Great builders have great toolboxes. These are the tools the Professor reaches for when testing speed, auditing SEO, building locally, designing and keeping an eye on uptime.
See how Google crawls and ranks your site. Submit your sitemap here first.
Visit ↗Core Web Vitals and speed recommendations from Google.
Visit ↗GTmetrix
FreemiumWaterfall charts and performance history for any URL.
Visit ↗Spin up WordPress in your browser in seconds — perfect for testing plugins and AI code.
Visit ↗Local
FreeOne-click local WordPress sites on your computer.
Visit ↗WP-CLI
FreeManage WordPress from the command line: updates, search-replace, users and more.
Visit ↗VS Code
FreeThe free code editor most WordPress devs live in.
Visit ↗GitHub
FreemiumVersion control for themes and plugins — your undo button for code.
Visit ↗Cloudflare
FreemiumDNS, CDN, SSL and DDoS protection in front of your site.
Visit ↗WPScan
FreemiumVulnerability database and scanner for WordPress core, plugins and themes.
Visit ↗UptimeRobot
FreemiumGet alerted the moment your site goes down.
Visit ↗Screaming Frog SEO Spider
FreemiumCrawl your site like a search engine to find broken links and SEO issues.
Visit ↗Free site audit and backlink data for sites you own.
Visit ↗Figma
FreemiumDesign and prototype pages before you build them.
Visit ↗Canva
FreemiumQuick featured images, social graphics and logos.
Visit ↗Coolors
FreemiumGenerate great color palettes in seconds.
Visit ↗Google Fonts
FreeFree, open-source fonts. Self-host them for speed and privacy.
Visit ↗Check text/background contrast against WCAG.
Visit ↗TinyPNG
FreemiumDrag-and-drop image compression.
Visit ↗AI tools
See the full AI + WordPress playbook for how to use these well.
Claude
FreemiumAnthropic’s AI assistant — excellent for long-form writing, code, plugin building and site audits.
Visit ↗Claude Code
PaidAgentic coding tool that can read your theme/plugin code, make changes and run commands.
Visit ↗ChatGPT
FreemiumOpenAI’s assistant for brainstorming, drafting and quick code snippets.
Visit ↗Gemini
FreemiumGoogle’s assistant with strong research and Google Workspace integration.
Visit ↗GitHub Copilot
FreemiumAI pair-programmer inside VS Code and other editors.
Visit ↗Cursor
FreemiumAn AI-first code editor built for vibe coding whole features.
Visit ↗