Some Things I Recommend

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Chris Coyier on

Howdy. I’m taking this week’s “Sponsored Post” to give a shout out to some apps, courses, and services that I personally like. These things also have affiliate programs, meaning if you buy the thing, we earn a portion of that sale, which supports this site. That money goes to pay people to write the things we publish. That said, everything on this list is something that I’m happy going on the record endorsing.

  • PixelSnap: A macOS Toolbar app for getting pixel dimensions from anywhere on the screen. Way handier than trying to use ⌘-⇧-4 for that.
  • An Introduction to Gutenberg by Joe Casabona: We just had a ShopTalk episode about how Gutenburg (a new editor) is coming to WordPress. There is certainly stuff to learn, and this is a course you can take to do that learning.
  • React for Beginners: Speaking of learning, this Wes Bos course will get you up to speed with React. Wes has loads of other great courses as well, like on Redux, Node, ES6, and CSS Grid.
  • Learn UI Design: Learn how to design effective user interfaces with Erik Kennedy.
  • Club GreenSock: The best animation framework out there. Once you’re a member, you get access to use stuff like the MorphSVG plugin and their new GSDevTools.
  • Amazon List: I made a little storefront of some items I love and use all the time.
  • WP DB Migrate Pro: I think this is my favorite WordPress plugin. I like to work on my WordPress sites locally, and I always want a fresh copy of the database from production so I’m designing and developing around reality. This makes it a push-button affair.
  • Jetpack: I’m also a fan of all the things Jetpack does for my WordPress site. It kinda seems like a big scary monolithic plugin, and in a sense it is, but you can easily flip features on and off as you need them. I should do a whole post on what I use, but for starters, Markdown-everywhere, social media posting, commenting improvements, handling subscriptions, increased security, and actually-good related posts.