Since a number of people that come to this little blog of mine are looking for WordPress plugins, I thought it might be somewhat interesting to post the tools I use to create such plugins and web sites in general. I know there’s probably stuff I haven’t heard of, so if you’ve got something you use not listed here, feel free to post it in the comments.

Hardware:
My personal setup at home is a PowerBook, but my office uses Windows. The specs are: Pentium 4 2.2 GHz, 2 GB RAM, dual monitors, Windows XP SP2. I usually have a dozen or so windows open at once, with one monitor as my main work area and my smaller secondary for whatever random widgets or apps (see below). With all those programs competing for resources, it can get a little sluggish at times, even with 2 gigs of RAM. I think it is almost about time to upgrade to a faster chip. Hmm… those Intel Macs are looking awfully tempting.

My Software Toolbox:

• Firefox - By far the best web browser out there. Combined with the web developer toolbar, and testing and debugging web pages becomes a breeze.
• TopStyle - My CSS and HTML editor of choice. Gives me just enough help with code (like syntax highlighting and code completion), without getting in the way.
• Zend Studio - I use this to help me write PHP code, like when I need to whip up a WordPress plugin for a client. Comes with a neat code profiler, which helps me with debugging in general and also lets me analyze the execution path of my PHP scripts.
• Adobe Photoshop - Fortunately, I don’t really have to do much graphic design work because all I know how to do is to use the slice tool, and add drop shadows. Which is why my next tool is…
• Macromedia Fireworks - For the times when images needs just a little bit of tweaking.
• ColorPix - Simple little utility to pick out the RGB color value of anything on the screen. Even comes with a handy magnifier so you can see exactly which pixels you’re grabbing.
• Trillian (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Google Talk) - Yeah, I use all 4 services. I’m connected like that.
• FileZilla FTP - Simple, efficient, and free FTP program.
• Google Desktop - Mostly used for the Google search mojo which helps me dig through and search old emails fast.
• Yahoo Widgets - Handy little mini-apps that do random useful stuff.
• VNC - Combined with Hamachi, this allows me to access my desktop remotely.
• Hamachi - Very nifty and easy to use utility which allows me to setup a secure VPN network from virtually anywhere. Nice thing about this is that it takes care of traversing through NATs, firewalls, and generally whatever else that could be in the way.
• Skype - Free calls to anywhere in North America. I use this mainly to call my own phone to check my cell phone’s voicemail, since I use pre-paid minutes and don’t want to waste minutes checking voicemail.
• MS Office (Excel, Word, Outlook) - When I need to open random documents.
• iTunes - What I use to rock out to when I’m in the zone.

Coming up in a future post, some behind-the-scenes look at how to use WordPress not just as a blogging platform, but as a content management system for small to medium sized web sites. Hint: see the sidebar’s “Recent Web Sites” for some example non-blog sites that I’ve done.