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for Webmasters

17 Essential Tools
for Webmasters

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Here’s a lost of many of the webmaster tools, plugins and apps I love and use across my sites

Shared Hosting

I use cheapo shared hosting (< $10/mo) for lots of little projects. This lot are the shared hosts I use, each offers a tonne of freebies & one-click installs, plus free domains for new customers.

  • BlueHost
    Only just started using BlueHost, but all good so far.
  • HostGator
    Famous for their awesome US phone support.
  • DreamHost
    Like many of their customers, I love DreamHost’s custom contrul panel – it’s as easy as it gets.

VPS/Dedicated Hosting

For more serious sites/projects, here’s who I use.

Live Chat

  • Olark
    Olark made me fall in love with live chat. Integrates easily with Gtalk or MSN. We use it for Wish.co.uk, and I love it.

A/B Testing

  • Visual Website Optimizer
    Bar far the easiest split testing tool I’ve used, and a good 100x simpler to use than the god-forsaken Google Website Optimizer.

Email Marketing

  • Aweber
    I’ve been using Aweber for newsletters since the year dot. It lacks the fancy features of MailChimp et al, but it’s so damn quick and easy to use that I actually send newsletters.
  • Popup Domination
    Awesome for creating opt-in overlays in WordPress and non-WP Sites. Forget the OOT sales patter, it really does work like a charm.

    • Monetization

  • Skimlinks
    Instantly swaps regular links for affiliate links on your sites.
  • OpenX OnRamp
    Dead simple ad serving, without having to setup your own ad server. Makes it super-simple to split test banner ads.

SEO & Linkbuidling

  • Backlinks.in
    My home-grown bulk backlink checker. Uses SEOMoz data c/o their API.

Usablity

  • UserTesting.com & WhatUsersDo
    These two services offer quick, affordable usablity tests on your site.
  • Qualaroo
    Great for quick one-shot surveys across your website’s users.
  • CrazyEgg
    For quick ‘n’ dirty heat maps of user behaviour.

Social Media

  • HootSuite
    Great for managing multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts across teams
  • Buffer
    Great app for queueing tweets to publish at given times by email
  • Desk.com
    Salesforce’s ace ticketing system, which we use for Wish.co.uk
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