This is a fun, light post for many of our customers who ask us about the tools that we use for Joomla development. So, for those of you who are wondering, here is the list of tools that we use to work on Joomla sites:
- Total Commander: We use Total Commander to browse local files once we download them from the Joomla website. We also use it to zip/unzip folders, or to view files in a zipped folder without unzipping it.
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EmEditor: EmEditor is, by far (and we’re talking light years far), the fastest and the most reliable editor on the market. We don’t use IDEs for Joomla development, we just use EmEditor. This editor can open files that are extremely large (we are talking several GBs large), and it will 1) match brackets, 2) syntax color the code based on the type of the file opened, and 3) allow for search and replace in multiple files (which is a very handy feature if we’re doing the same modification on multiple files). It also has some countless features that are extremely helpful for our work.
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FileZilla: FileZilla, is, without doubt, the best FTP client out there. We use it all the time to download and upload to our client’s sites. It has a few quirks (sometimes it uploads a file to the wrong directory – but we’re always very careful when we’re using it), but still, it’s the best. Note that Total Commander has its own, built-in FTP client, but for some reason, it’s not as reliable as FileZilla.
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Firefox: We use Firefox for all our web related activities on our clients’ sites, including, but not limited to, working on their WHM/cPanel, working on the backend of their Joomla website, and testing the frontend of their Joomla website. We also use Firefox to do research on Google, and to post on the itoctopus website!
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Chrome: We use Chrome to debug JavaScript errors on our clients’ websites, as well as fixing CSS errors (or making CSS modifications). We also use Chrome to monitor the loading time of each item on the site, and to see whether the Joomla website is trying to connect to another (malicious) website before serving the page.
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Citrix: We use Citrix to work on the Joomla websites of our large clients. Many of our large clients use Citrix that allow consulting companies to have VPN access to their development servers. Citrix is an extremely reliable tool and it’ll allow us to work smoothly with large clients.
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Tortoise SVN client: A few of our large clients use SVN to handle the development on large websites. We use Tortoise SVN client for this purpose. Check this post to know when we can/cannot use SVN to work on a Joomla website.
If you need development help on your Joomla website, then look no further, we use the right tools and we have the best brains in this business. Just contact us and let us prove to you that we can live up to your standards – don’t forget to check our very affordable fees!