Among the most popular request in interviews is to list some of my favorite tools for WordPress. As time goes by and WordPress matures, this is almost a meaningless question. True, there are plugins I use on almost every project but for the most part, they aren’t set in stone every single time. I like to assess the project then use plugins, tools and code according to what fits the project best. In this light, there are many tools we use that are never written about or showcased because they don’t really fit anywhere.

While working on a WordPress membership site – our very own TechBasedTraining – it occurred to me this would be a perfect opportunity to give you a peek into the many different tools we choose for a project like this. Kinda like peeking into the toolkit. Ready? Here we go.

Plugins

Wishlist Member – of course. We don’t always use Wishlist. For this project, Wishlist has been used for 2 years. Since were were updating the site, it was a good excuse to upgrade to the latest version.

Backup Buddy – on almost all our sites. Usually for backups but in this case it served double duty. The site was an existing one with traffic so we couldn’t just work on it live. Backup Buddy was used to export the site to a temporary folder and database. The bulk of the work was done in this folder and finally re-imported back into the main area after backing up (again) and deleting the old files and database.

Ajax Event Calendar – since we will be holding live classes, a calendar would be the best way to present our class schedule. We used other calendars before but decided to try this one because it looks really good and it’s been quite easy to use. This might be a new favorite.

Amazon S3 URL Generator – this lets you create expiring URLs for your downloads. Ideal for a membership site since Amazon already has protection built in. I also use these links for videos.

Executable PHP widget – like what it says. Lets you use PHP in widgets. Needed because we wrote a bunch of PHP code hooking into Wishlist and Delavo API to grab and display member credits, list all products members have access to and stuff like that. Eventually we may switch that code over to shortcodes so we can drop this plugin off our list. Nothing wrong with it. Love it. Just trying to cut down on plugins where possible.

MediaElement.js – HTML5 Audio and Vide0 – used to display our recorded training sessions and pre-recorded training.

Page Links To – a plugin not often used by us but in this case needed to redirect visitors from individual product sales pages to a temporary “we’re sorry but the product has been retired” page before automatically redirecting them to the home page again. We could have directed people to the home page immediately but thought it would only be courteous to let people know – especially for affiliate referred traffic.

PHP Execution – Wish this and the widget could be one single plugin. This one lets you use PHP inside your posts or pages. Again for the same reason as the PHP widget.

Shadowbox JS – used to display videos in a nice shadowbox effect when members clicked the play button or link.

Simple:Press – used only once because we had a product offering private coaching via private forums. We’ve not used this since the coaching ended but may revive it again under the new All Access plan to encourage members help each other out. Still a little torn between this and bbPress, we like the simplicity of bbPress but without new topic notifications on bbPress it really is a deal breaker.

Specific CSS/JS for Posts and Pages – among my top pet peeves is having Javascript on on every single page when it is only needed on one or a handful of pages/posts. This helps take care of that and also lets me do some really nifty things like a delayed redirect when people land on the retired page (see above). Of course the ability to add other things like CSS is helpful too for landing pages.

Syntax Highlighter and Code Prettifier Plugin for WordPress – been using this plugin for a long time on several projects simply because we post so much code. In a membership site where we’re talking technical training this definitely makes sense. I might be switching since it doesn’t look like it is being supported anymore.

Widget Logic – cannot do without this one. Definitely helps make navigation that make sense e.g. logged in or logged out, on specific pages or categories. Super useful for membership sites. Although with the Builder theme you can achieve the effect using different layouts and menus, I still use this for finer control.

Theme

Builder Theme – love, love, love this because of the layout engine. I can create so many different layouts, look feels in one theme and building the layouts is easy. We’ve been using this a lot for our own projects. Particularly useful for membership sites where you may have a members’ dashboard layout, home page layout, internal page layouts, launch page layouts, squeeze page layouts, different layouts for different membership levels. We’ll be covering this in our new TechBasedTraining program as well.

Graphics

Oh so many where do we begin? First, we like membership sites with clear linking and use icons/graphics to help with the text. Still tweaking the members’ dashboard. Generally, we like to look at these icon packs and sites. There are many others but these are the packs we picked from for this project.

• FamFamFam icons
• Fugue icons
• Crystal Icons
• Findicons
• GraphicRiver
• CanStock – like iStockPhoto but we find the prices much more reasonable. Been using them for years and their collection has really grown. I used several images from them for the sales page video.
• Graphics from Max Rylski – I’ve purchased many packs from him in the past. All excellent and will continue to buy from him. They are truly some of the best. Here’s one of his recent graphic packs. Great value.

Code Snippets / Coding Assistance

Lots of places. Some were from our private library we saved over time and can’t remember where they were from. Definitely lots of examples and searching on WordPress Answers, WordPress.org and blogs like WPEngineer.

Other Software

Delavo – that’s what we have been using for our shopping cart for years. I like it because the points system works pretty well and it has an API I can tap into to check points. We are considering using CubePoints so members can earn points and allow users to transfer those points into Delavo to spend like cash for other products and consult time.

Another thing we like a lot, Delavo is very well integrated with Aweber, something a lot of people have trouble with when working with a shopping cart.

Well, this is the bulk of it. Long list huh? It could still change as we tweak and move forward but I trust this gives you a better insight of what type of technology it takes to build a private member’s only site like TechBasedTraining. For more in depth technical training similar to these in a live class setting. Check it out.