I am often asked about what tools I use for my online business, so I thought I’d create a page with some of my favorites for design and promotion.
This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but the ones I feel have the most impact and use the most.
Some of the resources below are affiliate links, however I only endorse products I genuinely like and use myself.
Web Design
Browsershots.org
If you are redesigning your site or installing a new theme, you definitely want to stop here. This site will show you how your site appears on all the popular browsers and then some.
And if you have a local HTML page that is not live, you can even upload the page to test it before launching. Thanks to Paul of Technically Easy for the recommendation.
Genesis Lifestyle Theme
This is the theme I’m using for all my WordPress sites now. I’ve been through dozens of themes over the years, and was a long-time Thesis fan.
However, after Thesis 2.0 launched in October 2012, I was planning to switch back. But after seeing how complicated it was to customize I looked elsewhere.
I had been using Genesis on another site and loved it so much, I decided to change this blog over to the same theme. You can watch me customize the Genesis Lifestyle Theme below…
Genesis Simple Hooks
The perfect complement to any Genesis theme, and it’s free! Add your own custom code to any section of your blog without having to fumble with the theme files.
Want to add a banner below your header? No problemo. Just paste your code in the box marked “After Header” and you’re good to go. Plugins like this really take away the intimidation that often comes with theme customizations.
Artisteer
I use this design tool if I need to create simple static HTML sites, but it can also be used to make your own WordPress theme.
While I realize many people prefer to use WordPress plugins like Premise or Optimize Press for simpler landing/sales pages, sometimes I prefer HTML sites — depending on the the project.
This editor gives you maximum control over every element of your site — from the width of the site, header, columns to the colors, menu styles, fonts, shadow effects and so much more.
Watch my tutorial video below…
InstantWP
I was so happy when a subscriber introduced me to this free software. You can install WordPress on your Windows computer and design your site on your computer before publishing. Nothing like having a local testing platform!
Watch my video on InstantWP below…
Hexadecimal Color Tools
If you own a website, no doubt you’ve had to tinker with hex colors at least once.
They are the 3 or 6 digit codes that control the colors of various parts of your site (links, background colors, etc.) My tools will help you choose a hex color and even a color scheme if you wish.
Premise
Have you ever wanted to create a clean landing page on your blog that you could easily customize? Well, thanks to Premise, now you can.
This is a plugin by Copyblogger Media that allows you to setup landing pages in a snap. I used it to setup my WP Starter Tips landing page.
Notice the page is hosted on this blog, but has a completely different look. Without this plugin, you’d have to create the page manually or hope your theme has a blank template page that has the layout you desire.
Promotion
HootSuite
Unlike many bloggers today, I’m not very reliant on automation, but when I do use it, HootSuite is my application of choice. It’s great for scheduling posts and finding other sites in your niche. I use the free version.
Simple Social Icons
I had the hardest time finding a social icon plugin that included the buttons I prefer to highlight and the style I desired.
Simple Social Icons is free, widget-based and you can change the colors (hover state too) of them very easily by changing the hex color codes.
It’s a very classy way to display links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the other common social media sites.
AWeber
This is one of the most popular email management systems online. Send one-off email broadcasts, blog broadcasts (automated mailouts of your new blog posts) or setup an autoresponder series.
The biggest regret I have about my business is not learning how to master email marketing earlier.
Everyone always says “The money’s in the list”, but that’s only true for people who learn how to make their lists convert… and that takes a lot of trial and error.
Be sure to read the following post with a simple email marketing strategy…
Penguin Slapped You. Your Traffic Tanked. Now What?
CommentLuv Premium
This is a great way to encourage more comments by offering incentives to your readers. For example, after so many comments, social shares, etc. your audience will be able to select which post they want to promote with their comment.
In other words, you can reward your readers for sharing your content. It’s really a genius idea and perfect for new bloggers looking to increase comments.
Foobar
A notification bar is a great way to highlight sales, discounts, promotions or other must-read items on your WordPress site. Foobar is extremely flexible and even allows you to rotate multiple notifications and target them to different pages.
Max Blog Press Ninja
This is one of the fastest ways to instantly convert keywords on your pages into affiliate links.
I’m not sure why it took me so long to try one of these plugins because they are super convenient.
Easily assign multiple keywords to associate with the links and watch this plugin do its magic. It comes with tracking as well.
Hi, my name is 
Hi Lisa
I am a little surprised that there was not more on this list!
I guess that is the problem with WordPress, there are so many good plugins, the temptation to load too many is too great, ending up in a slow site, with page loads that seem to take forever!
Artisteer sounds interesting, being able to easily make your own WP theme. This would have been easier to make a client theme from scratch, than wade through the repository looking for one they liked, and one that had the right balance of style V”s widget,tool allocation.
On that front, I now use the Headway Drag and Drop Theme, so I can make a theme look however I want, with however many widget areas, sidebar position, width etc, as I want.
You can even have completely different layouts for the posts page, to other pages. It would be easy to create a new template with no navigation, Headers, or different header, no footer, no sidebar…. Basically what you want to have for a sales page, capture page etc.
I would be interested in your opinion on thsi theme, if you know it.
Thanks for the list, I found your site through Anne of My Blog Guest, and the two posts regarding Guest Blogging.
Jon Barry
Hi Jon,
Yeah, that’s why I mentioned it was not an exhaustive list. I only wanted to mention the ones I use the most and were key to my sites.
I really want to try Headway. Now that I read the bugs are out, I’m willing to purchase. I was going to try this a year ago but someone told me to wait. That’s great to hear you love it.
A great list, website tools are essential for maintaining a website. I really like to stick to the basics with Bing and Google webmaster tools. These tools allow me to see very important metrics for keywords and my position in search. When it comes to commenting and back linking I prefer the manual method and attracta. Appearing to Google as a “good website” seems to be the most important thing these days. For social apps I like share this and the social options from the jet pack plugin for word press. I really like free stuff and as far as mail clients go I use mail chimp it seems to do a pretty good job. As far as web design goes I like to find a good pre made them and tweak it to fit my needs, I do this in Weebly and WordPress. The Genesis simple hooks looks intriguing to help tweak a word press site with out too much work.
Thanks for the post looking forward to more.
Dan
Thanks for this list – it really gives some tips for consideration! I’ve been using WP plugins to spread news over social networks but maybe it’s time to try something else…
great tool collection…… loved it
That Browser shots tool is going to be handy, given Internet Explorer’s compatibility issues. My site always looked fine in most browsers except IE.
Also, is there a CommentLuv free version? I played around with different systems before settling with DISQUS but I see the value of CommentLuv and the incentive to get people engaging.
Yes, there is a free version of CommentLuv.
I have tried the CommentLuv free plugin via Intense Debate but found it slightly hit and miss. I don’t think all the bugs have beeen ironed out. I’m not getting a very smooth integration with my Blogger template.
Hopefully it will be better with WordPress
Hi Lisa , Great tool box. there are some things on your list I will explore ( commentluv)Question please Awber and Icontact are kind of the same have you tried both? If so which one do you like better. Awber is $19.00 per month were Icontact is $10.00. Thanks.
I’ve only used AWeber and have been since 2004. Can’t imagine using anything else.
MailChimp is free for the first two thousand subscribers.
I intend to use this for local internet marketing. I am unlikely to get close to two thousand email addresses for a local niche I am exploiting, so the free version will suffice.
For a larger market I would be willing to pay for AWeber
thanks so much for both responses!!
Great stuff. i really love it… m new in blogging field… hope it will help for me..
I like comluv but it is not good idea use that on big blogs where where people comment for just spamming . Intense Debate is other option though.
CommentLuv free is available through IntenseDebate. All comments get screened for moderation and I believe there is an IP block option
Lisa,
I am just trying to get started in creating a website. I don’t know what I am doing, so I am going to need all the mentoring that I can get. What is the first thing that I need to do?
Hi Derek
Have you watched my WordPress video? http://www.2createawebsite.com/traffic/create-free-blog.html First you need a domain name (yoursite.com) and hosting. It’s all on the page above.
Wow, Instant WP sounds great! I’ve been using Xampp for testing and development but Instant WP looks much more straight forward. Gonna give it a whirl right now, thanks for the tip!
You taught me something new – InstantWP and am hitting the site right away while taking a look at your other tools! Cool.
Hi Lisa i am new to the business and new to ur site> I been doing this for less than 2 month and am just learning WordPress. I find that I cant get thing to line up corectly on the I was womdering if the plugin simple works with other themes . I find your website to be very informative and I going to make a point in reviewing all your youtube videos.
The tools which you mentioned here are very good. I guess these will make by life easier my a huge sum. Thanks for mentioning.
Thank you Lisa I now have Foobar on my site!! It’s fantastic. My articles are very long lol so this will keep a couple of the important pages on my site clearly “in mind”. I’ve seen something similar before but hadn’t known what it was called. Adding new little features like this on occasion really make my day a little “funner”.
-Rayzel
Yay! Glad you enjoyed it.
goog
Very interesting. You have a few more blogs than me .Thanhk you
Thanks for the List but my main worry is ultimately site security resulting from the ease word press sites are hacked. sorry for being skeptical but i once had site hosted by hostgator build using word press, new as i am before evening learning and preparing to submitt my first site map Big mum google had already spotted my site as a potential site attack. i sought refuge with SBI which had to do the sitemapping stuff for me automatically then came the issue of infinit which you talked about in one of your articles but up to now i dont even understand its meaning save for the fact that INFIN IT must be hosted outside of sbi.
This is my personal: can guide me tru.the infinit process provided i host infinit with you?
Regards
Jamil
Hi Jamil
Once you have a host outside of WordPress, you will follow the host’s instructions for installing WordPress on that domain. Once the site is up, go back to your SBI! account and setup Infinit to connect to your new WP site so it will look as if it’s hosted on your domain. I have never used Infinit personally so I cannot give much more advice than that.
Have you not asked SBI! for help?
Thanks for the insight. I just downloaded Instant WP. I will try it out. In reference to Hootsuite, may I suggest that you do a future post on working it. ; )
sound good Lisa’s Toolbox for Web Design & Promotion i like your article and i read ur articles and its very informative for me and gain my skills and learning activities,i saw you video on InstantWP installed i surprise its very easy and work for me,,,thanks lisa sadia here,
I just downloaded Instant WP. I will try it out. In reference to Hootsuite
You will need to use the WP Duplicator plug-in to migrate your offline installation of WordPress (delivered through the Instant WordPress software) to your web server. Getting your database and tables online can be somewhat a headache so I recommend you buy the eBook written by the Instant WordPress author. The book is called “Instant WordPress Unleashed”.
Thanks for the insight. I just downloaded Instant WP.
Apart from the list may I know which SEO plugin are you using Lisa
I disabled all SEO plugins. I don’t think they are that beneficial anymore.
Hi Lisa
thanks for the blog. You are the second person in a week recommend browsershots.org so that must be a sign! I better take a look.
I’m interested in your recommendations for the various plug-ins for WordPress. I’ve found Yoast WP SEO easy to use. I notice you don’t think SEO plugins are useful anymore. Can you elaborate on why not?
regards
Garry
Hi Garry
I will be blogging about this next week. I think they *can* be for certain things like ensuring you’re using the right markup, reporting, etc. But they aren’t going to help you rank better alone. SEO is so dependent on off-page factors now like social media shares, backlinks, etc. I think too many people assume a plugin is going to catapult their rankings.
Its strange that I don’t see any plugins like Yoast,SEOPressor etc. They are worth the money and I think you try them on the site.
Lisa, have you completely stopped using all of them ?
I don’t feel the need for SEO plugins anymore. I will be blogging about this soon. I used to use Yoast, but since disabling them I have seen no difference.
Nice list am using most of this tools most especially studiopress products but recently simple hooks bas been giving me problems
Hi Lisa,
What screen capture software do you use to create your tutorials?
The videos are sharp and the mouse/cursor action is very smooth with none of the annoying stop-start jerky motion I’ve seen in most of the screen capture utilities I’ve tried.
Regards,
Randy
Hi Randy
Thanks! I use Camtasia.