Web Development Resources
Below is a list of web development resources I find useful. I’m always looking for resources that make it quicker and easier to develop and deploy robust web applications. This list will expand and evolve over time as I test new products and services, so if you find this useful check back often.
Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that if you purchase something my company will earn a commission. This does NOT affect my recommendations because I use and recommend everything listed below.
Hosting
Heroku
I use Heroku to host any Ruby on Rails app I develop that needs to scale. I stick with Heroku because you can get up and running quickly and don’t have to worry about scalability, maintenance, or downtime.
Digital Ocean
I use Digital Ocean for small self hosted projects. The $5/month instance is good for projects that don’t justify the higher cost of Heroku. I put the Rails deployment stack I use for my projects on Github.
Amazon S3
My company uses Amazon S3 to host static web pages as well as files our users upload through our apps.
Github
Not only do I use Github for both my public and private repositories, but this blog is hosted using Github Pages.
Services
Stripe
Stripe makes it extremely easy to accept one time and recurring payments online.
Mailgun
Mailgun is a transactional email service that we use to send and receive email from our apps.
Dropbox
Dropbox Pro paired with Packrat Version History gives me piece of mind that if my devices and other backup methods fail I will always have an up to date version of all my important files.
Twitter Bootstrap
Bootstrap
Bootstrap gets its own section because its a great foundation for creating responsive web applications.
Wrap Bootstrap
If you don’t want your app to look like every other Bootstrap app I recommend buying an inexpensive theme from Wrap Bootstrap
Bootsnipp
If you want to see what else is possible with Bootstrap checkout Bootsnipp for loads of great code samples.
Software
Textmate 2.0
I’ve tried other text editors but I keep coming back to Textmate. Textmate 2.0 is a huge improvement and its also open source.
Fish
I’ve tried a few different shells and I find Fish to be the most useful. I really like how it handles autocomplete and syntax highlighting.
RVM
If you are doing Ruby on Rails development you will eventually need to support multiple versions of Ruby. My favorite feature is that it automatically selects the Ruby version based on your Gemfile.
Homebrew
Homebrew basically brings the power of apt-get to OS X.
Libraries
Slim
Writing HTML is not fun. Using Slim allows you to write a lot less code.
Middleman
I use Middleman to generate HTML wireframes for new projects. The view code from Middleman can be easily ported to a Ruby on Rails project.
Jekyll
Jeykll is a another great static website generator. I chose Jeykll over Middleman for this blog because Github Pages has fantastic built in support for it.
