Inspired by Wes Bos’ page on what he uses. Here is what I use as my daily drivers.
Note: Some of the links here are affiliate links but these are all things I use daily and swear by. I would never recommend things that I would never use (like page builders). Affiliate links will be marked with a little star (*).
Some of these even nets you a little discount if you choose to use them.
Hardware
My PC
I have two computers that I use.
My daily driver is a Lenovo Legion Pro 5 laptop with an Intel i9-14900HX and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070. I splurged on this after my desktop PC of 10 years died.
I also have a 2023 base model Mac Mini M2 that I use to use as my work machine until I got the Lenovo laptop. Right now it is mostly used to test websites in Safari.
Keyboard
I use a Logitech G915 Wireless Mechanical keyboard. I love the brushed metal frame. It’s nice.
Mouse
My mouse is a Logitech G350 wireless gaming mouse. It gets the job done.
Monitors
I use two monitors including the laptop screen. My other screen is an Asus TUF 27inch monitor.
Tablet
I bought an 10 inch iPad Pro back in 2018, the battery has degraded quite a bit but other than that it still works great. I’m not really an Apple person but I’ll admit that when it comes to tablets, the iPad can’t be beat.
Software
Integrated Development Environment
VS Code
VS Code is a solid and customisable code editor. I use the ‘Dark Modern’ theme. The only customisations I have are based off this course.
Misc
Notion
I love Notion. Whether it’s for notes, projects or life things. I use it for pretty much everything.
Google Workspace
For my business email, documents, cloud storage etc. I use Google Workspace. It’s work and most people are familiar with it.
WordPress and web specific (hosting, plugins, themes etc)
Hosting
I use SpinupWP* with Digital Ocean servers for most of the sites I use but I’ve been exploring WPEngine and seeing what they can do.
Plugins
I try to limit the number of plugins I use when building websites but I do have a few favourites that I reach for every site build.
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) is the G.O.A.T plugin for any WordPress developer. While you can create your own post meta, I find ACF can handle 90 percent of the use cases you’ll have in regards to adding post meta.
My go to form builder plugin. Has so many integrations and is extendable.
A solid security plugin with good customisability. You get 2FA as well, which is great.
My favourite plugin of all time. Has easily saved me hundreds of hours of site migrations throughout my career.
GenerateBlocks covers most of the use cases that is still missing from WordPress core blocks. Being block native makes it huge plus. There’s no need for a page builder with GenerateBlocks and a decent theme.
Themes
I typically custom build themes using my own boilerplate but for the times where it makes sense to use an out of the box theme, GeneratePress is the only one I would recommend.
It’s lightweight, fast and flexible.
Other
Domains
I buy all of my domains on Hover*. It’s nothing fancy but is quick, reliable and the interface is simple. No reason to switch.
Analytics
I love Fathom Analytics*. Privacy focused, GDPR friendly and a simple dashboard. No need for a cookie banner with Fathom. They have pretty good podcast too.