Keeping a field guide to 375 tools
Our Resources page started as a list of 168 tools and grew to 375 in fifteen sections. The trick to keeping it current is that it isn't really a page.
Clients ask us which tools to use more than almost anything else. So we wrote it down: a plain-English field guide to the software we design, build and connect with, saying what each tool is and when it's the right choice.
It started with 168 tools. It now covers 375, in fifteen sections, from thinking and writing to measuring and maintaining a site after launch.
It's data, not a page
The guide isn't written as a web page. Every tool is a short entry in one data file: its name, its section, what it is and when to pick it. A small build step turns that file into the page, the contents list and the index of names at the top.
That has three useful side effects:
- Adding or correcting a tool means editing a line, not a layout.
- The count in the page's title and in the search box is always right, because it's counted at build time.
- Search works on the page immediately, with no service behind it. Try "video" or "CMS".
Keeping it honest
Tools change faster than websites. Products close, get renamed or fold into something bigger. The guide is corrected as that happens: when a product shuts down it comes out, and when one is renamed the entry follows the new name.
How we choose
The guide isn't a ranking, because there's rarely one best tool, only the best fit for a team, a budget and a goal. We pick with three questions:
- What job needs doing? The job comes first, then the tool, never the other way round.
- Can your team run it? If it needs us every week, it's the wrong choice.
- Does your data stay yours? You should be able to take your content and leave.
