Useful resources for Web Development

Last updated on: November 26, 2023

On this page you can find links to interesting and useful tools which could come in handy when working with web development, WordPress and SEO.

Plugin Tests

URL: https://plugintests.com/
Categories: Performance, WordPress

Automated “smoke tests” for WordPress plugins – a website that provides benchmark tests and detailed insights about the plugin structure, loading times, memory usage, etc. Nice “check before you use” tool for wise plugin usage decisions.

Search Console Insights

URL: https://search.google.com/search-console/insights/
Categories: SEO, Analytics

Nice way to quickly check how the website you’ve registered in the Google Search Console performs in Google. This holds a summary of the website achievements, trending and most popular articles, traffic sources, and trending search keywords.

List of Emojis which work in Google SERP

URL: https://www.sistrix.com/blog/emojis-and-special-characters-in-google-serps-what-still-works-today/
Categories: SEO

A list of emojis that still works in SERP, analyzed and compiled by German SEO company SISTRIX.

Speed Vitals

URL: https://speedvitals.com/
Categories: Performance, SEO

This site offers a great tool called “TTFB Test” with which you can measure how your website performs from different locations in the world. If you provide content for an international audience, it is a good way of checking if your CDN configuration works well.

KeyCDN Tools

URL: https://tools.keycdn.com/
Categories: Performance, SEO, Security

Another great site, which offers various kind of tests, which includes basic website speed and server configuration tests, traceroutes, dns propogantion and ssl security tests. Good alternative for testing TTFB internationally.

Bulk Google PageSpeed test by Experte

URL: https://www.experte.com/pagespeed
Categories: Performance, SEO

Tool to do a Google PageSpeed tests in bulk against a predefined or crawled list of URLs. Commonly used to get a quick oversight of how well the whole website scores in these tests. (Remember: Google evaluates the speed of each page in your website separately!)

Security Headers by Probely

URL: https://securityheaders.com/
Categories: Security, Technical SEO

This tool is a quick way to check if site security headers are ok. Security headers are directives which are used by web applications to enforce various security defenses in the web browsers. Headers include various things, like HSTS which makes it impossible to visit website via unencrypted connection and Content Security Policy, which defines from what sources it is allowed to load scripts, iframes or objects. Since they play a good “safety pillow” role in the website security, it is also a requirement in technical SEO for many tools and companies.

HSTS Preload List

URL: https://hstspreload.org/
Categories: Security

Form, which allows to submit the domains for inclusion in Google Chrome’s HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) preload list. Also could be used for checking or debugging HSTS configuration. This preload list is used by various web browsers to determine if the site accepts only secure connections, therefore granting additional security measure, that no connection will ever happen through HTTP for the included domains.

REAL Favicon generator

URL: https://realfavicongenerator.net/
Categories: Design, User Interface

If your website or web application is in a need for an icon (or favicon), there is no tool on the Internet that can match the good old “Real Favicon Generator” in terms of generating all the necessary icon formats for web (including icons for Android phones, Iphone app icons, icons for Windows tiles and masked icons for Safari). All you need to do is to prepare a 1024x1024px image and this tool will do the rest with creating a set of icons and a sample HTML code which you can add to your website in the matter of minutes. Before you use this tool, be sure that, no matter dimensions, your icon by its design looks good in any size (from 16px up to 1024px in width/height)

IcoMoon – Custom Icon Fonts

URL: https://icomoon.io/
Categories: Performance, Design, User Interface

The problem with all-in-one icon font libraries is that they contain a lot of stuff which is not needed and can slow down your website with adding extra kilobytes to it’s basket. Why use an icon font with thousands of icons, if you can use one which contains just what you need? IcoMoon solves this issue completely with allowing you to create icon fonts with your own selection of icons, which you can either upload as SVG files or compile them from many existing icon libraries.

Annotely – Online image annotation tool

URL: https://annotely.com/
Categories: Content, Design

Often there is a need to annotate the images for things like DIY articles, technical instructions, guides and Annotely is the most easiest – free to use tool available for this. Just annotate the image the way you like and download it.

Database Search and Replace Tool

URL: https://interconnectit.com/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
Categories: WordPress, Coding

A helpful script which allows to search and replace things in a WordPress website database. Commonly used for rewriting domain names, e.g. when you need to migrate your WordPress website from one domain to another or create a different environments for development. The script is free to download, though it is necessary to provide a little information about yourself before you can download it.

In previous versions this tool had little problems with processing the “wp_options” table, but in its latest version (v4) this has been fixed and the tool works flawlessly.