Blogger uses some tools and services to keep up with their blogging efficiency. These developer tools help a blogger save time and produce more quality content. Every blogger uses his own set of quality developer tools that help him perform tasks faster and with much more precision. The success of a blogger depends upon the number and quality of developer tools that he uses. Overuse of these tools can really make a blogger very much dependent and not using them at all can really disturb ones blogging routine.

12 Best Developer Tools for Bloggers

I have my own set of developer tools that I use to perform different blogging tasks e.g. publishing, collecting stats, creating graphics, coding etc. Most of these tools are free and open source which means you don’t need to spend even a penny to use them. Lets take a review of them all.

1. Wordpress

Wordpress is the one and only best open source blogging platform for professional, moderate and amateur bloggers. It has the best blogging architecture and of course its free to use. You can either use it on the remote Wordpress servers or you can even host it yourself and a run a blog under a domain of your own choice. Its 5 minute installation procedure and the ability to enhance your blogging experience through the use of themes and plugins simply wins the heart of the best bloggers around the blogosphere.

2. Feed Demon

This is the best desktop feed reader ever. Though it is not free and you need to pay $30 for a one year license but the features of this great software are definitely worth the price. Using this utility you can read feeds online as well offline and it synchronizes your desktop account with your online newsgator account so you can mark read/unread feeds and can access them from any PC in the world. This is better than Google Reader and is definitely a must have.

3. Firefox

This is the best web browser as everyone of us already knows. Firefox has really beaten the hell out of IE and is dominating the browser industry ever since its release. Its themes and addons feature make it much more exciting than the boring Internet Explorer. It has also been designed for fast and optimized browsing and has got built-in developer tools.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides free service to track your blog or site statistics. This is the most used stats tool over the Internet and the most professional one too. The good thing about it is that it is powered by Google and is free to use. You can track as many blogs/sites at once and it has no limitations. It gives you very accurate and in depth stats about your blog e.g. geographical visitor location, heat map overlay, bounce rate etc. If you want a good and free stats tool for your blog then this is a must have.

5. Web Developer

This is the ultimate firefox addon specially made to support web developers. Its called the Web Developer extension for Firefox and is free to use provided that you have Firefox installed. It will let you edit css, validate markup, change screen resolutions, enable/disable cookies, view source and everything a web developer can imagine of. If you makes themes or work too much on HTML then you definitely can’t live without this addon.

6. Dreamweaver

This a little expensive but remarkable web development software originally designed by Macromedia but now is a part of the Adobe family of products. includes CSS tools, Ajax components for building dynamic user interfaces, and intelligent integration with other Adobe software. This is the most professional web development software on the planet and if you like making dynamic web sites then you have to give it a try.

7. Photoshop

More widely known as Adobe Photoshop is another product from the Adobe family of products. This is a graphics designing software that is really expensive but its features are so unique and dynamic that I don’t think there would be a single web developer who can survive without using this software. You can edit and make professional images and picture with it. The logo you see above in this post was also made in Photoshop.

8. Notepad++

It is an open-source text editor and the best replacement to Windows default text editor i.e. Notepad. It supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. This is a great utility that I use for faster code and text editing. It even has syntax highlighting which makes it easy for you to identify and edit code of different programming languages.

9. SmartFTP

The most stable and easy to use FTP client for your computer. It is free and is updated very often. It has a lot of unique features such as direct FTP transfer and Queue transfer. It opens connections in a tabbed format which lets you open multiple connections at once. You can save your FTP address, login and password using the favorites feature and can even use FTP connections using a proxy. This is great when you have to update your blog or install some scripts etc for which you need to transfer and update files on your server.

10. EasyPHP

EasyPHP is a complete software package allowing to use all the power and the flexibility that offers the dynamic language PHP and the efficient use of databases under Windows. Package includes an Apache server, a MySQL database, a fully PHP execution, as well as easy development tools for your web site or your applications. If you are web developer who wants to run PHP and MySQL on his windows then this is the best one-click install tool for you.

11. Free Blog Stats

iBlogStats is a free web 2.0 blog stats tool for bloggers to check their blog stats and rankings. It is sponsored by Sizlopedia itself and is based on the Xinu architecture. You should give this a try if you want to know more about your blog.

12. Ajax Whois

This is a free domain lookup tool and unlike other domain whois/lookup tools it does not refresh the page each time you run a query rather it uses the ajax technology and helps you query domain info fast and securely. If you are domain addicted freak then not using this tool can really make you ill.

This was the list of my favorite web developer tools that help me in blogging and perform various tasks. You can visit their respective web sites using the footer on this blog.

Share with me your favorite web developer tools and tell about the ones you like.