I’m writing up my current tool set for web development partially because many are curious about what others use for development. But perhaps I’m doing it more as a historic note to myself about where I was with all this at the beginning of 2014. It’s not like I don’t write about web design tools often enough; I did as recently as last November.

The Underpinnings

Most of my web development is done using WordPress as the platform. It’s super popular which means there’s a huge development community surrounding it offering plenty of support and advice, as well as a tremendous range of themes and plug-ins – some free and some not. If I want to go a little lighter, I work with concrete5. It offers a CMS, its own framework, an active development community and a marketplace of add-ons and themes – again, some free and some not.

I’ve done it again – updated my web site at Bob Rockefeller Photography to another platform with other tools. Maybe you’re curious about which ones?

At the base is the old friend, WordPress [update: this is old news, it’s running on Statamic now. But this still should be interesting]. For as many bad things as I can (and have) said about WordPress, I have to admit that it is a powerful and well supported foundation for building websites. It’s not as sexy as Meteor nor as simple as Kirby, but it can do a tremendous amount and powers a huge portion of the websites running today. So Bob Rockefeller Photography is back from a number of alternative suitors and is running on WordPress.

Staying comfortable with another old friend, I did all the coding with Coda 2. That is still a solid development environment, with the proper Macintosh integration and the support of an excellent developer, (Panic). I’ve written about Coda 2 before, several times, so I won’t go over that all again. Suffice it to say that I learn more of its features, and improve my configuration of it, the longer I use it. Sublime Text is the current programmers’ darling, I know, but it is just too homely and un-Mac-like for me. And support from the developer? Don’t get me started.

Could a user of Aperture since its initial release switch to Capture One Pro version 7.1? That’s the question I set out to answer in some “spare” time over the last few days.

I just love Aperture’s approach to RAW workflow. The interface, the tools, its file management, and image adjustment all feel just right to me. The “problem” of late is that technologies such as lens correction for distortion and top-notch noise reduction for high ISO images have been lagging behind in Aperture.

Let’s not get into the whole issue of whether or not the numerous “point” upgrades to Aperture this past year are equal to what we’ve all been looking for as version 4. I’ll simply say that the Aperture of today has not kept up with its primary competitor, Adobe Lightroom, in some key (at least to me) technological areas. Lightroom can make excellent images out of RAW files shot at higher ISO from cameras such as my new Olympus OM-D E-M5 with Olympus zoom lenses.

Those folks shooting the new Fuji X series cameras feel more left out than I. Aperture can’t even read the x-trans Fuji RAW file format.