Design your way

New technologies are constantly evolving, as is the Internet.

The good news being the availability of a range of tools and apps to assist them. There are design challenges that are considered to be excessively complex and difficult. They are now handled rather easily. One can execute them with the right tool or an access to the right app.

Designers and developers always found ways to keep pace with other new technologies. 2018 is no different.

Take a look at this collection of my favorite tools and resources. They will help you finish existing projects and take on new ones you may have been hesitant to tackle.

Mason

Mason offers pre-packaged, always up-to-date solutions for today’s most common digital product requirements. It is the world’s first platform that lets your team visually build and customize complete front-end solutions and experiences—without the need for code.

The Mason builder, together with its library of pre-built solutions, can easily replicate the UI brand and style of any company or client. Anything you build with Mason components will give your site or app exactly the look and feel you want. Anyone—not just developers—can build, ship, or edit your component using the Mason builder. Should you need to update a Mason solution that’s embedded in your product, you can easily do so with the Mason builder and push live changes immediately.

Designers and developers alike will find Mason’s modular content, which consists of pre-coded experiences for everything from user registration, navigation, login, password reset, and social media logins and content feeds, easy to customize and even easier to deploy into a live, fully-functional front-end experience.

Just pick your Mason component, customize it, and enable it within your product using a single line of Mason-generated code dropped into your codebase.

Mobirise

Mobirise is an offline app for both Windows and Mac users who are looking for an easy way to create small customer projects, small to medium websites, portfolios, landing pages, promo sites, and even for rapid prototyping. Since Mobirise is offline, you are not tied to any platform, you have total control over your design activities, you can host your finished product anywhere you want to, and best of all – Mobirise is free for both personal and commercial use.

Mobirise is ideal for non-techies, and designers who prefer taking a visual approach to their design efforts. Everything is drag and drop, there’s no need for coding, and since Mobirise is based on Bootstrap 4 or the latest Google AMP, your products will be lightning fast and mobile friendly.

Features include 1200+ website blocks and templates, and a huge library of icons, fonts, and free images.

Elementor

Any WordPress theme that can claim more than 600,000 users in less than a two -year period certainly deserves the #1 WordPress Page Builder title. Not only does Elementor provide you with all the website-building features you are ever likely to need, if does so free of charge.

This popular free and open source frontend page builder is undergoing a series of improvements that should make it even more popular with web designers. Elementor 2.0 brings to the table several new and exciting features that are scheduled for release throughout 2018.

You can visually create stunning websites, without any need for coding. The package includes 130+ designer-made templates to help you get started, 400+ icons, 800+ Google fonts, and an exquisite selection of color palettes. All this, plus you’re free to customize and extend the theme to your heart’s content.

monday.com

monday.com is suitable for a team of two to a team of thousands spread across the globe. This team management tool is especially popular among teams that are not tech oriented in that it offers an escape from managing burdensome Excel files, using whiteboards for project planning, and attending excessively lengthy meetings.

If your objective is to make every user feel empowered by boosting collective productivity and transparency, this team management tool is for you.

A2’s Fully Managed WordPress Hosting

A2Hosting is a WordPress hosting service that is noted for its easy site staging environment and fast, ultra-reliable, and scalable hosting capabilities. With A2 Hosting, you can expect 20X faster page load times thanks to A2’s Turbo Server.

Hosting prices are quite affordable, and in most cases, you’ll be able to migrate from your existing host to A2 Hosting at no cost. Benefits include a free Jetpack personal license, automated backups, and expert 24/7 support.

Goodiewebsite

The Goodiewebsite platform connects web designers and business owners with developers and provides cost-effective coding at a competitive price. Small business owners and web designers that have websites in the 1 to 10-page range and are looking for a reliable development partner will appreciate the service Goodiewebsite provides.

Prices start at $999, and the quality of the deliverable is guaranteed.

The Hanger

The Hanger WooCommerce theme could be described as modern, as classic, or more appropriately, a combination of both characteristics. Website designers will welcome the easy set up and low maintenance features that characterize The Hanger, along with its ability to help them quickly build eCommerce WordPress sites for their clients.

The clients will appreciate how this WP theme makes it so easy to align the website’s looks with the brands they sell.

LayerSlider

LayerSlider has much more to offer than its name implies. You can use this premium multipurpose platform to create image galleries, mind-blowing slideshows, landing pages, animated page blocks, and of course, sliders. LayerSlider can also be used to create a full website – it powers more than 1.5 million sites daily.

LayerSlider is responsive and device friendly, it offers a variety of layout options, and no technical or coding skills are required to use it.

Uncode – Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme

Uncode has the needed functionality to build stunning portfolio websites in a few short hours., including new features like Slides Scroll, Shape Dividers, and the powerful Gallery Manager.

The best way to see what you can accomplish with Uncode is to visit their showcase of hundreds of websites created by users. You’re guaranteed to come away with some ideas and inspirations of your own.

Houzez

Building a website for a real estate agency from scratch would be a real challenge for the designer and expensive for the client. Houzez solves both issues. With this specialty drag and drop and responsive WordPress theme, you can create a website that even the most demanding of clients will love in an incredibly short time. Houzez functionality includes advanced custom fields builder, search composer, and a property management system among many others.

Pixpa

Pixpa is an all-in-one platform that enables designers, photographers, and other creatives to build their own professional portfolio websites. Your portfolio website on Pixpa features a built-in eCommerce store along with client proofing and blogging tools.

As a creative professional, you can manage your entire online presence in one place with Pixpa, hence saving time and money that would otherwise be spent on juggling multiple services. Pixpa is affordable, features best in class hosting and provides 24/7 customer support.

wpDataTables

wpDataTables is far and away the #1 WordPress plugin devoted to creating tables and charts. The extraordinary results users realize has made it so popular that some users switch to WordPress just to have the opportunity to use it.

Tables and charts created by using wpDataTables are colorful, responsive, and easily editable and maintainable. wpDataTables works with data from a variety of sources including large MySQL tables.

WhatFontis.com

With a database of 450,000 commercial and free fonts and its automatic AI system, WhatFontis.com can locate the font you need, even if you don’t know its name. This powerful search capability will save you a ton of time, whether you use it occasionally or several times a day.

WhatFontis.com belongs in your design toolkit.

FFonts.net

FFonts.net is a free font directory. Its collection of more than 75,000 free fonts is presented in 87 well-defined categories to assist you in your search. Look for a specific font or a font style of interest, preview it and download it free of charge.

You can write out a stream of text for a given font to get a better idea as to how it will appear in actual use.

Fluid UI

Fluid UI is a prototyping tool designed to make your projects proceed faster and help you produce higher quality deliverables. It does this by supporting live collaboration among teams and project stakeholders, which can involve video presentations, live chat, and real time annotations.

Fluid UI features include built-in libraries for all your web and device prototyping needs.

Conclusion

There you have it. A collection of tools and resources, one or more of which can speed up your workflow. They can provide an optimum hosting service. These tools and resources are also able to improve the quality of your deliverables.

You might be looking for a multi-purpose theme or a prototyping tool. How about a single platform from which you can manage your online business? You’ll not only find it here but when you make your choice it will be the best of the best for its type.

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