Access the resources from my toolbox that enable me to provide added value to my clients, craft marketing content, and elevate the quality of my web design work. These tools are available for use on your business and/or WordPress website. Take a look at the list below for a selection of high-quality items.
WordPress Themes
A WordPress theme is a tool that can be uploaded and activated on a WordPress website to change the layout and design of your website. Themes have options to customise the appearance of your site, including the layout, colour, typography and other design elements. Opt for premium quality themes.
Divi by Elegant Themes – Experience the sophisticated capabilities of Divi, a premium WordPress theme equipped with drag and drop features that allow you to create sleek and contemporary designs that will captivate your clients. The creative possibilities are limitless with Divi, offering you a wide array of pre-made layouts and the flexibility to customize designs to your liking. For a one-time fee, the Lifetime Access membership offers unparalleled value, providing unlimited access to all of Elegant Theme’s products, which can be utilized on an unlimited number of sites. Elegant Themes’ products are well-documented with an abundance of help files and video resources available online. The Elegant Themes Lifetime Access membership includes unlimited downloads and exceptional support services that do not expire in six months or a year, unlike some other major theme builders.
How can you get this theme for free?
Theme Forest – Themeforest is one of the largest online WordPress resources for web designers. Theme Forest has a vast selection of WordPress themes that can be viewed as demos and can be purchased and downloaded at reasonable prices. There are themes for just about any business, priced in $USD. Opt for a membership to download unlimited resources, or buy one at a time. Elementor – Pay by the month access to the Elementor theme and webhosting.
Migration & Clone Tool for Divi & Elementor
SitePRESSER – Package themes, settings, layouts & plugins. Also, package child themes and migrate Divi and Elementor sites with ease. Package your child theme designs quickly with the SitePRESSER plugin. SitePRESSER is easy to use, is well documented, and supported. One time only fee, SitePRESSER has an option to white label the plugin and gives you options to choose which elements to package and import.
Annual fee. See the SitePRESSER Teaser video. “We built SitePRESSER to make packaging up WordPress themes for sale much easier. Web designers looking to add revenue from theme sales want their clients to experience a seamless one-click installation process, that’s quick, easy, and safe and that’s what SitePRESSER does. SitePRESSER also comes with a set of tools to speed up your workflow, by checking for large or unused images or replacing stock images with placeholder images on export. With the ability to add your branding to the installation process, and you’ve got a tool that makes theme sellers look professional and stylish.” Melissa Love
Graphic Design Tools & Stock Images & Marketing Tools
Canva Pro – Look professional online in your marketing efforts with the Canva Pro account. Web designers and developers, business owners and anyone without experience can create their marketing material, design logos, videos, and more. Use images in web design, upload your images into folders to use over and over again. Print your designs, share your designs and order prints in various formats. Use the templates for social media platforms without having to guess or look up the correct sizes. Canva Pro offers great support and is well worth it with a monthly fee or annual fee payment options. Free for non-profits. Watch The Canva Pro.
Video
GIMP – An open-source high-quality photo manipulation/graphic design tool similar to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Retouch, restore and enhance images, create logos and fantastic graphic creations with this free-to-use software. Download it to your desktop. Gimp is fantastic and is recommended for intermediate to advanced graphic design creatives.
Where to Find Free Images for Commercial Use – See a huge list of free stock images for business use on this blog post. Most will not require attribution, but please read all image licensing to avoid copyright infringements and/or legal hassles.
Community Calendar – The Australian community calendar helps a company/sole trader or small business to line up social media marketing with key national and international events. Search for an online community calendar relevant to the country you are in.
Branding Colour Charts – Access my hex colour codes to use in branding or for creative digital design and marketing projects.
Google Trends – Great tool for social media marketing to see what’s trending online.
Google Products
The Google Search Console – Submit website URLs to the Google Search Engine, submit site maps, monitor site performance, check keyword performance, and more! Free tool.
Gmail for Business – use your own domain to create a professional email address, access email from anywhere, and allow Gmail to separate spam into promotion and social folders away from your inbox. Low monthly fees apply.
Google Fonts – Choose from a large selection of open source and 100% free fonts for commercial use.
FTP Software
FileZilla – A free open-source FTP software, distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Probably the world’s most popular FTP client, FileZilla is feature-packed as it only supports FTP, but also FTP over TLS (FTPS) and SFTP.
FileZilla Pro comes with additional protocol support for WebDAV, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Microsoft Azure Blob and File Storage, and Google Cloud Storage. Support is available through their forums. Visit their site for more information.
SEO Tools
Ubbersuggest – Enter a domain or keyword in the search bar to get statistics for free! Create a free membership to gain insights into the strategies that work for others to improve your website’s online performance. Access keyword suggestions based on what others are typing into the Google search engine. See and examine backlink data. Free and paid services are available.
All In One SEO (AISEO) – Jam-packed with features, the free and paid versions of this WordPress SEO plugin are fantastic for business and blogging use. Free and Paid versions. Paid local SEO.
Yoast SEO – Great SEO learning features enable even the novice to tweak SEO for better performance. This makes the plugin one of the best choices for business and blogging. Free and paid versions are available.Paid Local SEO.
Rank Math – Considered the “Swiss Army Knife Of WordPress SEO.” A feature packed SEO must-have tool for business and for blogger websites. Add up to 1000 keywords and monitor results directly from the WordPress Dashboard. Local SEO on free and premium versions.
Website Testing Utilities
Down for Everyone or Just me – A very handy tool for WordPress freelancers to find out if a website is just down for them or for everyone else. Simply type in or copy and paste the link into the search bar.
Pingdom – A website speed testing tool. Analyse your website load speed to see how well your site performs. This tool gives insights to web developers enabling them to optimise their web performance.
Facebook Sharing Debugger For Developers – This tool helps to test pages and post links that have been posted on Facebook, but don’t render correctly to show an image and a title.
Please note that most paid items are in $USD.
Web Hosting
Australian Web Hosting Providers – These web hosting providers have their customer services, servers and datacentres located in Australia. I like to use them for my client’s peace of mind. There are many to choose from. Note: Base the Webhosting packages on your client’s needs. Compare services carefully.
Do you require WordPress web design & development?
Gain a strategically planned website to attract your ideal client. To create a website that will achieve your goals, we first need to define your target audience and then design your brand. Starter Brand Packages are available, and they can be paired up with my Web Design Services if you currently do not have branding.
