Our favorite tools

We often get asked what tools were used to create our web site.
 

While many web developers are understanably reluctant to reveal their hard-learned professional secrets and discoveries, this whole site is about sharing and teaching and learning.  

So, to get a behind the scenes look at the what we used to create this site and other of our more cherised discoveries and web publishing tools, click the Read More button below or check out the tabbed interface above.

Moodle

Moodle is another FREE open source tool and is a Learning Management System. If you think that our online courses are easy to use and effective, thank the folks who have developed this amazing tool.

In fact, without this tool, this site could not exist. It is just that great. Easy to setup and configure. Easy to learn. Easy to use.  

If you are unfamiliar with Moodle and are curious to see it in action, check out any of our FREE ONLINE COURSES. They all run inside the  Moodle Learning Management software.

Akeeba Backup

This is another free Joomla! extension that is indispensable for  Joomla! developers and students alike. Surprisingly, it is not that easy or straight forward to backup a Joomla! website, particularly for students.

With this great tool, backing up or moving a Joomla! site is a snap. Without this tool, learning Joomla would not be as easy as it is.  

K2 Extension

The K2 content extension is a free Joomla component, but is so great we would pay for it if we had to! This tool converts a Joomla! magazine style site into a ful-featured blog site, thus negating some of the advantage that WordPress blogging software  has over Joomla!.

We use the K2 content extension throughout this website to organize and present our video tutorials and articles but can also be used to create author blogs, product catalogs, work portfolios, knowledge bases, image galleries and more.

Arteester

Arteester creates nice looking website templates and blog themes for WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and other popular tools. With Artisteer you can immediately become a Web designer, editing and slicing graphics, coding XHTML and CSS, and creating your own design templates, all without Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and no coding skills.

But what we like best about Arteester, is the excellent job it does teaching students the language of the web. Students learn about padding, sidebars, hover states and dozens of other must-know web design terms by adjusting sliders and choosing options. Terms spring to life as  students can immeadiately SEE the results of their modifications.

Social Extensions

JomSocial, Community Builder, Word Buddy, NING are all very good add-ons that can turn your WordPress, Dreamweaver, or Joomla! website into instant social sites.

Once you setup these tools, you can use your websites to organize events. Use member profiles to bring faces to names. Get everyone talking through groups, forums, chats and activity streams. Plus more (lots more).

We have used all of these social media construction kits, and they all have their strenths, but for this site we are running JomSocial.