If you need to do some website or web app upgrades that require you to take the site offline you can use .htaccess so visitors are not seeing broken pages and links. This edit works great for any PHP based site, Wordpress, Codeigniter, Drupal, Expression Engine, you name it.
I build websites for a living and I am constantly looking for ways to make my life easier. Code snippets, shortcuts, automation ... anything that can save me time and reduce doing the same task multiple times is worth consideration to be included in my typical workflow. One thing that most web developers have added to their tool box is a task runner, a process for automating tasks like minifying javascript or compiling SASS to css. Grunt and Gulp are probably the two most popular task running options right now (but there are many others). I have tried them both and found while useful they felt bloated and cumbersome for what I (and probably most website developers) need which is a quick and easy way to build javascript and css. Enter NPM.
Feedback, it's a blessing and a curse. Every web designer and developer knows that at some point you need to get feedback from your team and your client during website development. The problem is the countless ways that feedback is sent: emails, spreadsheets, text messages, project management software. Once you ask for feedback you spend all of your valuable time trying to manage it instead of doing something useful with it.
"The alternative is email hell or having really shoddy communication. I can trace just about every client problem I've ever had down to poor communication, and any tools or processes in place to counter that are a win in my book."
The problem isn't the feedback, the problem is a lack of good, easy to use tools to leave and manage the feedback.
I'm very excited to announce the upcoming launch of a new service I have been developing, PageProofer. One of the largest frustrations when getting a website (or web app) from concept to reality is dealing with all the various feedback you get while other designers, developers, testers, account people, clients, etc look at and review the site in progress. I decided to tackle this problem with a simple solution, the ability to leave notes and comments directly on a website while it's being viewed.
If you do web development you need to test across multiple devices, browsers and operating systems. My primary development machine is a Mac however I also run Windows 7 via Bootcamp/Parallels for browser testing locally (and for the occasional .Net based project that I take on). Now that mobile has become such a factor in the web development process it is also critical to test across devices. Being able to quickly test web sites and web apps without having to push files to a staging server is a huge time saver.
It's become a common phrase in developer job posts and interviews, "rockstar". Are you a rockstar developer? Do you want to be the next rockstar developer? What do you need to do to become a rockstar developer? I have no idea how or why developers ever got labeled with "rockstar", but personally it's a label I never want and something that when asked for I take as a negative (a recent phone interview led to this post). To me it says the person asking does not understand their target audience ... developers. Have you ever seen a posting for a rockstar lawyer, doctor or teacher? Not likely, it sounds ridiculous. So why do people seek out rockstar developers?