Git Some Great Tools For Your Dev Team

Now that you’ve got a taste of the tools behind the trade, let me dig deeper into our pathway to success on the tech side. Here is a list of amazing things we use to make our lives easier to do what we do.

Github: It took longer than it should have for us to effectively use git but once we learned the ropes and made it a focus, it started paying off big time. If your team isn’t using a source control system, we recommend you do; it’ll change your life. Seriously. Github has been the epicenter of our code work. What started off at the $10 a month plan eventually grew into the $50 monthly subscription with more accessible features included. With our expanding projects, it’s a no brainer.

Huboard: So Github takes care of all our development tasks like roadmapping and pesky bugs, which are arguably actually features. It works really well for tracking the connection between code and documentation, but lacks a bit of polish when it comes to planning. That’s where Huboard comes in?—?integrate it with Github and all your organizational nightmares go poof! It’s your ticket across milestones via a great drag-n-drop interface. And to top it all off, go ahead and test the waters with Trello-style interface. It allows you to move tickets between stages (which map to Github labels) and let your dev team know about who is working on what. It’s free for public repos but we went with the premium to have access to all the cooler benefits like private code collaboration.

Vagrant/VVV: Earlier this year, we moved our development environment over to Vagrant, a virtualization platform that has been growing pretty rapidly. I have to admit, it took a day… or three to properly configure and familiarize, but it is the next best thing from the MAMP setup. VVV is a WordPress-specific configuration of Vagrant that makes setting up a new WP development environment a breeze.

CodeKit: 2014 was the year we rebuilt our entire front end infrastructure to rely exhaustively on a LESS precompiler, some of which happens dynamically on the server and at other times get compiled pre-deployment. In the process of working on that transition, we discovered CodeKit, the most versatile piece of desktop dev software unbeknownst to mankind. It compiles LESS and SASS, checks and minifies JS, provides real-time refreshing of your browser to preview style changes and does a billion things more that we still haven’t fully explored. It definitely turbocharged our dev work for only $32.

Coda: Be prepared for this one. Yes, we did pay for a code editor, but hear me out. Some people will shudder at the thought of purchasing one, but Panic’s $99 Coda 2 is pretty epic. We’ve never regretted it. Auto-complete function names (which you can augment with custom libraries)? Check. Dynamic variable auto-complete? Check. Other cool tools? Check. They add small but cumulatively significant time savers. I’m a huge fan and recommend it to all. I will admit that we’re experimenting with the new Atom editor, but after being unimpressed with an alpha version, the recently released 1.0 is rapidly growing on us.

vSSH: We do a great deal of work on AWS, which requires saving and remembering a ton of security credentials and server locations… except we don’t actually have to remember all of it. Not since we started using vSSH. It stores credentials to make connections super easy. Plenty of folks will tell me that is easily done via any CLI (Terminal/iTerm2) but having an interface dedicated solely to AWS access has really grown on me; it helps me keep my workflow focused and productive.

InVision: While not a “tech” tool per se, InVision’s visual feedback tools are awesome for consolidating team feedback on new designs and tracking iterations as they move closer to reality. It’s an amazing tool for keeping the product team and everyone behind-the-scenes in sync with the revolving roadmap.

WPEngine: We’ve been hosting all our WordPress sites on WPEngine for about a year and it’s the single best decision we’ve made since starting Alumni Spaces. Daily automated backups, one-click stage/production copies, security guarantee, built-in CDN at no extra charge and a killer support team make my life a billion times easier. Our link here will get you 40% off an annual plan. Trust me, you’ll fall in love.

DNSimple: The name says it all. DNS and overall domain management with a great API put simply. Vanity nameservers, easy domain tools and killer support?—?can’t get any better than that for its price. They’re so good that they’ve been to DDOS attacks, but those setbacks didn’t stop their team from powerhousing through. They were super transparent and did a great job getting things back on track. They also just announced some new pricing tiers that might make some features more accessible depending on how many domains you need to manage.

Hover: If you haven’t heard of Hover, you should! It’s a brilliant client domain buying service. It may not leave DNSimple in the dust for managing your own domain(s), but when a client asks where to buy a URL, we send them to Hover. No upselling, 3 screen buying process and easy interface. This is where I send my mom to buy domains (and if you use a referral link, you get $2 for every domain your referral buys). If you have friends who want websites?—?and I’m sure you do?—?it’s like getting a domain for free.

Mandrill: Once you start getting into the nitty gritty details of money and payment discussion, this is the thing to use. It helps with smooth transactional emails. Lots of options in this space. It’s practically free! … if you’re a small business with a volume of less than 10,000 e-mails a month. That’s a lot. We like it because it’s developed by the makers of Mailchimp and it’s dead simple to use.

Filepicker.io: Amazing plug-n-play file upload tool that handles integrations with all the major social and file hosting services. That was a mouthful! But super worth it. It’s an easy developer tool. If you’re writing your own Dropbox, Box, Evernote or SkyDrive integrations, use this instead. Tip of the day: don’t reinvent the wheel if don’t have to.