On today’s episode, we are going to talk about the applications that I use daily at Automattic right here on Your Website Engineer Podcast Episode #303. Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Your Website Engineer Podcast. My name is Dustin Hartzler. Today we are going to be talking about the applications that I use every single day as part of just my workflow. The tools that I have on my computer that just make my life easier, the things that make navigating my job, make navigating my computer so much easier and so much more effective and fast.

And so that’s what I want to share with you today, and I’ll get to that in just a second. There are no announcements this week. I am traveling this week for Automattic Grand Meetup. I’ve had an amazing week – I’m saying in the future – with my coworkers this past week. We’ve been in Whistler, Canada, and I’m flying back to my houses today. And so I’ve prerecorded this episode so I didn’t have to worry about doing it there and dealing with not taking my mic and all that good stuff. So there’s no announcements this week, but keep an eye on that.

And I’ll update you next week with anything that may be happening in the WordPress space. I do have a plugin that I want to share with you today, and it is called Auto Affiliate Links, and there’s a link to it in the show notes for Episode #303. And this allows you to automatically display affiliate links in your website, do you can make more money. You can specify the keywords, and affiliate links will automatically be added to those pieces of text.

And so for example if I wanted to highlight that, anytime on my website I mention Flywheel, I want it to automatically link that to yourwebsiteengineer.com/flywheel. And do add my affiliate link there, it would automatically do that. Now, it’s not changing the content of your website itself. Like, the post isn’t being changed itself, and so if you turn off the plugin, like, it’s going to erase all of those. It’s not gonna work. So what it works for is a plugin is looking for those keywords when your page loads.

And then as soon as it sees it, it will automatically replace those onto your live site that your website viewers are looking at. So that’s how Auto Affiliate Links work. And if you want some way to automatically do that to make it much easier instead of adding links – I know a lot of times you can use snip text snippets and stuff like that to auto expand, or you can do it with Pretty Link Lite or Pretty Link the Pro version. There’s a lot of different ways to do this, but I found that this plugin looks to be very slick and very easy to use. So that’s Auto Affiliate Links. You can find the link to that in the WordPre – or in the show notes for this episode, Episode #303. And it can be found in the WordPress Repository by searching Auto Affiliate Links. Okay, today I want to talk about the applications that I use daily at Automattic. Some of these are specific to WordPress. Other ones are just specific to me. Others are specific to just helping me navigate my computer better. And again, this is a topic that I love to talk about.

I love to talk about productivity. I love to talk about, like, how to make my computer faster, how I can be faster with using my computer, and I will throw out there that I am using a Mac. So some of these are Mac only, but most of them can be used on multiple computers or multiple types of operating systems. And, like, the one that I’ll talk about is TextExpander. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but there are PC equivalents that will do the same thing. So let’s go ahead and dive right in. The first tool that I use every single day – I use it multiple times a day – is DesktopServer.

And I say that because I have a local install of WooCommerce, and all of the extensions that we support. And I can easily go in, and I can toggle those on and off. And I can make sure that they are turned on. They are turned off when I’m debugging and troubleshooting a client’s site or a customer’s site that is using one of our plugins at WooCommerce. So I use DesktopServer all the time.

If I need to set up a brand new installation with somebody that maybe they’re having a specific issue, then I will use Duplicator the plugin and then use DesktopServer to create an exact replica of that site on my testing server to make sure that it’s not a server-based issue that’s happening. So lots of different functionality pieces inside DesktopServer that I absolutely love and work really, really well for me.

The next thing is Sublime Text. This is a plugin that I use to open up a text editor, to make edits, to do poll requests and things like that. I spend a lot of time inside Sublime Text just looking at code and trying to figure out what the code’s doing to see if it’s actual bugs, to see if the code is working properly, or what the code is actually doing. So I really like Sublime Text for doing that. Slack is another application that I use every single day. I keep connected with all kinds of things going on within Automattic. It keeps me connected to my team. I have a team of ten that I’m on, and we have a private channel where we talk about different team things and just kind of a Watercooler if you will. Then we’ve got Watercooler channels. We’ve got channels that are specific for happiness engineers. We’ve got channels that are specific for different product areas. So if you’re interested in learning more about what one of the teams is doing, you can go ahead. And you can stay connected to their Slack channel. We’ve got a Slack channel for third-party debs, so we’ve got third-party developers that build plugins for us. And so if we have questions for them, we can ping them on those sites.

So we keep updated with notifications. We’ve got all kinds of things happen in our Slack channels, and so this is a great way to stay connected. And this is the second application that I open every single morning to get caught back up on everything that I’ve missed since I left the night before. So I use Slacker, again, in the community aspect as well, so I’m on the WordPress Slack channel. So I can publicly be connected to all of the people that are on the WordPress Community Slack Channel, which is really nice.

And we’ve got a Dayton one as well, so we can be connected for WordCamp planning and stuff like that. So that is all of Slack, and Slack is a relatively new tool. It’s kind of like an instant messaging tool. It’s kind of like Skype is for groups, but it’s just much easier. You don’t have to request permission to be connected to people. You can just direct message people, and it’s just a really cool app. You can get started actually for free with Slack if you have a small team or if just want to get started.

It’s pretty simple, so you want to go ahead and check out Slack. I mentioned Slack was the second application that I open up when I start my day. The first application is the WordPress app, and I use this to catch up on all internal blog posts. I use it to stay updated with friend’s blogs and what not. The internal blogposts that we use are called P2s, and it is like a neat solution that was created a few years ago within Automattic.

And it’s basically, kind of like, a newsfeed type thing. Think about, like, a Facebook post. Like, somebody can post very, very quickly whatever they may be thinking about or whatever information they want to share. And then people have the ability to comment down below, and there’s nested comments. I mean, it’s built on WordPress, and I’ve used it for different things. I’ve used it for Mastermind Groups. I’ve used it within work. You check boxes beside it, and then when people check it, it automatically, like, triggers a checkmark and things like that.

So it’s a really useful tool, and we use it all the time for internal communication. But I like the WordPress app because it’s like a central place where I can go, and I can focus on just reading and catching back. I call it the scroll back. I read the scroll back first thing in the morning to see what I’ve missed since the last time I’ve been online. Another tool that I use, and this is a Mac only app, and is called Annotate.

And it allows me to quickly take screenshots for customers, add arrows, add text. I can highlight different areas that I see that may be working that maybe they didn’t see, or maybe they’re missing where the settings are or they need to change something. Like, I like to highlight those and put arrows on the menu items and put arrows where they need to do things. So that’s what I use for that, Annotate. I used to use a program called Skitch, and that was made by Evernote.

And they kind of discontinued it, and it wasn’t really working very well. And so I found this one on the WordPress or on the Mac OS Store, the app store if you will. I have noticed that there’s a piece of it that doesn’t work on macOS Sierra. And so if you’re running the latest version, there’s a little bit of quirkiness that’s happening there. But developers are aware of it, and they are working on a fix. Cloudup is a way that I share these images.

So once I take a screenshot and I capture whatever I want to share with the customer, then I upload it to Cloudup. And it is an online image sharing tool. And then I use the URL that comes out of it automatically as a URL to my clipboard. And then I use that URL, and I auto embed that into a Zendesk reply. So it will automatically pull up, and customers can see exactly whatever I’m highlighting, whatever I’m pointing out. So I use that dozens of times per day uploading things to Cloudup.

The next one is TextEpander. This is a really awesome tool that allows me to quickly ask for information or quickly expand text. So one of the simplest ones that I have is I say Cheers! at the end of every support request that I send back to the customers. I say Cheers! And so instead of typing, like, C-H-E-E-R-S-! I just do cch, and it auto expands into that.

I use this for email addresses, so if I need to add the email address to a form or what not, I never type my email address anymore. If I do Dustin at yourwebsiteengineer.com, it is just ddw will expand to that. And so I have that set up for all of my email addresses. I have it set to ask for login credentials for customers within WooCommerce. I use it hundreds and hundreds of times a day. It saves me just so much time and helps me to stay very consistent with the way that I’m asking for things and things along those lines. So TextEpander I use all the time for both personal and for work. Alfred is another tool that I use both personal and for work. TextExpander, let me say, is a Mac only.

I think they’re working on a Windows, and there’s Windows equivalents of that. Alfred is a Mac only app, and this allows me to quickly navigate as a command space. I do command space on my keyboard, and then I can type things in. And it will automatically do things. So, if I wanted to go to our specific team’s P2, I’d type command space, and then I’d type P2. I hit enter, and I go. I have a keyboard shortcut set up for all the planning for the Grand Meetup.

And so if I wanted to find a document very, very quickly, I’d go ahead and do that with a keyboard shortcut, which is really, really nice. I use it to quickly navigate and search different things. So, if I wanted to look for a specific repository on our WordPress GitHub site, then I can just type G-I-T for Git, and then I type whatever repository I’m looking for. And it automatically searches for me. It works really, really well. You can do a lot of things. I’ve created an app that helped me navigate to different areas of the WordPress Dashboard.

So if I’m looking at the WordPress, I’m looking at somebody’s WordPress backend. Then I can type plugins, and it’ll automatically take me to the plugins page, which is really nice. So I use Alfred for hundreds and thousands of things on a monthly basis. I use Terminal. I don’t use it very well. I’m always trying to improve how I use Terminal, but I use Terminal to clone WordPress repositories into my testing environment. I use it to do poll requests are kind of the two main things.

Like I said, I’m not really a power user of Terminal, so I don’t use it for lots and lots of things. But those are a couple of the things that I use it for regularly. I use another program called Sequel Pro, and this is a Mac only app as well that quickly opens a WordPress database, and it allows me to easily run queries. It’s just like a really nice UI to be able to figure out things. So a lot of times customers will just say well, where are the orders located in my WordPress database. So, to make sure that I know exactly where it is or if I’m looking for something brand new, some sort of brand new information maybe where the ratings are located or whatever, like, I have to go in. I can look in the post table. I can look in the post metastable, and it just allows me to quickly navigate. If a customer says well, how can I move these rating from one product to another? Like, I don’t know. Like, it would take me forever to try to research that and try to figure it out. But if you go into the WordPress database, you can make some changes and some edits really, really quickly.

And it will associate a rating from one product to another, and it was really kind of a neat way. Like, you can fix things. You can try things. You could do all of this. Like, it makes it really, really easy to do. I don’t know a lot of Sequel and Sequel commands to, like, automatically do a lot of things. So that’s one of the applications I use. It’s called Sequel Pro. Let’s see. I have two more, and these aren’t really work related things.

These are more, like, productivity type apps that I use. But the first one is called Saent S-A-E-N-T, and this is both for Windows and for Mac. And I’ve got a little sync device. It was like an Indiegogo type applica – or Indiegogo campaign or a Kickstarter campaign that I funded a few years ago. And it’s a software application and a button that you can press. But essentially, what it does is it allows me to stay focused.

I say that I’m gonna work for 25 minutes, and I’m gonna work on tickets for 25 minutes say. And I have this timer that goes off that kinda scrolls across the top of the screen, and it lets me know. It kinda counts down from 25 to how many minutes that I have left. And so it allows me to stay focused. It allows me to stay at my desk. I use a Pomodoro method of workstyle, so I work for either 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break, or I work for 50 minutes and take a ten minute break. And I just kinda do that, and it helps me to remember to get up and to move around.

And if I have household chores that I need to do, like, a ten minute block is a perfect amount of time to grab laundry and move it from the washer to the dryer or unload the dishwasher real quick, or you need to do simple things around the house like that. So I use that. I also can tag each of these little periods that I have. So if I do 25 minutes, I can tag that as okay, I worked on tickets for 25 minutes. And then at the end of the day, I can see oh, I worked this long on this project.

And I worked this long on this project, and then at the end of the week, I can kind of see where all my focus and my energy has gone through the past week. So I really like that program for those types of things though not really any work related benefit other than I’m more productive and more efficient. And so I stay focused, and I can really figure out what I’m gonna – and, like, I just stay laser focused on working on tickets for 25 minutes. The time goes by so fast, and I’m like I can do another block real quick.

And I try to set goals for myself like okay, I have 35 open tickets. By the end of this 25 minute block, it would be awesome if I would only have 28 tickets left. So I try to see if I can knock out seven tickets in that amount of time. So I use the program called Saent for that. And the last one is called OmniFocus. You’ve probably heard of this before. This is a Mac only app as well, but it’s like all the other applications that are out there. There’s hundreds of apps like Nozbe and Wunderlist and Asana and just tons and tons of them out there.

But I use OmniFocus to keep track of all my tasks. It provides daily reminders, or weekly reminders are the big thing for me. I used to have one set up for my weekly post. We used to do Thursday updates, and so I’d always have a reminder to hey, let’s remember to post what I’ve done during the week. We now do daily reminders or daily things, so I have that as a daily reminder inside of OmniFocus. Just a bunch of things that you don’t want to think about, things that happen every three months or so or every month.

Like, I’d never remember when I’m supposed to change my contacts, so I have a reoccurring thing inside of OmniFocus that says okay, it’s time to change your contacts and time to change your oil filter or your air filter within your house or all kinds of things that you want to remember but you don’t necessarily need to know them right now. I put them as recurring tasks or something that’s gonna happen in the future. So that’s OmniFocus, and I love OmniFocus. And I’ve got hundreds of things to do in OmniFocus, and yeah, I just absolutely love that program.

So those are the applications I use daily within Automattic within just my normal day of doing things. We do have some email communication. Mostly it’s P2 posts that are automatically emailed to me so I make sure that I don’t miss them. And I do that inside of Gmail inside of just the web browser. So those are the applications. Those are the things, the pieces of software and the tools that I use every single day as part of my journey at Automattic. I hope it found you some sort of value with this or some sort of application that you can implement into your daily work life. And that’s what I want to share with you today, so until next time. We’ll talk again soon. Take care. Bye-bye.