One of the best things about Wordpress is that it's open source software which means that it's freely
available for anyone to create websites and sell them to clients.
All the tools you need for this course are also freely available as long as you have a computer and
internet access.
Let's take a look.
In this video you'll learn a few different options for the tools needed to complete this course.
You probably already have most of them and the rest can be obtained easily; inexpensively or for free.
By the end you'll have everything you need in one place to complete the course and create a WordPress
website business of your own.
First you'll need a computer with internet access.
This could be a Windows machine or a Mac.
And while we'll be doing a lot of our website development off line using a local environment you'll
also need internet access.
We will be using the worldwide web to download the tools and resources needed to build a complete business
as well as to develop and present websites live on the Internet.
On your computer you'll need a modern browser that delivers websites and connects to the Internet using
the latest protocols.
I recommend having both Mozilla Firefox as I'm showing here and Google Chrome installed as we will be
using each with some of our specific tools.
Safari on the Mac is also a good modern browser.
Well Internet Explorer for Windows is nice to have for testing your final websites as a part of your
process to make sure your sites work on all devices and browsers.
We won't be using it for website development itself.
Your computer most likely has a text editor included in the operating system like notepad on Windows
and textedit on the Mac.
You can use these but there are also some free code editors you can use that make it a little easier
to read.
The files will be editing these code editors use syntax highlighting and monitor code formatting for
this purpose.
Check out notepad plus plus for Windows text wrangler for the Mac and add them on both platforms.
If T-P stands for file transfer protocol and will use one of these programs to upload and download files
from the Internet in our local environment you can just use Windows Explorer pictured here or finder
on the Mac to transfer files to and from the local server on your computer.
But within hosting programs and internet servers you'll need to use NFTE program and there are many
free options.
I recommend fire FGP which is an add on for the Firefox browser or files Zilah a free program available
for Windows or Mac and finally will need some way to optimize and format pictures graphics and all kinds
of images for delivery on the web because we want our websites to load fast.
You'll be learning how to size images and compress them properly so you'll need an image editing program
like Adobe Photoshop.
I prefer Photoshop but it does cost money.
You can get it for 1995 a month at this time but if you don't already have Photoshop there are many
free options including Apple photos on the Mac.
I Pycke dotcom is a great web based photo editor.
GIMP is a longtime free competitor to Adobe Photoshop Google photos which used to be Google Picasa Bixler
is another good one based on the web photo or is a browser based photo editor and on one effects has
a free version that is excellent.
So to recap you've hopefully pause the video a few times and downloaded or found the tools you need
on your computer.
If not go ahead and review the info we've covered to get yourself set up and ready to create your website
business.
Next we'll be delving deeper into the specifics of what you'll be learning in this course.
We'll also go over some of the business tools you can use for managing invoices taking payments and
keeping up with the latest in wordpress and the web design industry.
See there