We are asked a lot about which tools we use/prefer when building WordPress sites or with Bricks in particular, so if you find it useful… here’s the list of the main tools being used to currently power this site (and also to deliver the available product + support).
Context: At the time of writing we have 1800+ active users (based worldwide), regularly returning to login, read docs, watch videos, create support tickets, download files & connect to us from numerous sites for license activation/validations.
This is the current tool ‘stack’ that makes that possible;
Hosting
GridPane – WordPress hosting solution that allows us to easily manage cloud servers, optimised for WP. Handles all the caching, daily backups, firewalls and a lot of the security etc.
Vultr – High-performance cloud servers, this site is on one of their High Frequency plans. (This is all being managed through GridPane).
Site Building
Bricks – Site builder / theme. Used due to being so fast/lightweight, outputting very clean HTML markup and being so customisable.
BricksExtras – Our own Bricks-addon for adding accessible components to Bricks sites. We’re using to add some interactive elements such as the back to top, dynamic lightbox, interactive cursor and the slide menu & burger trigger for our mobile menu.
Advanced Custom Fields Pro – Custom field & CPT plugin. Being used just to keep things more organized for us when updating content in places around the site.
CSS Framework
Utopia (free) – Simple, tiny CSS framework just to handle all the fluid typography and common spacing with their CSS variables. Utopia handles the size/spacing, Bricks handles the color palette (there are only three colors).
Product Related
Easy Digital Downloads + various EDD addons – Popular WP plugin for selling downloads. It’s being used to handle the sales, delivery of our plugin, restricting content, and all the license management. Fairly frictionless one-click-to-checkout process for new customers.
Customer Support / Communication
Fluent Forms Pro – Form plugin that are used for our contact forms and feature request forms. Output and styled using with BricksExtras’ Fluent Form element.
Fluent Support – Support ticketing system that allows for managing support tickets from inside the WordPress dashboard. We use this for our customer support portal. The intuitive layout on the front end makes it easy for new users to know how to use it at first glance.
SEO
Rank Math (free) – SEO plugin. We’re just using the free version for the basics. No Pro features required for this type of site.
Performance
Cloudflare – DNS & using certain performance features such as Rocket Loader, and Brotli compression.
BunnyCDN – Content delivery network to ensure all the site assets are delivered to the browser as fast as possible. We have routing zones in Europe, Asia, Oceania & North America. Automatically optimising all images & delivers WebP format where supported.
Flying Pages (free) – Lightweight plugin that just adds a script to preload pages JUST before the user finishes clicking on a link. That extra 100ms head start, on a site that is already quite fast, can make the site feel almost instant to browse between pages.
That’s it. Hope you found it useful.