Tools of the Trade

A Short List of Our Favorite Everyday Tools

You could boil down what we do at Deep Fried Advertising into one phrase – we build things. We build websites, brands, logos, user experiences and loads of other cool things. Much like skilled artisanship requires a toolbox, our job requires a specific toolkit.

So, what’s in a web developer/brand manager/graphic designer’s toolkit? It depends on who you ask. We all have our unique favorites, but across the board, here’s a few tools we find ourselves using almost daily:

BuiltWith

BuiltWith helps us find out, you guessed it, what websites are built with. It’s especially helpful in the discovery process when clients don’t know where their site is hosted, who provides their DNS services, etc. BuiltWith also gives information about email services providers, what CMS is in use, and gives an overall view of what makes a site tick.

WhatsMyDNS

We often deal with switching hosting providers or migrating from an old website to a new one. When that happens, DNS servers across the globe may not get the hint. That’s why you may hear us say say it’ll take some time for DNS propagation. WhatsMyDNS allows us to check a domain name’s IP address and DNS record on several name servers across the world.

Password Exploder

Passwords are your first line of defense against a long list of headaches, so finding the best way to communicate them with our clients was important. Thanks to our pals over at LookFar, we now have a foolproof way to securely send passwords to anyone. Password Exploder creates a link that explodes (expires) after a designated time period. So, if you ever get a funky looking link from us saying it’s a password, just know we’re looking after your cyber security!

Browser Test

A little shameless self promotion never hurt anyone, has it? Oftentimes we need to find out what browser and operating system a client is using to look around the web. We decided to make a browser tester of our own.

Wayback Machine

Time travel is possible, or at least it is in the Internet world it is. Wayback Machine allows us to travel back in time and see how websites looked in the past. It’s a little bit of a novelty more than it is useful, but it can be used to recall a design element or layout a client would like to create. Check out what Apple looked like way back in 2002!

MOZBar

MOZ is the Swiss Army Knife of SEO tools. MOZ can comb through your site’s backlink profile, help out with local SEO and help you find better keywords. The MOZBar, however, is truly an everyday tool. This Chrome extension will highlight any link on your page, show you Schema markup and help you find on-page elements such as headers, meta descriptions and alt text.

Deep Fried Ipsum

Did I say we were done with shameless self promotion? Along with website development, we’re all designers at heart. Lorem Ipsum is a bit boring, so we decided to spice things up a bit and develop our own. Whenever we need filler content for print or web use, we use Deep Fried Ipsum.

GeoPeeker

GeoPeeker allows us to make sure a site is displaying region-specific content, and lets us know if a site is down in other locations and not just for us/the client. It’s also handy when paired with WhatsMyDNS during new website launches to see, literally, results across the globe.

What WordPress Theme is That?

During the discovery period, we’re always trying to figure out how the client’s’ site is set up so we can figure out if we’re going to build on any of it or start from scratch. Or, sometimes you just need to figure out how your or someone else’s site is built. What WordPress Theme Is That can provide some helpful insights.

Hopefully some of these tools can help make your online life easier. Even if you’re not a developer, finding out what your company’s website looked like in 2002 is good laughter fuel. Get in touch with us today if you think our toolbox can help you!

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