Technology I use to develop websites and applications
Each project is different and has its own set of requirements. The tech listed below are some I've recently used and would recommend.
Content Manangement Systems (CMS)
Prismic.io
Prismic is a headless CMS that has some interesting sellings points. It's easy to use, has a great API and is affordable. Ideal for marketing heavy sites.
Sanity.io
Sanity is a headless CMS that I use for a lot of my projects. It's higly customizable, affordable and is easy for clients to update their content. It's ideal for sites that have unique content structures.
Craft CMS
Craft CMS is a self hosted, popular traditional CMS. It's authoring experience is great and it's easy to extend with plugins. A reliable choice for any project.
Dato CMS
Dato CMS prides is self being the most complete, user-friendly and performant headless CMS out there. It has features that you would only expect from an enterprise tool.
Frameworks
Next.js
Next.js is a React framework that makes it easy to build static or server rendered sites. It's gained a lot of popularity in the last year and powers a lot of the sites and apps you see today.
Laravel
Laravel is a PHP framework that I often rely on when building bespoke applications that require back-office functionality. It's rated as one of the most popular frameworks ever built and is completely free to use.
Ecommerce
Shopify
Shopify is a popular ecommerce platform that I use for the majority of my ecommerce projects. It's allows merchants to easily sell products online and has a great API for us developers to work with. Power this with a Headless CMS like Prismic and you've got a winner.
Craft Commerce
Take a well oiled CMS like Craft and add a powerful yet simple ecommerce solution and you've got Craft Commerce. I've used this for some high profile ecommerce projects and it hasn't let me down. It allows for complete control over the checkout process - something Shopify charges a lot more for.
Hosting
Vercel
The creators and maintainers of Next.js also provide a hosting platform that's perfect for Next.js sites. $20 per member per month will allow you to host some of the biggests sites on the web. With features like instant rollbacks and a global CDN, it's my go to.
Netlify
Similar to Vercel, Netlify is a hosting platform that's design to host sites built using frameworks like Next.js, Gatsby.js, Remix.run and so on. A great platform with plenty of built in features like form submissions and split testing.
SiteHost
SiteHost is a local hosting provider here in New Zealand. I've been using them for years and have a great relationship with the team. The cloud hosting plans are great value for money and can scale to suit your needs.