Hey all! It seemed like lots of people were interested in the tech stack/tools I listed that we used on our first side project, so I thought it might be helpful to list out a whole bunch of FREE tools & resources I use all the time when working on projects.
My personal favourites would be hackdesign.org (Best site to learn about design), http://www.pexels.com/ (Best free stock photos EVER) and Getting real book (by the guys over at Basecamp) This was the book that inspired me to start building products. A must read!
Hopefully you'll find some of these resources helpful and if you have any other suggestions, just let me know and I'll add them to the list!
Design resources, learning & Inspiration
- https://hackdesign.org/ - Literally the best free design course you'll find online.
- https://onepagelove.com/ - Great inspiration for nice landing pages
- https://www.landingfolio.com/ - More website design inspiration
- https://principles.design - A whole bunch of design principles
- http://nicelydone.club/ - A fantastic reference for standard patterns in web app design
- http://html5up.net/ - free (with attribution) html templates like landing pages
- https://flatuicolors.com/ - Great flat color picker
- http://bootflat.github.io/color-picker.html - Another great color picker
- https://www.invisionapp.com/ecourses/fundamental-ui-design - Free weekly UI design course by Jane Portman
- https://www.uxpin.com/studio/ebooks/ - 100's of Free ebooks on UX, Product and UI design
- https://codepen.io/ - Where people show off snippets of their front end work
Images, icons & patterns
- https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/ - Use this all the time. Free repeatable patterns for backgrounds and things
- http://www.pexels.com/ - Probably the best stock free photography you'll find
- https://deathtothestockphoto.com/ - Also pretty good stock free photography
- https://fontawesome.com/icons - one of the largest free icon libraries available
- http://ionicons.com/ - nice simple alternative icons
- https://unsplash.com/ - More Free stock photography!
Frameworks & templates
- https://foundation.zurb.com/ - Powerful, Web app specific framework
- https://getbootstrap.com/ - Well know CSS framework
- https://startbootstrap.com/ - Nice bootstrap starter templates
- https://www.bootstrapzero.com/ - Nice bootstrap starter templates
- Spectre.css - Neat flexbox css framework
- https://semantic-ui.com/ - Huge UI framework ready to go!
- http://getbase.org/ - nice clean, minimal html/css responsive framework
- http://simplegrid.io/ - Super simple CSS grid
- https://nodejs.org/en/
- https://expressjs.com/ - Framework for building web apps
- https://handlebarsjs.com/ - Front end templating
- http://www.passportjs.org/ - Web app authentication library
General Tools to help get things done!
- https://nodemon.io/ - This is a must have. Automatic server restart/reload for node
- http://dunnnk.com/#0 - generate mockups for any device
- Trello - I absolutely love trello. Such a flexible tool.
- http://optimizilla.com/ - Optimize image sizes without losing quality
- https://marvelapp.com/ - free prototyping tool to turn images into clickable prototypes
- https://gitlab.com/ Free repo for public and private projects
- http://firstaidgit.io/#/ - Searchable collection of git questions. I use this a lot :)
- http://hemingwayapp.com/ - Helps you to write better content
- https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/be-focused-focus-timer/id973134470?mt=12 - Pomodoro technique focus time. Get stuff done!
- Sublime text - Code editing. Check out all their package manager too
- https://jsfiddle.net/ - Test out your JS and share with others
- https://codemyui.com/ - A whole bunch of reusable HTML/CSS UI snippets
- https://sendgrid.com/free/ - Send emails for free from your app
- https://letsencrypt.org - Easily obtain a browser-trusted certificate (HTTPS)
Business
- https://fourminutebooks.com/ - Super short snippets of all the best books
- https://basecamp.com/books/getting-real - must read book for new web app makers!
- http://webappsuccess.com/- Free (online) ebook on how to create successful web apps
- http://wordoid.com/ Business/app name generator
Testing and launching
- https://humaan.com/checklist/ - website/web app launch checklist
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/window-resizer/kkelicaakdanhinjdeammmilcgefonfh/details?hl=en - test different screensizes
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-website-analysis/hlngmmdolgbdnnimbmblfhhndibdipaf?hl=en-GB - SEO and website analysis tool
- https://gtmetrix.com/ - Analyze your websites loading speed and fix it
That's it for now folks! I'll keep adding to this list as I remember/find them!
Jonathan
www.alwaysreading.io
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