Tools and skills · 117 elements
The periodic table of my stack.
Every platform, language, tool and skill I work with: 117 elements, each defined in plain words, with how I use it, how well I know it and the projects that prove it.
Every term, A to Z
A
- A/B testing
Showing two versions of a page to comparable visitors and measuring which one does better, instead of guessing.
- ACF
Advanced Custom Fields: a WordPress plugin for adding structured fields to content and, in its Pro version, building blocks without React.
- Action Scheduler
The background job queue that ships with WooCommerce: WordPress work that is too long for a page load runs in queued, retryable steps.
- Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe's enterprise content and digital asset management platform, built in Java and used by large global brands.
- Adobe XD
Adobe's tool for designing and prototyping user interfaces, in maintenance mode since 2023.
- AEO
Answer engine optimization: shaping content so search features, voice assistants and AI tools quote it as the answer.
- Amazon
The largest online marketplace. Selling there from an existing store means syncing products, stock, orders and fulfilment.
- AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages: Google's open-source format for fast mobile pages, once required for Top Stories and now optional.
- AngularJS
Google's original JavaScript framework for single-page apps, with two-way data binding. Support ended in 2022.
- Autoptimize
A free WordPress plugin that aggregates, minifies and defers CSS and JavaScript to make pages load faster.
B
- bbPress
Forum software from the makers of WordPress: discussion boards that live inside a WordPress site.
- BeTheme
A multipurpose WordPress theme from Muffin Group with hundreds of pre-built sites, usually paired with WPBakery.
- BigCommerce
A hosted e-commerce platform for growing and enterprise stores, with Stencil themes and GraphQL and REST APIs.
- BigQuery
Google Cloud's serverless data warehouse. It runs SQL over very large tables, and GA4 can export its raw event data into it.
- Bitbucket Pipelines
Atlassian's continuous integration and delivery service, built into Bitbucket: every push runs your build, tests and deploys.
- Bitrix24
An all-in-one collaboration suite: tasks, projects, CRM, chat and a shared drive in one workspace.
- Bootstrap
The front-end framework of grid, components and utility classes, first released by Twitter in 2011, for building responsive layouts quickly.
- Brand guidelines
The rulebook for a brand: logo use, colour palette, type pairing, imagery and tone, so it looks like itself everywhere.
- BuddyBoss
A commercial platform built on BuddyPress for app-like online communities, with courses, memberships and native mobile apps.
- BuddyPress
An open-source plugin that adds social networking to WordPress: profiles, activity streams, groups, messages and notifications.
C
- C++
A fast, compiled language that adds objects to C, used for systems, games, browsers and anything where performance matters.
- CircleType
A small open-source JavaScript library that sets text on a circle, the trick behind rotating badge text.
- Claude API
Anthropic's API for its Claude models. Send text, documents or tool definitions; get back answers, structured output or tool calls.
- Claude Code
Anthropic's agentic coding tool: it reads a codebase, plans changes, edits files and runs commands from the terminal.
- Cloudflare
A global network in front of websites: DNS, CDN caching, security, redirects and rules that run at the edge.
- Core Web Vitals
Google's three page experience metrics: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds (INP) and how stable it stays (CLS).
- CSS
The language that controls how web pages look: layout, colour, type, spacing and motion.
D
- D3.js
A JavaScript library for data visualisation. It binds data to SVG and HTML, so charts are built from the data up.
- Divi
A WordPress theme and visual builder from Elegant Themes, edited on the front end with drag-and-drop modules.
- Django
A Python web framework with an admin, an ORM and security built in, 'for perfectionists with deadlines'.
- DNS
The internet's directory: it turns names like arvindkumar.ca into the addresses servers answer on, and says where a domain's email goes.
- Drupal
An open-source PHP content management system known for structured content, permissions and large government and university sites.
E
- Elementor
The most widely used visual page builder for WordPress: live front-end editing, theme building and a large add-on ecosystem.
- Embeddings
Numbers that capture what a piece of text means, so software can find related content by meaning rather than matching words.
F
G
- GA4
Google Analytics 4: event-based analytics that shows what visitors do on a site and which channels bring them.
- Gemini API
Google's API for its Gemini models, the same family behind Gemini and AI Overviews in Google Search.
- GeneratePress
A lightweight WordPress theme built for speed and accessibility, extended by its GP Premium add-on.
- GEO
Generative engine optimization: earning accurate mentions and citations in answers written by AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.
- Git
The version control system almost every software team uses: every change recorded, branches for parallel work, and a way back from any mistake.
- Google Workspace
Google's office suite: Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive and Meet, built for working on the same file at the same time.
- GraphQL
A query language for APIs: the client asks for exactly the fields it needs and gets them back in one response.
- GSAP
The GreenSock Animation Platform: a JavaScript library for smooth, precisely timed animation, with ScrollTrigger for scroll-driven motion.
- Gutenberg
WordPress's block editor. Pages are built from blocks, and with full site editing, so are themes.
H
- Headless CMS
A content system that only manages content and serves it over an API, while a separate front end decides how it looks and where it goes.
- HTML
The markup language every web page is made of. It gives content its structure and meaning, which browsers, screen readers and search engines all read.
- HubSpot
A CRM with marketing, sales, service and content tools on top, popular with growing businesses.
I
- IIS
Microsoft's web server for Windows: it hosts .NET applications like Kentico, with its own bindings, rewrite rules and certificates.
- Illustrator
Adobe's vector graphics editor, used for logos, icons, illustration and layout mockups that scale to any size.
- IPv4 and IPv6
The two versions of the Internet Protocol's addressing: IPv4's 32-bit addresses are running out, IPv6's 128-bit addresses are not.
J
- Java
A general-purpose, object-oriented language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine, used for enterprise systems and Android.
- JavaScript
The programming language of the browser. It makes pages interactive, and through Node.js it runs on servers too.
- Jira
Atlassian's issue and project tracker: tickets, sprints and boards for software teams working in Agile.
- Joomla
An open-source PHP content management system, forked from Mambo in 2005, with built-in multilingual support.
- jQuery
The JavaScript library that made the DOM easy to work with across browsers. Still loaded by WordPress and a huge share of the web.
K
L
- LambdaTest
A cloud of real browsers and devices for testing websites, by hand or with automated scripts, without keeping a device lab.
- LearnDash
A learning management plugin for WordPress: courses, lessons, quizzes and certificates inside a WordPress site.
- LearnPress
A free learning management plugin for WordPress: courses, lessons, quizzes and paid enrolment.
- Looker Studio
Google's free dashboard and reporting tool. It joins Search Console, GA4 and other sources into reports people actually read.
M
- Mailchimp
The email marketing platform small and mid-sized businesses start with: lists, signup forms, campaigns and automations.
- Marketo
Adobe's marketing automation platform for B2B: forms, lead scoring, nurture programmes and the hand-off to sales.
- MCP
The Model Context Protocol: an open standard for connecting AI applications to tools and data through one kind of connector.
- MemberPress
A WordPress membership plugin: paid plans, content rules that lock pages to members, coupons and recurring billing.
- Mentoring
Helping other people get good at the work: pairing, code review, explaining the why as well as the how, and standards a team can follow on its own.
- Microsoft 365
Microsoft's office suite, once Office 365: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, with OneDrive and SharePoint.
- Monday.com
A work management platform of boards, timelines and automations for planning and tracking projects across a team.
- Moodle
The open-source learning management system schools, universities and companies use to run online courses.
- MySQL
The open-source relational database behind WordPress and much of the web. It stores content in tables and answers queries in SQL.
N
- npm
The package manager for JavaScript: it installs a project's libraries and build tools and runs its scripts.
O
- OpenAI API
OpenAI's API for its GPT models, the ones behind ChatGPT: text, structured output, tool calls, embeddings and more.
P
- Paid Memberships Pro
An open-source membership plugin for WordPress: levels, recurring payments and content restriction, with a large add-on library.
- Paymentez
A Latin American payment processor, now part of Nuvei, used by stores in Ecuador, Colombia and the region.
- Perplexity
An AI answer engine that searches the web and answers with citations, one of the places buyers now research before they buy.
- Photoshop
Adobe's image editor: photo retouching, compositing and the visual groundwork for a lot of web design.
- PHP
The server-side language WordPress, WooCommerce and Moodle are written in. It runs on the server and builds each page before it reaches the browser.
- Playwright
Microsoft's framework for browser automation and end-to-end testing across Chromium, Firefox and WebKit.
- Polylang
A multilingual plugin for WordPress that keeps each translation as its own post, linked to the others, with a free core.
- PWA
Progressive web app: a website that installs like an app, works offline and can send notifications, built with a manifest and a service worker.
- Python
A general-purpose programming language known for readable code, used for scripting, data work, machine learning and web back ends.
R
S
- Salesforce
The largest CRM platform: customer records, sales pipelines, service cases and the reports built on them.
- Schema.org
The shared vocabulary for structured data. It tells search engines and AI tools, in code, what a page is about: a person, a product, an event, a question.
- ScrollMagic
A JavaScript library for scroll interactions: pin elements, toggle classes and play animations as the visitor scrolls.
- SCSS
The main syntax of Sass, a CSS preprocessor: variables, nesting, mixins and partials that compile down to plain CSS.
- Search Console
Google's free tool for site owners: which searches show your pages, which pages are indexed, and what is broken.
- Security Development Lifecycle
Building security in from the start: threat modelling, secure coding rules and testing at every stage instead of a check at the end.
- Selenium
The original open-source tool for automating browsers, used to test that a website still works after every change.
- Semrush
An SEO and competitive research platform: keywords, rankings, backlinks and site audits, and now tracking of AI visibility.
- SEO
Search engine optimization: making pages easy for search engines to crawl, understand and rank, so the right people find them.
- Shopware
An open-source e-commerce platform from Germany, popular with European retailers. Shopware 6 is built on Symfony and Vue.js.
- Slack
Team messaging in channels instead of email threads, with integrations that bring alerts and tools into the conversation.
- Slider Revolution
A WordPress plugin for layered hero scenes: sliders, parallax, video backgrounds and timed animation without hand-written code.
- SMTP for WordPress
Sending WordPress email through an authenticated mail server, so password resets, form alerts and order emails reach the inbox.
- SPF and DMARC
DNS records that prove a domain's email is real: SPF lists the servers allowed to send, DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails.
- SQL
The standard language for asking a relational database questions: select, filter, join and change the rows in its tables.
- Squarespace
A hosted website builder known for polished templates, with hosting, commerce and scheduling in one subscription.
T
- Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager: one container for analytics and marketing tags, so tracking changes ship without touching the site code.
- Tock
A reservations and ticketing platform for restaurants, wineries and events, with prepaid bookings and deposits.
- Toolset
A suite of WordPress plugins for custom post types, fields, relationships and listings, built without writing code.
- TypeScript
JavaScript with types. Microsoft's superset of JavaScript catches mistakes before the code runs and compiles to plain JavaScript.
W
- WCAG
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: the W3C's standard for websites people can use whatever their abilities, and the basis of laws like the AODA.
- WebMCP
A proposed web standard that lets a page expose its own tools, like a form, to AI agents in the browser, so they can use them in a structured way.
- Wix
A hosted drag-and-drop website builder: design, hosting and apps in one subscription, no code needed.
- WooCommerce
The open-source e-commerce plugin that turns WordPress into a store: products, cart, checkout, payments and orders.
- WordPress
The open-source content management system behind roughly two in five websites. Written in PHP and extended with themes and plugins.
- WordPress Multisite
One WordPress installation running a whole network of sites, with shared users, themes and plugins and one place to update them.
- WP REST API
WordPress's built-in JSON API: read and write content over HTTP, and register your own endpoints for apps, blocks and integrations.
- WP Rocket
A WordPress caching and performance plugin: page cache, file optimisation, lazy loading and delayed JavaScript.
- WPBakery
A drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress, formerly Visual Composer, bundled with many commercial themes.
- WPML
The best-known multilingual plugin for WordPress: translated pages, posts, menus and WooCommerce products, with language switchers and SEO tags.
Y
Z
- Zapier
A no-code automation service that connects web apps: when something happens in one, Zapier does something in another.