What I’m Using

I’m always interested in what other people are using to manage their websites, businesses, and lives. Some of the most popular events that I’ve organized are around sharing tools and tips, whether demonstrating a piece of software that saves someone time, or a technique for handling specific situations.

I’ve seen a few people put together lists of tools that they use, and I’d like to do the same and share some of the tools that I use regularly. With the amount of tools and processes out there and the pace of progress, this will necessarily be out of date or incomplete even as soon as I press publish.

last updated on 13 September 2023

This Website

  • WordPress, of course!
  • This site is hosted on WP Engine, which I’ve been using since 2012 for a variety of sites. I also host a lot of sites, including my WordPress maintenance and support business site on SiteGround. I’m a SiteGround ambassador, because I believe that they deliver some of the best hosting around, and their pricing and customer support are great.
  • I use Gravity Forms for this and pretty much any site that needs forms. This includes the signup for my newsletter.
  • My newsletter is currently powered by NewsletterGlue. I have the newsletters that I create on-site sent to MailerLite for sending.
  • Speaking of mail, I use WP Mail SMTP to set up my offsite mailing through MailGun. I also use Manage Notification E-mails to turn off some of the more annoying auto generated emails that I don’t need.
  • I power my speaking page with Advanced Custom Fields Pro, because it makes it much simpler to create custom postmeta in WordPress and edit and display it easily.
  • Akismet has done a good job at keeping spam out while letting good comments in. I use it for my site and most client sites.
  • The IndieWeb plugin brings in a lot of other plugins and tools like ActivityStream, Bridgy, IndieAuth, Micropub, Post Kinds, Semantic-Linkbacks, Simple Location, Syndication Links, Webmention, andWebSub/PubSubHubbub. These are all tools that allow my website to function as more of a ground base for my internet presence, as opposed to any one social media silo.
  • I’m part of a blogging group, and one of the things that we do is share drafts of posts to review before publishing. Public Post Preview makes it easy to create a link to share.
  • I manage my site with InfiniteWP, Imagify, WP Rocket, and a few other tools to keep it running a bit smoother and faster.
  • I previously used some block editor plugins to help me make content look nicer on the front end and easy to edit in the Gutenberg block editor. Turns out I didn’t need them for what I do with this site.
  • I use Syntax-highlighting Code Block (with Server-side Rendering) now to manage code samples on the site. I appreciate the ability to make them look nice without additional load for visitors.
  • I wanted to have a lightweight form of stats for page views on the site. I don’t want to track everyone around, or even individual users, but just get an idea of how many visitors I get each day, to correlate with publishing and sharing posts. I’ve started using WP Statistics for this. I can get a general overview of the site while keeping individual visitors fairly private.
  • When I’ve run donation drives on sites I use GiveWP. In early 2020 I used Give to raise over $1800 for two well deserving charities, and the team there made it easy for me to set up and get going.

Tech Setup

  • I use a 2023 Macbook Pro 14″ currently. It was a great upgrade from my previous 2017 Macbook Pro 13″ model.
  • I use a 42″ LG monitor, which lets me place two windows side by side at full width. It can actually place four different inputs on screen at once, but this is overkill for me. I prefer this over a multiple monitor setup, but still appreciate being able to see my browser while writing code or reviewing notes while writing.
  • I use the Logitech MX Keys keyboard and an MX Master 3 mouse. I started using gel wrist pads for both after having my wrists and forearms get sore and pained, leading to worries of future carpal tunnel syndrome.
  • My desk is a motorized standing Bekant desk from IKEA. I stand for an hour or two per day at the desk, with the rest of the time sitting or working elsewhere. It feels good every once in a while to stand. While sitting I’m using an IKEA high backed office chair and while standing I use an Amazon Basics desk mat.
  • I have a love/hate relationship with most tech, and that’s led me to pare down most of my other tech devices a bit. I can’t find a way to properly fit a tablet into my life without feeling like I’m being wasteful, and so I’ve no longer got one. I instead use a Kobo Aura Edition 2, which I prefer over the Kindle thanks to its ability to sync directly with OverDrive and Pocket.
  • For a cell phone I use an iPhone 12 Mini, which I recently upgraded to from the iPhone SE. It’s purple and in a sparkly case and very cute! No Android maker seems to be making a high powered phone with a screen smaller than 5″ anymore. I prefer smaller devices overall as easier to hold and easier to travel around with, but part of me wants to go to a large screen like a Note 9, where I can do a bit more work on it when inclined, or even forego bringing the laptop at all for a few trips while still being able to do presentations.

Coding Setup

  • My IDE is VS Code
  • I use the Bearded Theme Vivid Purple theme for VS Code, and have slightly modified the color scheme to be a bit more readable in low light situations. Overall I like dark themes for apps and services, but a lot of them lose contrast with design choices.
  • I’m using the Hack Nerd Font for VS Code and iTerm2. I find it easy to parse through, and appreciate the differentiation between similar characters like 0 and O.
  • I use iTerm2 as my terminal. The default terminal app can do a lot, but I like some of the extra customization that can be done here, like the aforementioned font and color changes.
  • Oh My Zsh has lots of cool features, many of which I haven’t even fully discovered to use for my command prompt. I do use a few Oh My Zsh packages, a custom theme (some color and prompt modifications of bira), and some aliases for common commands that I run. I also source a folder of custom shell scripts via zsh, so that I can store them all in one place and ensure that they’ve got the right capabilities and are ready to use.
  • Transmit is my FTP client. I still use that far more than ssh or rsync for file management with clients, as it’s easier to get access to most of the time and serves my needs well. Transmit 5 does seem to have a significant speed boost over 4.
  • Sequel Pro is how I manage some databases. Since I’m working with a variety of clients across different hosts and don’t often have to manage their databases I admittedly don’t use this as often as I use PHPMyAdmin on whatever host they have. When I really need to dig into a client database, that’s when I set this tool up.

Misc Apps

  • I use Alfred to run some shell scripts, open apps, start services, and more. I’ve written a few posts about that here and here for a start.
  • Trello is one of my to-do, task management, and project management systems. I’ve been using it for years, the free version does a ton, but with the Gold membership I’ve got the ability to do even more, like run lots of Butler commands for my daily todo lists. I can’t recommend it enough.
  • I have started using Notion more heavily for project management. It isn’t as intuitive as Trello, but it can do quite a bit more for visual management.
  • Todoist has been a great daily-driver for general task management for the past year or so for me.
  • Calibre is how I manage ebooks for my Kobo. It stinks that the device doesn’t have general wireless syncing for things that aren’t from their store or one of the aforementioned services that I use on it. I do miss the email to device feature that Kindle has.
  • Clean My Mac X has lots of neat features to clean unneeded files, free up some ram, and scan for malware and privacy issues. It also does a more complete application uninstall than just deleting an app file.
  • Handbrake is an open source tool for converting videos. It is annoying to set up bulk conversion and doesn’t always do things the way that I want it to, but it works well overall.
  • ImageOptim is a similar tool that I use for image optimization. I move a lot of files online and I want to compress and optimize them as much as I can without losing usability. It saves bandwidth and storage for everyone!
  • I don’t do a lot of image editing, so Pixelmator serves my needs for most everything. It has enough features for me without being overly bloated or having a subscription fee like Adobe uses now.

Page based on https://www.giftegwuenu.dev/uses/ and https://jonchristopher.us/uses/