WordPress Hosting
There are a more WordPress hosts out there than you would ever want to attempt to count. These are our recommended favorites.
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Flywheel
This hosting company is #1 in our book. Easiest to get up and running, fantastic support, and their dashboard is the best. Free SSL included in all plans!
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WPEngine
WPEngine was one of the first WordPress hosts to offer nightly & on-demand backups and a separate staging environment. Great support & free SSL as well.
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MonsterMegs
Good shared hosting option if you're looking for something basic. We like that they're independent and have good support.
Domain Registrations
Where do you go when you need to register a domain for your business? We recommend these registrars.
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Namecheap
Very reasonable pricing, nice interface, and excellent customer support. We trust Namecheap. They might have "cheap" in their name, but their quality of service is tops.
Yes, this is the only domain registrar we currently endorse. Stay away from GoDaddy.
WordPress Training
Tutorials, classes, videos, and more that are geared to help you learn how to use our favorite content management system.
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WP101
Fantastic set of WordPress walkthrough videos that get updated for every new WP release. We subscribe to WP101 for every one of our clients!
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Treehouse
In addition to learning the ins and outs of WordPress, a membership to this site will unlock the world of web design, programming, and more. Seriously: better than going to college.
Backups & Security
Always be prepared for disaster. Your digital existence could be hanging by a thread.
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Backblaze
We've used Backblaze to restore lost files on more than one occasion and they've never let us down. The price is right, too: $5/month per machine for unlimited backups including external drives.
Website Analytics & Insights
Who is visiting your website? How are they finding it? What are they doing while they are there? These tools can help answer those questions.
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Hotjar
This app is so awesome, it's going to freak you out a little bit. We started using it for the heatmap feature which allows you to see what visitors are clicking on. However, the "recordings" feature is going to blow your mind. Amazing app.
The Software We Use
Lift Development uses the following pieces of software to do what it is that we do: design and build effective websites.
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Coda
Beautiful UI with a ton of features useful for coding and publishing CSS, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, etc. We use it daily.
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Affinity Designer
The first graphic design app we've seen that truly competes with Illustrator. Affinity Designer is fast, intuitive, and without the feature bloat that you seem to find in this kind of software.
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CodeKit
Most of the websites we build utilize SASS for the stylesheets. CodeKit processes all of that quickly and lets us know if anything is wacky. It does a ton of other things, too, so we should probably look into that.
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Polymail
Polymail puts you in charge of your inbox. With each new message, you can easily snooze, delete, archive, mark as spam, and more. Inbox zero IS a reality with this app. Runs on both Mac & iOS.