There are many aspects to developing a website, and not all of them are always performed by one person. Depending on the focus of the website, the best web development tools could be different for each site. Heavily graphical sites will want advanced image and video editors. Sites that rely on passing text information along to readers will want to employ content management software. The important thing is to find tools that streamline the workflow and are able to perform all of the necessary tasks for creating and maintaining the target website.
An important consideration when trying to choose the best web development tools is to consider the workflow for the site. A website that is maintained by a single person in an office has very different requirements than a website maintained by an entire online team. If a team is involved, then web design tools that have document-sharing or online-collaboration features are desirable. Even if working alone, it is vital that the programs being used for each part of development are able to work peacefully with each other. This can mean using only tools from a single company or avoiding programs that use proprietary file formats.
The focus and goals of the website also will help to determine which tools are the best and which ones are not needed. Small websites might be able to rely on open source tools or online tools that can help to manage the site without the need for detailed programming knowledge. A large website might find that advanced offline analytical tracking software and a custom web server are invaluable.
A concept called scalability should be carefully considered. There are web development tools that can shift from handling a website comprised of a handful of pages to a website that can handle thousands of pages without requiring any modifications and with no loss of performance. Tools that are not designed to scale up with the size of a website also exist. Price can be a consideration here, but a very realistic outlook of the future of the website should be assessed to determine if a small additional investment in a scalable tool at the start could save time and headaches later.
Finally, the best web development tools will be intuitive and easy to use for everyone involved. While there may be dominant and popular development suites and programs, if they are obtuse and not easily accessible, then it defeats the purpose of using them. With the variety of tools available, there should be some that fit the exact needs of a company or individual.