code. Intelligent features, integrated environments, and clever shortcuts can have a huge impact on time, efficiency and quality.

Cursor for coding

I’ve played with many code editors over the years – from Notepad++, to Sublime, to Atom, and many more. Cursor is the latest and greatest ‘AI Editor’, building on the back of Visual Studio Code’s comfortable and familiar context. It’s powerful, extensible (with a thriving extensions ecosystem), and slots neatly into my development workflow.

Local for local web development

As a Windows user, it’s often a painful experience to build and manage a (performant) local development environment. Local just works and allows you to manage, update and work with multiple local WordPress installations with ease.

They also offer an integrated hosting + deployment process, which I haven’t used but could be handy for people who want to manage everything in one place.

Workflow

Writing, managing and publishing code can be a complex process, especially when coordinating with other developers. These tools make the whole process seamless and easy!

GitHub for versioning

GitHub sits at the heart of my development workflow and manages my files, changes, history and team collaboration.

I use a ‘feature branch’ workflow, where discreet functionality is managed and deployed via dedicated branches.

GitKraken for managing GitHub repositories

I tried a lot of tools for visualising and managing GitHub repositories, and none of them came close to being as good as GitKraken.

GitKraken is where I manage branches, versions, releases, conflicts and more – all in one super-sleek interface!

Trello for task management

I live my life from Trello, and it makes sure that I always know what’s next. I have boards for individual teams and projects, columns for activity types, and tags for statuses and dependencies. Trello keeps me sane and productive.

Infrastructure

The physical (or virtual) hardware on which your site runs, the location of the hosting, and the configuration of those back-end systems can have a huge impact on the performance of your site. Getting the right hosting and CDN setup is one of the most impactful changes you can make to improve and manage performance.

Servebolt for lightning-fast hosting

I’m obsessed with speed, and Servebolt is by far the fastest WordPress hosting I’ve ever encountered. The easy setup and management, excellent customer service, and lightning-fast response times are genuinely delightful. Comes with a handy WordPress optimisation plugin, too.

Cloudways for (cheaper, DIY) hosting

Whilst Servebolt is my go-to for hosting, it can be a little pricey for hobby sites, and you’re a little limited in how many sites you can manage in a single ‘bolt’.

For everything else, or if you want to get your hands dirty, there’s Cloudways.

Cloudflare for content delivery, caching & more

The most powerful tool in my arsenal, Cloudflare, takes care of the heavy lifting of caching all of my assets, media, and static pages.

For more advanced use cases, its Worker, Argo and firewall capabilities make it a critical part of the stack.

WordPress plugins

I don’t maintain an exhaustive list of recommended plugins, as it’s always important to pick the right solutions for a given site. Some, however, warrant some attention here as they form key pieces of my tech stack, workflow and architecture.

ACF (and ACF extended) for architecture

If I want to do anything even remotely sophisticated with my templates and content, I turn to ACF. It powers my custom fields, blocks, site options, and in some cases, entire template logic. Couldn’t live without it.

Yoast SEO for SEO foundations

Does most of what I need out of the box, and is easily customised/extended via a range of APIs and filters.

Relevanssi for internal search

WordPress’ native internal search is pretty garbage. This adds proper indexing, fuzzy search, and all sorts of other handy features. 

wpDiscuz for comments

WordPress’ native comment infrastructure is pretty terrible. wpDiscuz gives it more bells and whistles (and has a thriving marketplace of addons and integrations).

WP Rocket, W3TC, or Nitropack for performance optimisation

Sometimes, a static page caching layer (and cutting out all of those pesky database calls) can make a huge difference to how quickly your website loads. 

Each of these plugins comes with a bunch of clever optimisation features, such as localising common JavaScript libraries and optimising the way in which your pages load.

Site Kit by Google for analytics

If a site needs a Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics integration, using Google’s official plugin makes everything easier and neatly integrated.

User Role Editor for access management

Any site with more than one admin/editor user should be actively managing roles, capabilities and access levels. This plugin makes that (relatively) easy. 

WP 2FA for security

Having an extra level of login protection is a no-brainer, and this plugin makes configuring and managing that a breeze.

Cloudflare’s connector plugin

Makes syncing (and purging) caches a breeze.

Hardware & quality of life kit

Investing in the right tools for the job makes for a healthier, happier, and more productive experience.