Recommended resources for your website
Good software makes everything easier. Here is a list of digital tools that I recommend.
Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. Thanks so much for your support!
Hosting & Domain
Siteground shared hosting (best choice for most websites)
Siteground is the most loved (from most reviews) hosting provider worldwide. They are affordable and deliver top notch performance.
- They are recommended by WordPress themselves as a good and safe choice.
- Their support is amazing. With 24/7 chat, phone and ticket support.
- They have a 1 click WordPress installer. Easy for everybody.
- Easy to use interface (recently updated).
View their pricing
Hostinger shared hosting (the cheapest hosting I could find)
Use the discount code: LIVINGWITHPIXELS to get an extra 10% discount.
WordPress pagebuilders
Elementor is the most popular WordPress pagebuilder in the world. It has over 3 million downloads. This is what makes it so great:
- Elementor makes it super easy to build up a page by allowing users to drag and drop elements onto a page.
- You are not limited (as with a theme), so you can design your page pixel perfect. Just how we like it as designers.
- It’s built for performance, so the code is very clean.
- With their Pro version you can even design the header, footer, blog posts, webshop etc.
- One of their pro plans has a licence for 1000 websites. This makes it perfect for webdesign client work.
- It’s popular so they are a lot of tutorials to find about it.
- It has amazing animation and scroll effects built in.
Get Elementor
Elementor addons
Missing plugins/addons for your dynamic Elementor website. You want this one if you are serious about doing client work.
- It comes with the amazing Jet Engine. Create your own custom lists, grids and advanced custom fields. All in 1 plugin (this also replaces ACF and CPT UI).
- Customize almost every part of your WordPress webshop with JetWooBuilder.
- A powerful Search feature to add to a website with Jet Search.
- Comes with JetSmartFilters, which is great for creating a filter for your dynamic content.
- Pretty fun visual effects (like parallax effect) with Jet Tricks.
- You will get lot’s of predesigned Elementor templates that you import with 1 click and sell to other companies.
Pro tip: Check their pricing. Unlimited websites is a much better deal than 1 website.
Check it out
Use the coupon code: LivingWithPixels10 to get 10% discount. Important: it only works if you use the exact link that the button will link you to.
A very well designed library of unique Elementor Widgets to add more functionality and flexibility to any WordPress website.
- Very well designed widgets that don’t need a lot of adjustments to impress your clients.
- Very customisable (if you want to).
- You will get lot’s of predesigned Elementor templates that you import with 1 click and sell to other companies.
- Their starter package is for unlimited websites (you don’t see that often).
Check it out for yourself
Design software
Adobe XD is the new standard for UI / UX design. It’s part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which makes it perfectly to combine with other Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.
- Adobe XD makes it super fast to prototype an idea for a website or app.
- It has an amazing ‘repeat grid’ feature which allows you to create and adjust grid layouts really fast.
- You can save different styles for your colours, fonts and elements. With 1 click you can change something on all artboards.
- You can share your prototype with other people via a link and get quick feedback.
- It has a developer share feature which allows developers to measure and export all styles.
- It has cool animation effects built it.
- It’s free! (if you pay you get more prototype sharing features)
Get Adobe XD
Security plugins
Before one of my client website got hacked I thought that free security plugins were enough. Now I know better. iThemes is affordable and protects your websites a lot better.
- It’s the second most popular security plugin in the world.
- It keeps your website faster (faster than Wordfence).
- It has 2 step authentication, which keeps people with fake emails out.
- It’s affordable because there is an unlimited website package.
Check out iThemes Security
Payment providers
Stripe is the payment provider that most people use in the west (USA & Europe). It’s has a very easy to use and beautiful interface and will give you a lot of data graphs to check your stats.
- Perfectly integrates with Woocommerce on WordPress.
- Has lots of payment options (even Apple and Google Pay for example).
- It’s popular, so there is enough info about it online.
Check out Stripe
Management software
ManageWP is a tool that allows you to manage all of your client websites in 1 simple dashboard. This makes managing your web design business a lot easier.
- Update all of your client plugins with 1 click.
- Login to your client websites without remembering passwords.
- Create client report PDF’s that you can send to your client.
- It’s free!
Get ManageWP
Handy WordPress plugins
In this part I’ve compiled a list of plugins that I use and make it a lot easier to manage your websites.
- Rank Math SEO > Optimize every page for Google (more features than Yoast for free)
- Duplicate Page > Duplicate a page, post or template with a click
- Post Types Order > Change the order of blogposts or products without changing their date.
- ManageWP Worker > Easily manage multiple websites in 1 dashboard (my tutorial: https://youtu.be/IVJHCqq58MU)
- Antispam Bee > Simple and light Antispam plugin
- iThemes Security > Simple and powerful main security plugin (lighter than Wordfence)
- Elementor Custom Skin > Create a custom design with Elementor for your dynamic content)
- Custom Post Type UI > create custom blogposts that can be used for things like a portfolio or repeatable content in a list.
- Google Analytics Dashboard for WP > Still a good choose to display Google Analytics in your dashboard (also your client’s)
- reSmush.it Image Optimizer > Super simple plugin to automatically compress images when somebody uploads it via WordPress.
Some of the links on this page are affiliate links, where I earn a commission if you make a purchase via my link. This helps me continue to create the free content that I put out. I will only promote companies that I really believe are worth your money. Thanks a lot if use my links to make a purchase.